Wud Records: November 2022 top ten tracks published at SoundCloud

The top ten tracks for November 2022 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist at SoundCloud.

How Did We Calculate The November 2022 Chart?

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. 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. There may be a news spoiler in that last sentence…

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 December 2022 playlist. 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 November 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and other platforms.

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 seem worthwhile.

Who’s In The November 2022 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They enjpyed a particularly splendid month on the November 2022 chart, occupying four of the places. Three of their songs on the new chart come from their splendid Cosy Lube Turtle album. The other is from their Cherry Smoke Empire album.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. We recently released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it away to a distributor for global distribution. More news on this will follow soon.

Staying at number one on the new chart for a third month is Astronomy. This is a 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 in the opening bars 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.

Leaping back into the charts at number two we see another song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. 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 distribued them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were covered in them.

Standing still at number five is the third Cosy Lube Turtle song. This one is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

Wings Wetted Down is a masterfully crafted piece of songwriting, with its clever key changes and all its melodic hooks. It is considered a deep cut among BÖC fans. The version performed by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is largely true to the original, with the addition of a riff section that Derek solos over.

There is a fourth entry from The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Their wonderful epic song The Furniture / Los Muebles is an extraordinary tale, which threads its way through the entirety of the duo’s Cherry Smoke Empire album. It tells the story of a dysfunctional family of fisherfolk from the Asturias region of northern Spain, who lost and then found some of their furniture following a flood. The Furniture (part one: overture) has charted many times and reenters at number eight.

Flicker

Flicker had a very strong month and achieved three entries on the new Wud Records chart. All three came from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Week Five is the highest Flicker tune on the new chart, reentering at number three. Week Five has a remarkably live-sounding feel for a studio recording. It is a breezy feel good latin rock dance number with summer vibes that wouldn’t sound out of place in a set from Carlos Santana.

Week Five is a piece about looking forward to the future and feeling excited about forthcoming adventures and new experiences. It begins with a sample from the Prague metro and as the tune builds it becomes progressively more intense.

Another reentry this month is Oily Road Hideaway at number six. 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 on his Fender and George 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.

Falling one place this month from number eight to nine comes 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.

Dark Company

Another very good month for Dark Company sees them occupy all three of the remaining chart positions. Each song comes from a different album, with the work-in-progress Alien Heat album, Signmaker and Rage In Heaven all represented.

Climbing back up from number seven to number four this month is Dark Company’s awesome alternative / hard / psychedelic rock and funk song Dancing In The Dark. The version you can hear is still work-in-progress.

Pete wrote the lyrics in 1989 and the song was originally performed by Alien Heat. In Dancing In The Dark, Pete describes his memories of going nightclubbing in the West End of London after being revved up by his good friend Billy.

Pete was not actually terribly keen on the song and would always refer to it as “Farting in the Park”.

Back in the days of Alien Heat, Dancing In The Dark included Graham’s drum solo. This was when everyone in the band would roll a cigarette (or something a little more flavoursome) while he performed it, hopefully having the deed done and the object lit in time to carry on with the song at the drum solo’s conclusion.

Sacrifice, the opening track on Dark Company‘s Rage in Heaven album, is a reentry at number seven on the new chart. Recently Sacrifice has also enjoyed radio play on a number of stations. This is probably a contributary factor in its resurgent streaming popularity.

Sacrifice is an alluring and curious mix of progressive rock, trance and rap. The genre-bending nature of Sacrifice has helped it appeal to fans from multiple musical subcultures over the years.

Reappearing at number ten, after a long time out of the chart, is Killer by Dark Company. If we were to run a top twenty, Killer would feature very often.

Killer remains a very popular song. It was the very first song that Dark Company finished recording, at the old Silent Running Studios in Exeter back in the summer of 1991. It has a hybrid reggae and rock vibe and is a song that Pete wrote for George, whose dilemma was to stay or go. He stayed.

The drums are provided by an old Boss DR220A drum machine and the song also features the wonderful tenor saxophone of Rowena Parsons. Killer is the opening track on Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker.

* None of our other acts made it onto the November 2022 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in November 2022, 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.

Recently we have added a few more of the previous charts as pages to their section of this website. We are less than a year behind in this work now, as some catching up has been done. If you’d like to see all our old charts, they can be accessed easily by clicking here. More pages will be added soon, when there is time.