CUD’s very own Carl Puttnam has compiled an exclusive YouTube playlist for 3 Loop.

And it’s over to Carl to let you know why he’s chosen these tracks.
1. Il Velero – Lucio Battisti
I originally picked this up in a Shetland charity shop. Sounds like a disco version of..

2. Discord – The Fire Engines
..which is the noisiest record ever made.

3. Blood and Honey – Amanda Lear
Another holiday purchase, but not sure when.

4. Les Coups – Johnny Hallyday
I heard this first on a French radio show, coupled with Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight”. I had no idea who it was. It’s Stevies’s tune but the lyrics make the opposite meaning. Not “everything’s alright”, but tout le monde is Merde..

5. The Garden – Nino Ferrer
I found this amongst the records that my partner was bequeathed by her Grandfather. Where he lived is the place in this record.

6. Amarsi Un Po – Lucio Battisti
Battisti again. Nice trance-y thing going on here.

7. Seeing Out The Angel – Simple Minds
I read an interview with Simple Minds back when I was at school, and they said that they liked Deodato, Kraftwerk and Dusseldorf amongst others, so here is..

8. La Dusselforf – la Dusseldorf
Crazy drumming. I know everyone says that now, but I first heard this in around 1980; back then it really was “crazy”. And the football is good too.

9. Computer Love – Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk make me think that there is a God. Something like the Sufi’s ecstatic state.

10. Prelude to the afternoon of a faun – Deodato
Who does a great cover of a Steely Dan song…

11. I Got The News and 12. Fire In The Hole – Steely Dan
Steely Dan piss on the Beatles and most everybody. If I do this again, i might just a top20 Dan chart..

13. The Chess Game from “The Thomas Crown Affair” – Michel Legrand
and relax…

14. Forest Life from “Brendon Chase” – Paul Lewis
Never released on DVD, but I have a pirate copy. It’s got to be the best kid’s TV show ever… and the book’s cool too.

15. Can Can Del “Filly” from “Quando Le Donne Avevano La Coda” – Ennio Morricone
16. Jesus Christ – Johnny Hallyday
Someone once said that Johnny was/is the French Cliff… Come on?

Let’s end with some Rock!!
17. Boogie No More – Molly Hatchett
18. Dancing Madly Backwards – Captain Beyond
19. The Camera Eye – Rush
20. Time We Left This World Today – Hawkwind
Not a lot of people know that in our earliest days we covered this song and to some success. Mike The Hippie (from Jumbo records) was particularly fond…

and then something a little more mellow
21. Down Deep Inside – Donna Summer
With John Barry

22. Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Dionne Warwick and John Barry from “Thunderball”
Dedicated to John and Donna and underwater-set movies everywhere…

Now that’s what I call a playlist – Thanks Carl!

Unreliable memoirs from a semi-retarded bass player

Crew cut

It might appear to the outside oik that CUD just arrive at a venue, play songs of the contractually agreed length, get clean towels, get paid and leave the venue without batting an eyelid. But, I tell you, there is one big, giant eyelid getting batted to make it appear so simple. There’s a finely oiled machine working behind the scenes to make sure you get the CUD you need every day, on time and with their flies zipped up.

First in the pecking order, is the tour manager. He’s the one always on his mobile and carrying a bulky Filofax around (so 80s!), bulging with business cards. Most of these he collected from Soho phone booths. He is also the only member of the crew to wear a laminated tour pass on a lanyard. It’s not needed; no one else has one; it isn’t even for the CUD tour; it belongs to a 1992 Boo Radleys tour.
The tour manager’s job is to make sure that the tour goes without a hitch – the band arrive at the venue, play songs of the contractually agreed length, get clean towels, get paid and leave the venue with the clean towels and without leaving the (also clean) drummer behind.
As booker too, the tour manager has to ensure that the route of the tour describes a zigzag up and down the country that takes in every motorway service station and his mum’s house.

The sound engineer. His job is to play his favourite CDs before the band come on stage, to (ideally) turn off his CDs when the band start playing, and to ensure the sound that the band make on stage is turned into music before it is heard by the audience. He loves it when you go over to him mid-set and shout “Needs more top, mate!” or “Add some reverb, mate!” The more helpful advice the audience can provide, the easier it is for him to do his job.

Who’s that figure dashing across the stage, trying not to be noticed?
I don’t mean Carl, the singer. The other one.
This is the guitar tech. That’s what they call a roadie these days to make him sound skilled. It may appear to the untrained eye that the guitar tech just humps heavy amps about and applies gaffer tape to anything that dares budge a millimetre but, oh no. His job is the most important on the team. And if I didn’t say that, next time I break a string mid-song, I’d be given a ukelele to play on.
Unproved fact: Every year ‘guitar tech’s across the UK use enough gaffer tape to stretch from Earth to the Moon and back. And that’s actually how it stays in orbit.

In our heyday, we would also employ caterers. Under new CUD austerity guidelines, we now have to source our Fair Trade, organic, macrobionic diet ourselves. Thankfully, in the 21st century, every motorway service station now has a section devoted to this, next to the Ginsters pasties and cheese strings.

No gig can go ahead without the tour exorcist. Before every soundcheck, she waves her magic wikka sticks and sprinkles her patchouli oils over the stage to remove any traces of death metal before CUD can perform their strictly Christian songs of joy and goblins.

Bigger tours also employ lighting engineers whose job it is to use strobe lights to identify any epilepsy sufferers in the audience. Now we’ve downsized, we rely on local experts to switch a spotlight on, then off, then on, then off again. Then on again. We do, however, supply our own light bulb.

And so to the humbled van driver. His job is to provide the band with as many toilet stops as possible (ideally on the outside of the van) and get the band back to base camp post-show, unperturbed by the volume of beer-talking issuing from the backseats. If the driver also owns the van, then woe betide the band member who spills Fanta on the seats. Our former bass-player, now known as Blind Willie Clawfinger, can bear witness to this.

55 Showbiz Crew

And we’re out of room. No space to mention the band dealer, groomer, topiarist and falconer. Consider yourselves forgotten.

* We do allow them one can of Tennents Special each from our generous rider though.

William Potter is filling in his Caffé Nero loyalty card

CUD – The Complete BBC Sessions, a 4CD boxset featuring some of the finest of CUD’s missing gems.

Having slaved away tirelessly in the BBC vaults watching Carl, William and Mike do all the work, 3 Loop Music are proud to announce the imminent release of the Complete BBC Sessions spanning 19 years of airwave ownership.

The box set collects together all of Cud’s BBC Sessions including their 3 John Peel sessions, some extremely rare regional radio recordings and a full gig from Sheffield Sound City in 1993. There’s over 50 previously unreleased tracks and recordings across their entire career from 1987 to the most recent 6Music Session in 2006.

The set also comes with postcards designed by the band, a poster and booklet with brand new sleevenotes.

Released on 6th August, you can pre-order it exclusively at the our shop now along with other Cud products.

Unreliable memoirs from a semi-retarded bass player

CUD are now dwelling in a sweat-soaked cellar in Leeds, rehearsing in utmost secrecy for our impending dates. (Did I mention CUD are touring in June?) But first we face the dilemma of what to play. Some wag suggested we play songs made famous by 90s indie turn CUD. But with such a raft of hits to choose from, slimming the setlist down to 55 minutes (Musicians’ Union 2012 regulation length) seems an impossible task.

We considered themes:

1. Instrumental versions. This was a popular choice with our singer Carl, who intended to sit out the set on a stool describing the lyrics in sign language. (You should see his mime ‘Purple Love Balloon’.)

2. A classic album played backwards. We tried learning the songs backwards but were unable to find a reverse button on our CD player. Plus we were concerned about delivering Satanic massages.

3. Acapella. This was a popular choice with all of the band but our singer Carl. The band intended to sit out the set on a stool describing the music in sign language.

4.  A jazz odyssey.

You may be disappointed to know that none of these suggestions were agreed. Instead we will be playing songs made famous by 90s indie turn CUD.

Of course, now arthritis has set in, we can no longer play our fast songs and even have to miss out every other note in our slow songs. The benefit of this is longer sets (subject to Musicians’ Union 2012 setlist regulation length) from fewer songs. The set is likely to include several long pauses too, as we try to remember who we are and what we are doing onstage with these strangely dressed people.

An unpopular idea I suggested was playing medleys. Think CUD mashed with Jive Bunny. By stringing together several of our best tunes in one unstoppable train, we could play all our hits and Mike wouldn’t have to relearn all his guitar solos. And we wouldn’t have to listen to them. But when we tried this, we discovered that all our songs were the same speed, in the same key (C sharp minor seventh, since you ask) and even had the same words, so no one could tell when one ended and another began.

Every member of the band has a favourite song they insist on playing. We usually play this regardless of what the other members are playing. And that’s how democracy works. My favourite is ‘Robinson Crusoe’ because this is the one I can remember. At least I think that’s what it’s called.

As to the actual set list for June (Did I mention CUD are touring in June?), thanks to the fad that is social networking, bands no longer have to make decisions. We put it out to our Twitter/Facebook stalkers to see what songs they would like to hear. All three of them chose their top song and it is this song that we are going to play in June.

William Potter is currently looking for a new guitar strap with pictures of ladies on it.

Unreliable memoirs from a semi-retarded bass player

Leicester Charlotte, Brighton Barfly, Leeds Duchess, Wexford Whimsy….

Seems like all the great pocket venues in the UK have closed their doors since CUD last played. A coincidence? I think not.
The temptation was to label our next outing ‘the Closing Down tour’, to hail a fond farewell to these halls of legend, untainted by beer and mobile sponsors. (We poo-pooed this idea when we realised punters might expect major discounts on ticket prices.)

Where would we be today without classic pub venues such as Oxford Bags, the Halifax Colostomy and Rayleigh Trouserpress. Well, not Oxford, Halifax or Rayleigh, and more’s the shame…except in the case of Rayleigh. Each venue was unique, with its own cocktail of mucus seeping from the walls, decades of chiselled graffiti in the plaster, stale beer on the carpets and gaffer tape patching the gaps and hiding unearthed electrical cables. Rayleigh Trouserpress will always go down in mystery as the first place to book an up-and-coming Damon Albran in 1982, when he was but the accordion player for Dexy’s Midnight Rumours.
On entering older venues and absorbing their fetid stimulus takes me back to halcyon days before investment in repairs, while the damp spreads respiratory infection in our singer’s lungs.

One of our fondest tour memories was playing to a crowd of seven health inspectors at Prestwich Varuka Klub in 1989. The venue was on the second floor above a crackhouse. We had carry our amps up a rickety fire escape, then crowbar the steel plates from the windows to get our gear inside. There was just one plug socket for the entire venue. We had to pause our set whenever anyone order a cappuccino, so the bar staff could plug in the kettle. We all suffered from food poisoning that night, so the long breaks between songs were welcome. The Varuka Klub is yet another fondly remembered venue that has had to close due to a combination of overzealous Tory austerity policies and over-protective health-and-safety legislation. Now the committed indie fan has to take a park-and-ride bus to the new Bury Twitterdome if they want to glimpse Snow Petrol and pay £4.35 for a plastic pint of Jägermeister.

Still, saying that, the CUD fans of today seems quite happy to fork out £120 a ticket to see us in a more luxurious setting. Since their student/dole days, the Space CUDets have proved relatively upwardly mobile compared to fans of, say, Sultans of Ping, who were recently moved on from their occupation of landfill sites in Newport (source: Mori, Oct-Dec 2008). Tickets for our autumn jamboree at River Cottage sold out in minutes, even without the involvement of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or the permission of River Cottage.

Our impending summer matinée tour of Harvester Inns goes one step further, by accommodating the late 30-something dads and their five-year old sons who make up 98% of our audience. The support act this time will be a bouncy castle and Upsy Daisy from popular television show In the Night Soil. I understand she performs a heartrending cover of ‘Motortricycle Emptiness’.

Touring has changed so much since we set off from Leeds, with our cardboard guitars folded up in the back of a Reliant Scimitar, in the pre-industrial age. Some things have changed for the better, some for the worse and some for the same. But at least there’s one thing you can count on when you come to see CUD on tour in 2012 – er…

William Potter is currently relearning basslines, one string at a time, in anticipation of the CUD revival of 2012.

CUD backstage at Salisbury Bonkers in 1992. (It had only been redecorated the day before.)