Shed Studios was responsible for the production of hundreds of band recordings [1] and a large body of music used for various advertisements and films in Rhodesia, and later in Zimbabwe, from 1975 until 2000.

The company "Shed Recording Studios (Pvt) Ltd" (now defunct) began in 1975, as a collaboration between Steve Roskilly, Martin Norris and Neil Thain, all employees of Rhodesia Television.

This outfit learned its trade by making a series of live recordings at various music venues around Salisbury, the capital City, but soon found that the uniqueness of the mobile caravan, became more of a restriction than an advantage and a proper studio was seen as essential for progress.

Neil Thain had pulled out fairly early on, moving to Johannesburg and as the volume of advertising work increased, the number of hours available in the evenings soon became insufficient.

This left Roskilly alone in the studio to carry on the business as he fortunately had a 5 year exemption from callup, having only recently arrived in the country from the UK.

Norris wrote a jingle for the travel agency - Musgrove and Watson, as commissioned by Nick Alexander, a copywriter for Matthewman, Banks and Tholet, but sadly had to leave for yet another call-up stint.

Roskilly was left to do the arrangement and production work, and asked David Scobie, a 15-year-old with a very mature Neil Diamond sound-alike voice, to sing the lead part.

The "Shed" record label was also launched in 1980, offering free studio production time to deserving artists in return for a percentage of any resultant incomes.

Success resided predominantly in two artists, David Scobie, as mentioned before and The Bhundu Boys, though many others including The Rusike Brothers, The Great Witch, and The Real Sounds became household names.

The released single shot straight up the record sales charts knocking Michael Jackson's "Thriller" off the coveted No 1 position.

A compilation of The Bhundu Boys and African Herb, an offshoot of Thomas Mapfumo's band, was released, and resulted in interest by the radio DJs John Peel,[4] Andy Kershaw and Charlie Gillett.

Shed responded in 1986 by licensing a compilation of Zimbabwean Bhundu Boys hits to Discafrique called "Shabhini", which took the UK world music public by storm.

Back in 1981 Shed Studios was commissioned by the Zimbabwe Government to provide live sound for the first Independence Celebrations at Rufaro Stadium.

The gear was duly delivered to the stadium directly from the airport, without customs clearance, the day prior to the event and the celebrations went ahead successfully as planned.

Subsequently, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee pronounced that the relevant government Ministry of Youth Sport and Recreation had not purchased the PA system in the laid down method, nor had it complied with the norms of importation.

In 1981, Steve Hughes a Harare Night club owner and friend, invested in the company in order to build the second studio for Bothwell Nhamhondera, who had recently joined.

Nyamhondera's talents soon saw him the engineer of choice for the local record companies Gramma and Gallo (later ZMC) [5] that had by now started to hire studio time on a regular basis.

Cliff Hunt, the band’s manager agreed to make overall rights to Shed Studios as long as the proceeds from any future sale first settled the outstanding bill, then whatever was residual would accrue to the Rhino charity as originally intended.

Two years later, Roskilly asked his film producer colleague Ralph Stutchbury, to cut together some iconic sunrise shots alongside the powerful Refugee audio recording.

You Tube also features another video with the original soundtrack on the Shed Studios channel In 1987, Andy Zweck from Harvey Goldsmith Productions in London, and Neil Dunn, a friend of Roskilly’s, brought the offer of becoming promoter for a pair of upcoming concerts for Paul Simon.

Acting as technical manager Roskilly went on to work with Dunn for a series of further concerts including the Reebok Sponsored Human Rights Now!

They operated and developed the new PA company together for about 6 months, and worked in the Soundscape-equipped digital studio producing jingles and a theatrical backtrack for St. George's College, Harare, the Passion Play No Greater Love.

Andrew McClymont replaced Chris Martin in 1997, as Prosound became Pro-Active Audio Zim, becoming hire manager, and the company took off, handling all sound services for the extensive World Council of Churches' 8th Assembly in 1998, led by general secretary Konrad Raiser.

In early 2000 however, Roskilly saw a downturn in Zimbabwe's advertising and disc business due to foreign currency cutbacks in the country, and the politically motivated farm invasions [8] began in earnest against prime exporters.

For Roskilly, the political future of the country was not looking good, and when other family issues also intervened, he set about moving back to his native UK.