Party: CUD, playing album Asquarius in full

Party: CUD, playing album Asquarius in full

Leeds’ CUD are dusting off their flight cases and sunglasses for another road trip.
The ASQUARIUS tour this September will see the band play their astrologically challenged chart bothering A&M album IN FULL, along with a set of ‘greatest hits’, live favourites and other assorted delights.
Emerging from the same art/design cauldron that produced fellow Leeds legends Soft Cell, Scritti Politti, and The Mekons, CUD were the pre-Britpop answer to doleful shoegazing bands – fun-loving, light-hearted, romantic and downright catchy.
Alternatively loved or loathed like a yeast extract, CUD are indie rock for the unpretentious pleasure seeker, boasting as they do the rich deep-lunged voice of Carl Puttnam, edgy guitars of Mike Dunphy and tight, funky rhythm section of William Potter, bass and Gogs Byrn, drums.
CUD were initially lauded for their quirky Peel session cover of ‘You Sexy Thing’ in 1987. They soon built up a huge live following and buffed up their repertoire with a string of unstraight pop beauties, best exemplified by the 1990 album ‘Leggy Mambo’. This led to a major-label deal with A&M in 1991, front-page NME coverage, massive sell out gigs and proper Top 30 hits, ‘Rich and Strange’ and ‘Purple Love Balloon’.
Misunderstood by record companies and press, CUD packed away their guitars and sticks in 1995 but, bolstered by a greatest hits anthology (‘Rich and Strange’) in 2006, they agreed to tread the boards again and found an army of ‘Space CUDets’ still eager to sing along, dance like fruitcakes and invade their stage.
CUD are now even better than they were in 1992.

Invited: Amy Jones, Amy Bruckshaw-Cross