A view from a garden in the Midlands

Thanks to Mike & Julia (Wonderful pictures as always Julia) for sending some updated pictures from their garden near Coventry at the weekend. As Mike said “It’s actually sunny today. Not sure how long it will last though!” We are with you on that. Thanks to plantnet.org we’ve got some Michaelmas daisies and some dahlias. Lovely stuff!

In a builder’s birdbox style

Seen on our travels the other day around Clerkenwell, a bonkers-style bird nesting box made from an old builder’s boot. Wonder does the steel toecap keep in the heat at night? And do you reckon that there’s a camera in the heel part to document the future bird resident’s progress?

Dubwise and otherwise

Big shout to our radio collaborator Jesse Yuen, for sending us last month’s and the month’s before Dubwise and Otherwise show this morning. Both shows are well worth listening to for some genuine Sunday morning chilled vibes.

The show is broadcast once a month on Radio Cazimi, an online community radio station based in Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia. (Walyalup is located at the mouth of the Swan River and of course Jesse’s other show was called North of The River Swan!)

We’re half-way through the Springtones show at the moment and it is cracking! We were scratching our head’s thinking “Where do we know the intro from?” and it’s The Aloof with Never get out of the boat, a tune we only had in our hands last night while rearranging our records.

We’ll check out the Soundcloud link in a couple of days for yesterday’s great show. Cheers Jesse!

All we need is peas and chips

A big thanks to whoever it was (it may have been Penny Golightly) who told us the best way (and the cheap as chips way) to grow those expensive culinary delights called pea shoots, is to get the seeds from those packs of dried peas that have the salt tablets in them. Discard the seed tablet and then sow away. Above are a few we sowed a couple of weeks ago, get those scissors out!

Also, we are confused as what is the best way of preserving chillies as we are having a glut of them (a nice glut to have by the way) here. As you recall we have tried the “hang them out to dry” method but we’ve been told about the freezing method, which we are trying. Any other good ideas for preserving chillies?

Dub for a Saturday morning till 10am

Big shout to Jesse Yuen and friends Lia T and Rok Riley who are on the air via the internet for the “Dubwise and Otherwise” show from 8-10am on this Saturday morning from the other side of this world of ours. If you want to chill out indoors in the warm to some downtempo bass heavy vibes tune into radiocazimi.com here.

What speed do we play it at?

We’ve just finished a shortwave International themed mix and chose this cracking version of Manzanita‘s Paga La Cuenta Sinverguenza in a Cumbia Rebajada style (slowed down).

Below is the track at the original turntable intended speed. What speed do you prefer? The track now sounds a bit “Pinky & Perky”.

We present the classics

A couple of weekends ago on Imaginary Stations a programme called CLSC was broadcast via the transmitters of the great Shortwave Gold. “Music we like to think is classic, or classical in nature” was the theme of the show and featured all sorts of loosely defined classic(al) tunes. Have a listen to below how the theme was translated by the Imaginary Stations crew.

Also at a couple of seconds in, is a mix from One Deck Pete called Classical Gas.
Tracklistings are:
Yussef Dayes – Magnolia Symphony
Classical Mechanics – Porphyry
Scientist Ft Alicia Previn – Scientist Spacewalk
The Salsoul Orchestra – You’re just the right size
The Poplar Bluff High School Bands – GRC – Classical Gas

There are more episodes of CLSC to come including CLSC2 which was broadcast last weekend and appears on the Imaginary Stations Mixcloud here.

 

 

Ahh there you are, I think these punks have come for you…

Firstly thanks a million to Mike from The Crossroads Appreciation Society (here) for his prompt reply and sterling work for finding the episode where the punk band were featured and for putting the clips up on youtube above. It’s a bit of a classic! From these clips we have found out that the band were called The Foremen (a play on four men perhaps, but the band is made up of three men and a women) and the line up was:

Danny Fielding – Lead Guitar and Vocals
Wally Roberts – Keyboard and Synth
Jeff or Geoff Blake – Drums and Percussion
Tracy – Bass Guitar and Personal Manager

They were at the Crossroads Motel reception on their way to the basement studio to record two singles. One of the songs was influenced by or used the lyrics from William Hughes Mearns‘ Antigonish or so Danny told Meg Mortimer later (Wikipedia mentioned that “David Bowie is believed to have partially inspired the lyrics for David Bowie‘s 1970 track “The Man Who Sold the World,” which describes an encounter “upon the stairs” between Bowie (who “wasn’t there”) and the titular figure”).

With songs like this and the use of a synth, could they be considered even Post-Punk or New Romantic with that image? Or are we being very genre-pedantic there?

Mike told us “There was a ‘story’ to the recording studio which was opened by Chris Hunter (David Hunter’s son). It was called Eldorado Records which had Kate Long (Kate Robins) as its major star. Really Lew Grade’s way – as he had several times prior – to
get a chart single seen on Crossroads to get into the charts.” Brilliant stuff.

He went on to say “Not sure it would be classed as a social issue, but for whatever reason, ATV wanted to show the punk group in a positive light. The alternative music show Revolver at that time had been produced in the studio next door (which is) possibly the reason they did it”.

We love the clip, which starts “With Meg being annoyed with them, playing their music loud in the reception. But later one wanders into her office, she assumes to cause trouble, but he instead has a nice conversation with her.”

It’s terrible to think that all of this time that we thought the band were the ones who started the fire. Apparently not but Mike added “A long time ago one of the actors who played a punk in the band did email us to mention he also played one of the ‘thugs’ that started the fire”. We knew that Danny Fielding and his mob were the good guys!

If you want to know anything about the long-running Soap Opera and we mean anything we recommend you to visit the fan club site here. There is so much info on there, including music related referenced, including a Coventry Connection (of course) here:

Cheers again Mike and thanks very much for your help again!

Dub for a saturday evening

A wonderful bit of dub just released out of the Jah Warrior camp called Lost Dub by I-Lodica. Excellent stuff.

 

More polytunnel business

We managed a few hours in the garden this afternoon and it was nice to be able to spend some time out there. We picked our beef tomatoes (above) from the polytunnel, and a couple of hours later a sauce was made (then later frozen) with a couple of chillies added to give it some heat.

In the tunnel we gave the workbench a bit of a wipe down, as we’re a bit paranoid that diseases and the like can spread quickly so we always check there isn’t a build-up of water on the plates below the plant pots, cut off anything that looks dead or damaged and also check any that we may have missed out while watering. The tunnel is starting to fill up now as we’re bringing in anything that could be damaged by the frosts (in a few weeks’ time?) and starting off some vegetables including parsnips, carrots and some onions and garlic in large tubs.

We also stuck some onion bulbs outside (above) after clearing an area in the side bed and made sure to put down protection from any birds and squirrels who fancy nicking them.

And we just seen on Facebook that Bez has just got himself a polytunnel, good stuff. That’s a nice sized one!