Wud Records: August 2023 top ten published at SoundCloud

The August 2023 Chart

The top ten tracks for August 2023 on Bandcamp and SoundCloud have been published in a new compilation.

How Did We Calculate The August 2023 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.

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 September 2023 chart. So if there is a track you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it and share it to your social media feeds! 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 August 2023 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 oursevles 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 August 2023 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They dominated the chart in August 2023, claiming four of the top ten positions. All of them are from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album. They also took the top two places, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy holding on to the top position for a fifth consecutive month.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. About a year ago we released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it for global distribution.

Since our recent studio upgrade earlier this year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Cosy Lube Turtle is currently on the slab.

We have finished the remixing and started the remastering. The new and improved Cosy Lube Turtle album will be ready for a re-release in the coming days. More news on this will follow soon.

Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting song 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 a little 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.

Standing steady at its highest position of number two is Redeemed. This song is the final song on Blue Öyster Cult’s 1972 eponymous debut album. Donald Roeser‘s guitar tone at the very end is so incredibly beautiful. We highly recommend listening if you don’t know this song already.

Redeemed is the only recording on Cosy Lube Turtle where Derek and Chuck both played their guitar parts at the same time. They referred to it as their Christmas song, even in summer. The count-in was always improvised and somewhat unpredictable, due to the odd number of beats in the intro. “One, one,” was a popular version.

Last month‘s number eight rises two to number six on the chart this month. Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It is a song for which they were well known.

Originally it was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performance by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

Returning to the new chart at number nine we see another song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. Its last appearance in the Wud Records charts was in January 2023.

Originally released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1974 Secret Treaties album, The Bastard Sons of Dennis would indulge in various acts of tomfoolery during a live performance of this song. Derek would introduce the band and thank the venue and sound engineer. He would also encourage the crowd to join in with the cries of “Dominance!”, “Submission!”.

In the long pauses before “It will be time!”, Derek and Chuck would spin their guitars upside down. Stuck on the back of Chuck’s guitar was a large sign that read “Throw panties now!”, and on the back of Derek’s was a similar sign that read “If no panties, bras!” Very few undergarments were ever actually tossed onto the stage, apart from on one occasion when somebody had brought a big bag full of old knickers and distributed them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were covered in them.

Flicker

Flicker had an excellent month with four entries on the new Wud Records chart. All four come from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

At Least 1000 Words has just been remastered and re-released. It will also be distributed worldwide to sites such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Tidal, and so on. There will be a listening party at Bandcamp on Saturday 16th September at these times, depending on whereabouts you live:

19.30 Central Europe/Johannesburg
18.30 uk
13.30 New York
10.30 Los Angeles
03.30 Sydney (Sunday morning)
02.30 Tokyo (Sunday morning)

Everyone is invited to join. Composer, guitarist and project director George will be live in the chatroom to discuss the album and there may even be a surprise guest. More on this will be published soon in our News service.

The highest re-entry this month is Oily Road Hideaway at number three. This is a delightful and catchy latin jazz dance. Oily Road Hideaway is the only track from Flicker‘s first album with programmed drums. It also has twin bass guitars playing in unison, with Dave panned to the left on his Fender and George panned to the right on the Plank.

A very unusual instrument called a string fish appears towards the end of the tune. This is a home-made creation, from the workshop of Pyg frontman Martin Dearmunn. A string fish is a little like a pair of dulcimers or zithers, joined together at an acute angle. The strings are vertical and played with fingers, like a harp. To play a scale, the player must alternate between the left and right side, like a kalimba.

Welcome to the Family climbs four positions from nine to five on the new chart. Welcome to the Family is a wonderful latin-jazz-rock-fusion instrumental. It builds from its acoustic guitar beginings to a heady climax of guitar feedback and noise. There is a lovely bass solo from Dave, who also plays all the keyboard parts with outstanding aplomb and sensitivity.

Welcome to the Family was inspired by The Godfather by Mario Puzo and a new chord from a Portuguese sea shanty. It is one of Flicker‘s most enduring and popular releases.

Aeroplane by Flicker is a re-entry at number seven and makes its first appearance since October 2020, nearly three years ago. Aeroplane was composed on an acoustic guitar tuned DADFCE and was the first piece of music George composed after arriving in Prague in 1996. Phil “The Fiddle” Jones played some wonderful soaring violin lines when the two of them performed this tune live on the famous Charles Bridge as Dr Watson.

When Flicker recorded Aeroplane, no violinist was forthcoming so Lucy approximated Phil’s parts rather beautifully on cello. Dave added bass and drums and a swishy synth to end. The band tried to record a plane taking off at exeter airport, but there were no planes taking off that day so a sample was used in the end. The whole story of the day’s sample capturing adventures/misadventures is a rather splendid tale all of its own, and you can enjoy it by clicking here.

Returning to our charts for the first time since November 2022 is Farsight by Flicker. Farsight is a wonderful piece of music, progressive rock or indie jazz perhaps in style, highly melodic and decorated with samples from Captain Kirk’s USS Enterprise, Jonathan Agnew and Maharaj Ji, among others.

Farsight was originally an Ug Brothers creation that came about very late in that band’s existance, and didn’t make it to a live show before they folded in 1995.

Flicker‘s second album, HappySad, is under construction and you can listen to it as it stands right now by clicking here. Several more tracks are likely to be released in the coming weeks and months, so please keep an eye and an ear on our News service and Twitter.

The Subterraineans

Short and Sweet is an amazing, beautiful, wonderful, epic classic rock song. It rises from last month‘s number five to this month‘s number four.

A massive favourite for many years, Short and Sweet used to profoundly affect people listening to it whenever The Subterraineans played this song live. Like many of Dean’s songs, it is a rather poignant prophetic prediction of Dean’s ultimate fate and how he felt about his struggles.

Short and Sweet is well over eight minutes long and feels much shorter somehow. Jerry’s bass sounds a bit uncertain at the start, but he always played it that way so he must have had some idea what he was doing!

The main reason for the success of The Subterraineans these last few months is the recent remastering and re-release of their Demo from 1987. The difference in sound quality of the recording after its enhancement in the new studio is remarkable.

The Subterraineans Demo was recorded on a 4-track cassette portastudio in 1986 and 1987, and mixed onto cassette. The audio degraded even further over the intervening 36 years. Even though it was never going to match today’s standards of perfect high fidelity, we felt that this recording was worthy of addition to our catalogue at Bandcamp.

Dean tragically committed suicide in 1994 by jumping from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. He was just 29 years old. He received absolutely no professional help from the uk medical or social professions. With a little professional help he would surely still be here with us today. He was a unique and charming character and his passing was a great loss to the world.

As such, we have decided to donate all proceeds of the sale of this EP and its individual tracks, beyond the first euro, to The Samaritans. They do amazing and difficult work, trying to prevent more people jumping to their deaths from that notorious bridge.

Dark Company

Back on the new chart at number ten is Ship to Shore by Dark Company. This is a wonderful progressive rock song with a lot of history. The work-in-progress version on the Alien Heat album was transformed into a hybrid electronic rock song by Jeff and George in the early days of Dark Company‘s second incarnation, when the band became a digital trio.

Originally an Alien Heat song, Ship to Shore has been a big favourite for many years. It begins with a sound that was sampled from the Alien Heat band’s version. Zaphod created this special sound himself on the Yamaha DX7 and the song would usually begin with a cry of “Cue The Noise!”.

* None of our other acts made it onto the August 2023 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in August 2023, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

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.

The August 2023 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

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.