News

The Life, Times and Dreams cassette EP by Watershed has now been uploaded to the Archives section of the Wud Records website. Released in 1990, this recording features four of the songs from the mighty pen of Al Shalliker that were regularly performed live by those Grand Ubermeisters of Skank. These songs are Capital City Hero, Friendship and Life, Crusin’ in Contours and Living in the Gap. If the artwork for Life, Times and Dreams is anything to go by, this is the fourth cassette EP by Watershed, after Are YOU Normal?, Do It and In Niceness.

We have spent many years hunting the web for signs of this great band from Plymouth and found very little. As far as we have been able to tell, there is one more cassette EP called If The Sun Don’t Rise available to listen to on Youtube. There is also a more recent recording called The Eyes of Eli Wallach, which you can hear on on Myspace.

By the time the band recorded The Eyes of Eli Wallach, their sound had changed completely from reggae and funk to rock. Although we were still able to recognise Jo’s voice on a couple of songs and snatches of Al’s guitar and Mark’s bass, this was nothing like the Watershed that we knew and loved.

We believe that Jo may have suffered some kind of vocal damage due to the band’s constant gigging and become unable to sing very much, which would explain the apparent change in gender on the vocal front. Such a shame, she had a fantastic voice, full of power and expression. We also know that the awesome talent of Dave Gregory on keys will never be heard again live. He sadly passed away a few years ago.

Life, Times and Dreams has an interestingly light and fresh sound and is reasonably representative of the way the band played these songs. It was recorded around the time that Mike Baldwin on saxophones was leaving Watershed and Dave on keys was joining, as both of them make an appearance together. We are not certain if this ever happened in a live situation, although there must be somebody out there who can confirm or deny this fact. Dave’s signature sound in the band was the Fender Rhodes, and at the time of this recording he played a grand piano instead, suggesting that he had not yet integrated that particular instrument with Watershed’s sound.

Somewhere out there in the universe are copies of Are YOU Normal?, Do It and In Niceness. We would love to hear these wonderful collections of songs again and have the honour of hosting them here in the Archives of Wud Records. If you happen to be in possession of one of these cassettes, please contact info@wudrecords.co.uk as we would be very interested in hearing from you.

On top of all of that, Al used to keep a big box of cassettes under his bed on which there were recordings of just about every live performance the band ever did. Watershed would listen to these tapes after shows to analyze the performance and listen for possible improvements or adaptations. If those tapes still exist, there is an absolute gold-mine of fantastic live performances just waiting to be edited and compiled onto some web pages for the world to enjoy. Such a tantalising thought. Down in our ancient cassette vaults we have a very small amount of this live material and hope that we can bring it to you in the next few weeks.

Should there be any further developments with regard to Watershed-related discoveries, we shall let you know in our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to hear Life, Times and Dreams by Watershed in the Archives of the Wud Records website, please click here.

If you prefer to listen over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

Cute But Weird, the 1995 studio album by The Ug Brothers, has finally been remastered. All of the remastered tracks have been uploaded to Bandcamp and SoundCloud. They can also be enjoyed right here at the Cute But Weird page, among The Ug Brothers’ pages of the Wud Records website. They are, without any doubt whatsoever, sounding significantly better than the previous versions of these splendid tracks. The album consists of eight studio tracks and a bonus live recording of The Ug Song.

Due to the effects of cassette copying from the old master back in 1995, the original files that we have seem to have suffered a certain amount of audio degradation and distortion. Using modern techniques, we were able to minimize some of these losses and repair some of the distortions.

We were also able to go a little way to balancing the original mix a bit better, which was always somewhat light in the guitar department. This was due to it originally being mixed by the guitarist in the band, who wanted to be sure he didn’t mix any of the other band members too quietly. The final result was far from what we would call ideal.

We are still in possession of both the master tapes and the DAT masters. Sadly we have no DAT machine in our studios any more. Not only that, the ancient device on which the raw audio tracks for the songs were recorded is no longer working and replacement parts are extremely hard to come by.

However, we believe that during the course of 2017 we may be able to repair our old recording device and acquire a decent DAT machine. This means that a complete remixing and remastering of Cure But Weird is a definite possibility for the future, especially if fans of the band are interested in such a thing. If there are any further developments on this particular front, we shall inform you in our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to download Cute But Weird from Bandcamp, or simply listen, you can do so by clicking here.

If you would like to listen over at SoundCloud, please click here instead.

If you prefer to listen to Cute But Weird by The Ug Brothers here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

Watershed have a brand new Archive page here at Wud Records. Plymouth’s finest exponents of reggae music are one of our favourite bands of all time and after some research and some delving in the cassette vaults we are delighted to be able to bring you a few goodies from them.

When we discuss the various truly great bands that we have encountered over the thirty-ish years that we have been doing this kind of thing, Watershed are always pretty much at the top of the pile. It seems a great cultural crime that they were never picked up and developed by a major label. If in the early 90s you were to compare Watershed with the band Muse, both of which were operating at the same time within just a few miles of each other, Watershed had a substantially bigger fanbase and arguably better material. We are not saying that Muse don’t deserve all the success they have had because they absolutely do, they are still a fantastic band and we love their music as well. But back in the day, Watershed were better.

However, such conjectures are for an alternative reality. Is this one, Watershed have never been easy to find on the internet. As massive fans of the band, we felt that their music still needs to be heard and appreciated by the world and adding some material to the Archives section of Wud Records seemed like a reasonable way to go under the circumstances.

Our searches for them have gone largely fruitless over the years, although we did find a couple of links to their later works on MySpace and Bandmine. Fans of bands on the Plymouth music scene may well be interested in the link that we found to past bands on the Plymouth Live Music site.

There are two links to YouTube as well, which are both fantastic! One of them takes you to their 1992 demo If The Sun Don’t Rise, which features five of the tracks they frequently used to perform live. The other one is a real beauty. It is a video of the band performing the song I’ll Take You With Me When I Go (also on the demo If The Sun Don’t Rise) in 2013, to commemorate the sad passing of the band’s long-time piano, Fender Rhodes and synthesizer virtuoso Dave Gregory.

We have a small amount of material to add to this meagre collection and hope to do so in the coming days and weeks. We shall keep you informed of any such developments in our News service and on Twitter.

In the meantime, if you would like to read some more about Watershed or check out the two pages of them on YouTube, you can visit their new page by clicking here.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis and their return to top form continues! They have now had two rehearsals in the space of a week, having not had one for around three and a half years before that. They have been through just about all of their previous songs over the two rehearsals and seem to be able to remember most of the parts. Apparently they were sounding even better than last week, according to our admin team, who could hear all the goings on as the boys had left the studio doors open.

As well as their previous songs sounding great, there are several new ones in the melting pot. These include one Blue Oyster Cult song (Flaming Telepaths from the wonderful Secret Treaties album) and a handful of originals. There are only about three of four tracks that have not had the dust and spiderlings blown off them, so a full set is a definite possibility.

With all things being well, some of their recordings, which have lain dormant for a few years, will be completed soon. This will hopefully complete their two unfinished albums, both on Bandcamp. If you would like to hear Cosy Lube Turtle, their Blue Oyster Cult covers album, as it stands right now, you can click here. If you would like to listen to Cherry Smoke Empire, an album of original tracks, you can do so by clicking here.

As for a return to the stage, The Bastard Sons of Dennis should be ready for a live performance in the very near future given the present rate of progress. They have played at many open mic sessions in the past and are not terribly keen to do much more of that as they find the format of such events rather tiresome. We will explore the possibilities with them of other feasible types of performances, such as being an opening act for other artistes, solo full-length performances or performing live at multi-band events. Whatever the outcome of these wranglings may be, we shall keep you informed in the Wud Records News Service and on Twitter.

There is also the possibility that Andy may be away for a few weeks in the New Year, which will slow the progress of The Bastard Sons of Dennis. However, all in all, we feel very positive about the continuing return to action and form of this fabulous duo.

Prism have become the newest addition to the Wud Records website with their eponymous cassette album from 1988 now added to the Archives. These eight lovingly-crafted songs, expertly recorded by Paul Bateman from Daylight Studios in Honiton, feature the amazing vocal talent of Emma Waters, with Allan mostly on bass and Tom mostly on guitar.

Prism were formed by Allan and Emma during the early part of 1987 and rapidly became favourites of the Art College crowd in Exeter, which is now a part of Plymouth University. They were well known for being a rock band with no drums, and used to use this as their unique selling point, with the catchphrase ‘wot no drums’ appearing on their gig posters. Eventually they added a drummer to their line-up, but that happened subsequently to the recording of these songs.

Each member of the band contributed to the songwriting and Paul, the engineer, added a few snatches of tasteful lead guitar here and there to round out the mixes. Paul did not appear live on stage with the band but was usually at the controls, twiddling the knobs on the desk. We believe Paul may have programmed the drum machine for The Story of Samantha Kite, but have no way to confirm this.

We have long since lost track of what happened to the members of Prism but at least their wonderful songs and those wonderful vocal performances by Emma are now preserved for everyone to enjoy here on the internet. We have also lost track of the milkman, who you can hear delivering the milk to the house where much recording was done at 32 Howell Road, Exeter at the end of Blindest Night. C’est la vie, mes amis.

If you would like to listen Prism’s eponymous cassette album here at Wud Records, please click here.

To listen to the Prism eponymous album over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

A brand new playlist of all the favourite musical discoveries of the Wud Records team has been published at SoundCloud. None of the bands on it are associated with ourselves in any way. There are not even any of our bands’ songs included in this one. We simply accumulated the songs that we all liked during November into one playlist and published it at the end of the month.

Tracks have been arranged according to the number of plays at the time of publishing, starting with the fewest. Tracks that are early in playlists tend to receive more plays than later tracks, and we feel that the ones with fewer plays need the best chance of exposure. If you are one of the bands from which we recently liked, shared or tweeted a track at SoundCloud, there is a chance that one of your tracks might be on this new playlist.

Are you a member of SoundCloud? We always follow back if you have your own tracks and we always listen eventually, even if it takes a few weeks. So if you would like the opportunity of a bit of free publicity you could follow Wud Records over there.

We hope that some more people will find and listen to these wonderful songs. Each one has something that we felt was special or interesting in some way. Because we enjoyed them so much, we feel that it would be great if the artists in question could have a bit more exposure for their fabulous works. So please listen, enjoy, share and check out some of these wonderful bands. The playlist is very eclectic, so there is probably something on there to suit every taste.

If you have a favourite or two on there, why not shout about them on social media? We are sure the artistes responsible for creating the music will welcome such word-of-mouth exposure.

If you would like to listen to this special new playlist of November 2016 Musical Discoveries over at SoundCloud, please click here.