6:14AM – Woke up a bit ago from a dream that The Patient Mrs. was pregnant. There wasn’t much action happening — it’s not like she was pregnant and we were in a car chase; that was a separate dream — but it was one of those super-realistic dreams that you’re not sure when you come out of it which side of reality you’re on. Funny shit. I can’t even go to sleep without being hounded to reproduce. You’d almost think my genes weren’t totally fucked.

Anyway, once I was up, the thought of there being writing to do assured I wouldn’t go back to sleep — if you’re awake, you might as well be productive — so here I am. The four hours I got should suffice, or maybe I’ll be lucky and crash back out after this post. I’m not too worried about it. And hey, there’s Cuda, doing “Hellfire.” Who doesn’t want to be awake for that?

It might seem a strange choice to wake up and suddenly say, “I’m gonna go post a Cuda clip!” but it makes sense on some level as I was thinking about the nature of obscurity last night as I started to put together the new podcast — oh yeah, there will be a new podcast this weekend — and was ripping tracks from bands who had vastly different levels of success in their time. I don’t want to give away the theme in advance, but it got me thinking about all the stoner bands that popped up in the period between the mid-’90s and early-’00s and how many if any of them will have the chance to be rediscovered however far down the line.

Cuda was a one-shot offshoot from Bongzilla. Guitarist Spanky and bassist Cooter Brown assembled a four-piece and released the stonerly Hellfire EP on 12th Records in 2001. It’s the only thing they ever put out that I know of. Under half an hour of music 10 years ago and that’s it. Amazing how many acts have come and gone on one official release over the years. Hell, my band did it, if you want to put “official” in quotes.

This coming week, aside from that new podcast I already mentioned, I’ll get that Sungrazer interview posted. It’s not long, but there’s some insight to it that I think is cool and guitarist Rutger Smeets talks about being on tour with Colour Haze and RotoR, which is badass. I’ll also have reviews of discs from El Camino, Nordic Nomadic, The Dive and Russian Circles (and someone else), and in case the podcast isn’t enough audio for you, a premiere of a new track from SerpentCult. Lots of good stuff to come.

If you’ve emailed me in the last week or two and I haven’t gotten back yet, I apologize. Things have been really busy for me between work and school, and I just haven’t had the chance to be on my laptop and conscious at the same time. I’ll hammer all that out this weekend. Hope you have a good one. Be safe and we’ll see you on the forum and back here Monday for more zany fun.

Tags: 12th Records, Cuda, Madison, Wisconsin

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2011 at 5:39 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.