Wud: band pages updated

Wud band pages updated at the Wud Records website? Seriously?

Yes, it’s true! We have updated some of the pages for the band Wud here at the Wud Records website.

This update has been long overdue! When we first launched the website in 2008, a few of us lurking behind the scenes made a few pages for the various legacy bands and wrote a paragraph or two, so that at least something would exist. The idea was to go back and finish off writing those pages… someday.

Now, most of the Wud band pages that are present have been updated. We even uploaded some new photos to the Wud Gallery – the black and white photos taken by chief audio engineer Ian Dent at Daylight Studios in Honiton, on the day that the Daylight Demo was recorded in the spring of 1985.

In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, the hardcore of Wud Records made a decent living from music. Then things started being squeezed. Venues paid less, and some venues would only book musicians if they paid the venue for the privilege of being allowed to play there.

Other promotors and venues would only pay musicians using a strange currency called ‘exposure’ – “We won’t give you any money for your show, but think of all the exposure you’ll get!”

We’ve tried paying for groceries, vehicle repairs, legal services and a plumber in ‘exposure’, but none of them would accept this peculiar currency. Instead they said they needed to be paid in money or they’d call the police. It seemed ‘exposure’ was a thing only musicians could receive, but not spend anywhere. So we took out our wallets and paid them with money, whilst wondering exactly where we could spend this mysterious ‘exposure’ which we had accumulated an abundance of.

In 2025, almost nobody makes a living from music alone. More and more of our people started day jobs and families. Nowadays there is only one person among the Wud Records entourage who earns a living exclusively through music, and we are not allowed to use this person’s real name for contractual legal reasons. Let’s just say this is an old friend in great demand worldwide for touring and session playing for their awesome talents.

With time being so squeezed and there being so much that needs to be done all the time, many projects have been put on the back burner, to simmer quietly until they can be completed.

Some time ago, we decided to try to focus more on the music that would be quicker to conclude. This includes everything with Pok the Bard and The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Then we would shift our focus to Flicker and Dark Company, who require more time.

It also needs to be said that we still give a little of our attention to both Flicker and Dark Company, and there will be more from both of them coming in November and December. Watch this space!

One of the jobs that still needs to be done is to finish off writing the many incomplete pages for legacy bands here at the Wud Records website. Curiously, the recent fiasco with SoundCloud has helped move that forwards.

We slowly started to move our music off of SoundCloud and onto HearThis, Audius and Audiomack, starting with the oldest recordings.

So far we have managed to move the songs of Mark Drower and the Everyones and Now. During this process, we started combing through the artists’ pages at our website and giving them a spring clean.

The status of these pages are as follows:

* Mark Drower and the Everyones – all pages good! Hooray! \,,/(^_^)\,,/ Perhaps someday somebody will come forward and give us some more to include.

* Fooog Dinboffin and the Release – very little present. Recently we dug out some cassettes from the cassette mine. We listened and found three songs (among many) by this duo which could perhaps be made public. Expect some news before the end of the year! ;-)

* Now – all current pages complete, with plans to add more. There are several cassettes of Now‘s music in the cassette mine. If we find anything decent, groundbreaking, historical or cool there, it will be uploaded.

* Sirius Rising – there is not much Sirius Rising here at our website. We found seven cassettes and they have been uploaded into the machinery of our studios. So far, four of the cassettes have been analysed. From these, there are four songs that are perhaps reasonable. The tapes are a tough listen and we tend to have them playing when other studio work, such as maintenance or graphic design, is ongoing. We intend to upload the music once all seven cassettes have been analyzed. Announcements will be made here in our News service, our Bandcamp Community, and on BlueSky and Twitter.

* Lemming Meringue – all pages seem complete. Hooray! We will probably update the gallery at some point – more news on this will follow in due course.

* Wud – their homepage, gallery, Daylight Demo and Wudsongs pages have all been updated recently. One of the Wud band pages became incorporated into the Wudsongs page. It thus became superfluous, so it has been removed. The Wud band gallery will be updated in due course. We are working with old photos, when there is time between all of the other work that is ongoing. There are also numerous cassettes of Wud to be mined for their goodies. One page remains to be finished – the Wud Band Biography. Hopefully soon.

The Wudsongs album is still being finalised at HearThis, with the new and enhanced photos we have been working on as cover art for the tracks. We didn’t make a proper cover for the album yet. If things go well, it will be released at Bandcamp, and there will be many gallery updates at the Wud Records website before the end of this year. There are literally hundreds of photos, so this work will be ongoing for some time.

Another of our backburner projects that is worthy of a mention is the uploading of all the video footage we have to the Wud Records YouTube. We managed to edit and upload a couple of videos this year and hope there will be time (and mojo) to make and upload more for your enjoyment.

Some of us will enter retirement from work in the coming years, and that will certainly be a time when these things can move forward. Meanwhile, the beat goes on.