The March 2024 Chart
The top ten tracks for March 2024 on Bandcamp and SoundCloud have been published in a new compilation.
We almost included data from spotify and the other streaming platforms, but unfortunately their data arrives too late from the distributors. We may delay the creation of these playlists for three or four days in the future, although this will be a team decision as we do like to have our recent hot tracks up on the website right from the first day of the month.
Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.
Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.
Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/
This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.
As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. More news on this to come at the end of 2024.
Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.
Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.
The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so worng. It’s a proper mess.
Why Use Bandcamp?
Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.
This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.
Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. It’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible as they are the best site for supporting artists. You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist.
Consider also the danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the current dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or even cease to exist altogether. To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish.
How Did We Calculate The March 2024 Chart?
The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).
When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls!
We have combined the stats from both SoundCloud and Bandcamp for the new chart. This is because it will not be long until all our Bandcamp tracks are also published at SoundCloud, providing they do not mangle their stats too horribly in the conversion/downgrade to ‘insights’.
Radio play and songs published at other platforms are omitted from the statistics. There may be further developments when our music is added to more platforms.
Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music. We have ways of knowing these things.
Only you, the listener, can influence our April 2024 chart. So if there is a track you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.
Thanks For All Your Help!
Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during March 2024 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.
All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. You genuinely help us keep the fires burning and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)
We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.
Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.
If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, both of which opened recently, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.
Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.
Who’s In The March 2024 Top Ten?
Pok the Bard
Congratulations to Pok the Bard! We have started to release his Anthology album’s tracks to SoundCloud (as mentioned in this News post) and doing so has made an immediate impact. Pok has claimed the four top spots on our new chart with all four of his currently available SoundCloud tracks.
Straight in at number one this month is the first of two new entries from our PokStar. Young Light is a beautiful song that Pok composed after he left the sixth form of school in 1983. He wrote it for Mark Drower for all the inspiration he gave to the fledgling wudders.
Young Light is quite a short song at only 2:36 and is full of wistful wonder. There is also a banjo, that Pok happened to have with him when he came to visit the studios on the day the song was recorded. It seemed like a fun idea to include it.
The second new entry for Pok at number two is a brand new release. Wear a Feather in Your Hat tells a most extraordinary tale about a group of travellers in the USA in the 19th Century and a man with purple skin. This really truly is a delightful song and the tale has the most peculiar twist at the end.
Pok plays three guitar parts on his beautiful Gretsch acoustic – one left, one right and a lead part. The lead part was recorded all in one take, and it was the first take. The man’s skills are often under-rated. Maxx and Sven do a fabulous job with the bass and percussives, as always.
Wear a Feather in Your Hat first appears on the Indeed recording by Laughing Sun. The lyrics even say “You can be a man of Wud or you can go insane!” – which seems a relatively easy choice to make.
Back in 1985, when Pok wrote Wear a Feather in Your Hat and used the word ‘man’, it was widely understood to mean ‘woman’ as well, in an all-encompassing and friendly way, rather than today’s necessity for lengthy politically correct pronoun conjugations and configuarations.
Pok‘s third song falls from number two to number three. The Dark, The Ring and The Knowedge is a fabulous tale of wizards and strange events. It is in the key of G major. The Dark, The Ring and The Knowedge was based on a true story that happened in approximately 1985, involving the discovery of a piece of lost jewelry. The lyrics are not simply a curious and compelling tale, they also hold within them highly practical pearls of wisdom.
Pok plays a lovely expressive fingerstyle acoustic guitar and quirky bluesy electric lead. Josh did an outstanding job on keys, playing piano with one hand and organ with the other, and capturing the psychedelic mood of the song perfectly. Sven’s infectious dancehall shuffle is an absolute delight (fantastic when soloed in the control room!) and Maxx’s bass is perfectly understated to glue everything together.
Down from number one to number four this month is The Sidewalk Song. This was co-written with Mark Drower and is a very historic and classic old song. The Anthology version we made is based upon a Now recording that Pok and ourselves consider to be largely definitive. The Sidewalk Song is a gloriously bombastic hard rock piledriver in E major, full of youthful self confidence, swagger and braggadocio.
After Now ceased to exist, The Sidewalk Song was subsequently performed by Lemming Meringue and Wud, although Ken’s Robert Plant influenced vocal was never quite up to Mark‘s more wholesome humanistic version. The breakdown section with the added percussion was improvised. The vocal was never performed the same twice, neither by Mark nor by Ken. The chords are very simple and clearly defined, and the traditional shout of “G!!!” is left in, as it was used to warn band members of the upcoming change.
The Bastard Sons of Dennis
The Bastard Sons of Dennis enjoyed a very good month on the chart in March 2024, claiming three of the ten possible positions.
All of the songs are from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy falling to its lowest ever position of five after remaining at the top position for a record ten consecutive months.
Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. Towards the end of 2022 we released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well. Recently it was sent for global distribution.
Since the studio upgrade early last year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Another album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Cherry Smoke Empire, is currently on the slab.
A progtastic full-band mini-album by the dynamic duo is also in the early stages of finalisation. Sadly we tend to feel that further recordings of their many remaining Blue Oyster Cult covers seems an unlikely prospect. This is mostly due to “discommunication, disorganisation and general untogetherness”, as the legend who is Paul Bateman once said of them when they were in Rough Terrain.
We finished the remixing and remastering of Cosy Lube Turtle in the autumn just gone. The new and improved Cosy Lube Turtle album was re-released early in October. We are still considering holding a Cosy Lube Turtle listening party at Bandcamp at some point when everything can be arranged.
This month‘s number five song, Astronomy, is a profoundly beautiful and haunting song. It was composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.
The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is more produced than their live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.
Then Came the Last Days of May falls two places to number seven. This song tells a true story of how three university friends of Blue Öyster Cult’s guitarist, Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, were brutally murdered in a drug deal that went horribly and tragically wrong. The version by our dynamic duo adds a twist to the versions heard on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous studio album and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album from 1975.
Derek would sing “Now and then a duck” instead of “truck”, which caused fans of the duo to bring toy ducks with them along to live performances. Chuck’s solo is largely based on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version, and his little whistle at the end (which didn’t always come out quite right in a live show) came from the character Tom Good in the uk tv sitcom The Good Life.
The third song from The Bastard Sons of Dennis is a re-entry at number nine. This is the penultimate song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot is another Blue Öyster Cult cover, which originates from the Long Island quintet’s 1972 eponymous album, Blue Öyster Cult. The original version is highly psychedelic.
When covered by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Chuck tunes his guitar to DADGAD. The twinkly noises at the beginning are created using an old computer fan and its assorted janglesome danglesome appendages. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot was often performed first in a set of Bastard Sons of Dennis songs, due largely to the tuning.
Mark Drower and the Everyones
It has been another good month for Mark Drower and the Everyones as two songs from their seminal Blaze Tape recording find themselves in the chart this month.
Falling from number four to number six is I Know I Know You by Mark Drower and the Everyones. This is a beautiful song with a lot of history.
I Know I Know You was composed by Mark Drower for the King’s School Ottery St Mary Project Week of 1982. As such, I Know I Know You is one of the oldest recordings in the Wud Records pantheon of fantastic songs.
I Know I Know You features a teenage Pok on lead guitar. It was performed live during the performance of the play Everyone by Frederick Franck, as well as by other bands that came later, such as Wud. It came in Act One, directly after the scene where Everyone talks with his Friends. The drop-D tuning Mark often used on his acoustic is still known as Drower Tuning by many of the wider Wud posse.
Treasure by Mark Drower and the Everyones sinks from number six to number ten. Treasure has a redoubtable history and was often jammed and made into other songs entirely, songs which never saw the light of day beyond the rooms they were jammed in.
Treasure is another fabulous song that Mark created. Its wonderful lyrics were often quoted, and those obscure chords in drop-D tuning that Mark taught us never appeared in any chord dictionary.
Treasure features the fabulous lead guitarings of a teenage Pok the Bard. Lisa Williams, who played the part of Treasure during the play, read the talkover at the beginning.
The Ug Brothers
The Ug Brothers returned to our charts once more with a new entry at number eight. The 222nd track ever to feature in the monthly charts is a lofi instrumental bootleg of The Ug Brothers playing live in 1995.
What Is It? is a reggae-rock-funk tune (sans vocals) from the Ugstrumentals album. What Is It? has a tremendously infectious groove. The rhythm section of Dave and Graham with their clever and silky smooth rhythms and bass harmonies are a joy and the song was always tremendously popular live.
* None of our other acts made it onto the March 2024 chart. *
Listening Options
If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.
Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.
Explicit Music 1982 - 2025. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying, lending, hiring, public performance, public broadcasting and sampling prohibited.