Cud - Songs Called That (2022)

Cud was formed in Leeds, England in 1987 by Carl Puttnam on vocals, Mike Dunphy on guitar, William Potter on bass and Steve ‘The Infamous Drummer From Cud’ Goodwin on drums, after the four of them discovered the remains of a drum kit in a rubbish skip. Before they'd even released a single they were invited to record a session for Radio 1 DJ John Peel, after sending him a demo tape, and this led to them being signed to The Wedding Present's Reception Records, who released their first single 'Mind The Gap' in 1987. Their second release was the 12" 'Peel Sessions EP' in February 1988, including a cover of Hot Chocolate's 'You Sexy Thing', which had already featured in John Peel's Festive 50 at number 20. Two further 12" EP's followed in 1988, with 'Under My Hat' appearing on Ediesta Records and 'Slack Time' on Dug Records, before they signed to Imaginary Records in 1989. They released two albums for the label, 'When In Rome, Kill Me' in 1989, and 'Leggy Mambo' in 1990, plus the singles compilation 'Elvis Belt' after they left the label. The band had spent the two years since 'Mind The Gap' building up a small but fanatical following in the north of England, with a comical hybrid of funk and the uglier elements of independent music, helped by their desire to perform absurd versions of Hot Chocolate and Jethro Tull songs. 

However, 1990 brought a new sense of sanity and professionalism to the band, and so they signed to A&M Records in 1991, and their greater spending power enabled Cud to reach the UK top 30 in 1992, with 'Rich And Strange' entering at number 24 and 'Purple Love Balloon' at number 27. Their fourth album 'Asquarius' also hit the top 30 on the UK Albums Chart, and the band were labelled with the proto-Britpop genre label "Lion Pop", though at the time the NME did not further construct a scene around that term, meaning that Cud would miss out on the Britpop fame of the mid-'90s. Nevertheless, a further top 40 single followed in 1994 with 'Neurotica', whilst their last album 'Showbiz' would chart at number 46 on the UK Albums Chart in April 1994. Potter was replaced by Mick Dale in early 1995, and they recorded a number of tracks with him, but the band broke up before they could be commercially released. in 2006 Cud reformed to support the release of a double album of their greatest hits entitled 'Rich And Strange - The Anthology', and they performed a small tour to promote it, while the same line-up again reformed for a short tour early in 2008 to support the expanded re-releases of 'Leggy Mambo', 'Showbiz', and the retitled 'Elvis Belt/Elvis Handbag'. 

At their gig at the Barfly in Liverpool on 6 March 2008, Puttnam suggested, contrary to suggestions on the band's homepage, that the latest tour would be their last, and on 27 April 2008, Cud announced that their final ever gig (entitled "No more Cud!") would take place in Rio's Leeds on 3 May 2008, but two years later they were back again for two gigs during March 2010, held at the Hootananny Club in London, and then in 2012 the band did their "Jubilee tour" in support of their album 'The Complete BBC Sessions' released by 3Loop Music. In 2013, Steve Lamacq premiered Cud's first new single in 17 years, which was a double-A side titled 'Louise' / 'Mexico', and they followed that in 2014 with 'Victoria'. The band have continued to tour since then, and in September 2021 they released a new single entitled 'Switched On', followed in October 2022 by 'Sorry (I Let You Down)'. As so often happened with these 90's indie-pop bands, they treated their fans extremely well, by adding otherwise unavailable tracks to the flips of their singles, and so we are able to compile a four-disc set of non-album recordings, with the first three discs covering their classic period from 1987 to 1994, and the fourth one concentrating on their reunions between 2013 and 2022. 

Track listing

Disc I - 1987-1990
01 You Sexy Thing (promo split single with Electro Hippies 1987) 
02 Mind The Gap (single 1987)
03 You're The Boss (b-side of 'Mind The Gap')
04 Under My Hat (single 1988)
05 Punishment-Reward Relationship (b-side of 'Under My Hat')
06 Art! (b-side of 'Under My Hat')
07 Slack Time (single 1988)
08 Make No Bones (b-side of 'Slack Time')
09 Lola (single 1989)
10 Living In The Past (b-side of 'Only (A Prawn In Whitby Bay)' 1989)
11 Everybody Works So Hard (b-side of 'Only (A Prawn In Whitby Bay)' 1989)
12 Hey!Wire (single 1990)
13 Purple Love Balloon (b-side of 'Hey!Wire')
14 Remember What It Is That You Love (split single with Family Cat 1990)

Disc II - 1990-1992
01 L.O.P.H.E. (from the 'Robinson Crusoe' EP 1990)
02 Plantation Island (from the 'Robinson Crusoe' EP 1990)
03 Backdoor Santa (flexi single 1990)
04 Marjorie (b-side of 'Magic' 1991)
05 Oh No Won't Do (single 1991)
06 Profession (b-side of 'Oh No Won't Do' 1991)
07 Ariel (b-side of 'Oh No Won't Do' 1991)
08 Price Of Love (b-side of 'Oh No Won't Do' 1991)
09 Undoubtedly Thomas (b-side of 'Through The Roof' 1992)
10 Prime Cut (b-side of 'Through The Roof' 1992)
11 Do It Again (b-side of 'Rich And Strange' 1992)
12 A Song Called That (b-side of 'Rich And Strange' 1992)

Disc III - 1992-1994
01 Down Down (from the 'Ruby Trax' compilation 1992)
02 Day By Day (b-side of 'Once Again' 1992)
03 Cud's Ode To Christmas Joy (single 1992)
04 1.W.G.S. (b-side of 'Neurotica' 1994)
05 Juicy Eureka (b-side of 'Neurotica' 1994)
06 Brand Name Skin (b-side of 'Neurotica' 1994)
07 My Need To Hurry (b-side of 'Sticks And Stones' 1994)
08 Ski Bum (b-side of 'Sticks And Stones' 1994)
09 Down The Plug (b-side of 'Sticks And Stones' 1994)
10 My Keyhole Don't Keep Secrets Anymore (b-side of 'Sticks And Stones' 1994)
11 Look On Up At The Bottom (b-side of 'One Giant Love' 1994)
12 Find It (b-side of 'One Giant Love' 1994)

Disc IV - 2013-2022
01 Louise (single 2013)
02 Mexico (b-side of 'Louise')
03 Victoria (single 2014)
04 Superstar (b-side of 'Victoria')
05 Justin O'Shea Situation (b-side of 'Victoria')
06 Switched On (single 2021)
07 I Like It Better (When You're Not Around) (b-side of 'Switched On')
08 Sorry I Let You Down (single 2022)
09 ABCD (Loving Is The Glue) (b-side of 'Sorry I Let You Down')
10 (I Can't Take Back) What I Said To You (b-side of 'Sorry I Let You Down')

A-ha - Rendezvous (1984)

A-ha (often stylised as a-ha) were formed in Oslo in 1982, and consisted of lead vocalist Morten Harket, guitarist Paul Waaktaar (then known as Pål Waaktaar), and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen. Shortly after getting together, they left Norway for London in order to make a career in music, and they named themselves A-ha after Harket spotted a song called 'A-ha' in Waaktaar's songbook, and although he thought it was a terrible song, it was a great name. In April 1983, with funds running low, they booked themselves into a small Sydenham studio, Rendezvous, run by a man called John Ratcliff. The band ended up at Rendezvous almost by accident, allegedly booking it because it had a Space Invaders machine, but Ratcliff proved a generous patron when the band were at a low ebb, paying for them to make additional demos of the songs he thought were strongest, and renting them a flat at 221 Dartmouth Road, about 200 metres from the studio. Ratcliff introduced them to his manager, Terry Slater, and A-ha enlisted Ratcliff as a manager as well, with Slater and Ratcliff forming TJ Management, in which Ratcliff dealt with technical and musical aspects and Slater acted as the group's international business manager. One of the demo tracks recorded at Rendezvouz was called 'Lesson One', but before long it had been reworked into their breakthrough hit 'Take On Me', and with Ratcliffe's help in getting them a record deal with Warner Bros Records, it became their first single in 1984. 

After it failed to chart, the song was re-recorded again with production by Alan Tarney, and when this also failed to chart it was finally re-released in 1985 with a new, ground-breaking video, and this time the song peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and at number two on the UK Singles Chart. The video used a pencil-sketch animation/live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which individual frames of film are drawn over or coloured, and it became one of the most instantly recognizable and most enduringly popular music videos in the US. It was nominated for eight awards at the third annual MTV Video Awards in 1986, winning six, including Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Best Direction, Best Special Effects, Viewer's Choice and Best Video of the Year. A couple of other tracks demoed at Rendezvous were later re-worked for the band's debut album, 'Hunting High And Low', but many of the songs remained unheard until they were included on a free CD with the audiobook edition of the band's book 'The Swing Of Things' in 2004. Even then, not all of the Rendezvous demos were included, and so I've tracked down the missing songs, and we now have all of the tracks that the band recorded at the studio in 1983 and 1984. 'Days On End' features guitarist Waaktaar on piano and Harket on trombone, with the original title being 'If You Do', while 'Presenting Lily Mars' was inspired by the 1943 film of the same name, and was intended as a possible b-side or album track, and a couple of lines from these demos were later used in the songs 'And You Tell Me' and 'Dream Myself Alive'. So here are all these rarities now collected together on one album, titled after the studio where they were recorded. 

Track listing

01 Take On Me
02 Days On End
03 Never Never
04 Monday Mourning
05 The Love Goodbye
06 Go To Sleep
07 Umbrella
08 Hunting High And Low
09 And You Tell Me
10 I've Been Losing You
11 Love Is Reason
12 The Swing Of Things

Jay-Z - Black Gangster (2000)

Following the release of 'Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life' in 1998, and it's general critical acclaim, Jay-Z collaborated with Mariah Carey on 'Heartbreaker', a song from her seventh album, 'Rainbow', which was released in 1999. The song became Jay-Z's first chart-topper in the U.S., spending two weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and in that same year, he released his fourth album, 'Vol. 3... Life And Times of S. Carter'. This was another hit record, selling over three million copies, and the most successful single from it was 'Big Pimpin', featuring UGK, which peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2000 he released 'The Dynasty: Roc La Familia', which was originally intended to be a compilation album for Roc-A-Fella artists, but Def Jam decided that it was to be a Jay-Z album. It did, however, help to introduce newcomer producers The Neptunes, Just Blaze, Kanye West, and Bink, all of whom have gone on to achieve notable success. This is also the first album where Jay-Z utilizes a more soulful sound than on his previous albums, and while not quite as successful as '..'Life And Times...', it's still sold over two million units in the U.S. alone. This third post from Jay-Z features mostly unreleased tracks recorded between 1998 and 2000, and includes the 'Heartbreaker' single, which never appeared on one of his own albums, plus collaborations with Lil Kim and Mya. 

Track listing

01 So Right (remix) (feat. The Lox) 
02 Love Is Love 
03 What The Game Made Me (feat. Memphis Bleek & Sauce Money) 
04 From Marcy To Hollywood (feat. Memphis Bleek & Sauce Money)
05 Heartbreaker

06 4 Alarm Blaze (feat. Mop)
07 Love For Free (feat. Rell) 
08 Black Gangster
09 Queen Bitch (remix) (feat. Lil Kim)
10 Is That Your Chick (The Lost Verses) (remix) (feat. Memphis Bleek & Twista) 
11 Best Of Me (remix) (feat. Mya)