We’ve got those Car Boot blues

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We recently attended a car boot at a South London car park at 6.45 am early doors, after gaining special “VIP Early Bird Dealer only access”, which basically meant handing six quid cash to a bloke on the gate while he chatted with a school boy on a pushbike.

One of the sellers was a vendor who looked like something out of Only Fools and Horses, battered Crombie, pork pie hat, two dinner plate sized badges and trousers hitched up a little too much showing some shin. He was pitched up next to an angry Millwall looking bloke selling large packs of bin bags and knock off perfume.

On the Crombie guy’s stall sat a Hohner Melodica. “Thirty quid,” he chirped. “Sixties original mate. It’s a beauty but the case is a bit bxggxred” Charming!

A “serious” muso type (so we thought) stepped up. He handled the instrument like he knew it inside out. “Mind if I play it?” he asked. “No bother, son,” came the reply from Del Boy.

We hesitated, bracing ourselves for some Augustus Pablo-style dub business. He took a breath, pursed his lips, looked around as if he was playing to a large crowd and proceeded to give a very bad short rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Even the Millwall guy selling the bin bags put his eyes up to heaven. It certainly weren’t Pablo…

Good luck to all for some great weather tomorrow for a spot of Sunday gardening!

A delayed report from Bristol

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We also had a recent report from Kit, G5KIT in Bristol which we’ve just got around to posting up now. He’s cleared out the cleavers from his herb corner above (which is well up our street!) and as he told us “surprisingly, the parsley is thriving underneath. The anti-cat sticks seem to still be doing their thing, too.” “I’ll probably pop some basil, mint and thyme in there around the parsley, just so there’s something vigorous to fight the weeds off.”

That’s a great idea and we do know mint can be a bit vigorous at times, but we’ve got a couple of mint plants in the garden that are still in their original pots (buried into the soil) that helps to keep them from spreading too much.

Cheers Kit, do keep letting us know how things are doing!

A little whistling bird told me so

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Cheers to Spike from Morschen43 for sharing more photos of his garden in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. He was trying to take a pic of his apple tree and didn’t seen the blackbird on it that just didn’t move, so giving him a super picture and whistled a great tune as well!

Here’s some assorted photographs of the plum tree and some blossom around the garden. Spike certainly has a great looking garden and home!

And thanks to Spike, we heard this tune on his last Vampirefreaks radio show. It’s from Sidarsen and called Des Millards (from 4.51 mins in). It’s 18 mins long but it really is a bit of a hypnotising /strange one.

Here’s what Spike’s weekly radio show is all about: “Vampirefreaks is a show primarily focused on rock/punk but also covering the world of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, and sometimes hip-hop.” So if you love that stuff, tune in!

Cheers again to Spike for playing this tune as we’ve never heard of this before and for keeping up to date on the gardening tip. Keep those pictures and reports coming Spike!

Jumps and scratches free with every mix!

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Here’s a brand new (old) mix from One Deck Pete with tunes obtained from car parks in this big city of ours, out of various boxes, vinyl strewn over blankets from stalls next to “geezers” selling fake perfume and bin bags. No returns please and cash only, Okay?

Here’s the tracklistings:
Bob Marley – Mr Chatterbox
Willie Lindo – Midnight
Bob Andy – You don’t know
The Revolutionaries – MPLA + Version
I Roy – Cow Town Skank
Augustus Pablo – Cow Town Version
John Holt – Stranger in love
The Tennors – Pressure and slide
John Holt – Moving Away
The Revolutionaries – Revolution dub

 

It all seems to have started up north

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A big thanks to Debby H. for sharing an update from her north London garden! While we sowed ours directly outside this year and are still waiting for them to pop up, Debby’s cosmos are already starting to flower even though the plants are still small (see her photos above).

It’s great to see that her seed potatoes are finally breaking through. There’s some really healthy growth on them already.

Elsewhere in the garden, the rhododendron is also blooming beautifully.

As she mentioned “The bluebells are still lovely, although unfortunately not the native ones” (above).

The garden is looking great at this time of year as well, what’s it going to look like later this year? We can’t wait to find out, keeping sending us the updates Debby!

Gardening with a Violet Gown (on)

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Cheers to our good friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending us this musical recommendation by The Lost called Violet Gown and it’s a wonderful tune! On a psychedelic soul tip, and there’s some nice coconut shell sounding percussion in there too!

The tune sounds like something that should be on the excellent Andrew Weatherall – Live at Antenna Studios mix from years ago. Lots of interesting stuff on The Lost here. Cheers Justin!

Gardening all over the world (as Status Quo may have sang)

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Thanks to our Downbeat on Shortwave collaborator and gardening friend Jesse Yuen who was out and about in his garden in Perth last weekend and sent us some pictures. (Top Picture) “It’s about 4.30pm in the afternoon, but there’s beautiful light because there’s a bush fire burning somewhere, so the smoke is giving everything a bit of a golden hue.”

He’s just acquired a new plant, a yellow flowering kangaroo paw. “I salvaged them from a house down the road about to be knocked down as I was on my way to DJ at a bush doof. I’ve been keeping it alive in a pot in the backyard until the weather cooled down and I had a chance to plant it.” That’s a find! More on the plant here.

He also got himself a eucalyptus macrocarpa for his garden. As he told us “This one is an absolute beauty. We’ve been on the waiting list at our local nursery for about six months, but some people wait for over two years. It’s a native, but it’s rare to buy it at a nursery. Check out pictures of it in an adult form to see how it gets.” See pic below, blimmin ‘eck!

And related to the kangaroo paw, here’s some pictures of the bush doof Jesse was DJing at and it looks a looks a great one!

He also said, “I’m gardening to the sounds of the preview of an amazing sounding downtempo album by local Australian artist Freda” and here’s a track from it.

 

Cheers for keeping us updated Jesse and the garden (and the bush rdoof) looks great!

Getting ahead of it all

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Of late we’ve had some lovely days and then days of greyness and a little rain. Even if we don’t, the garden likes it and is starting to bolt ahead. The clematis which has taken a few years to establish itself is now doing well (above).

We were thinking had we put the potatoes in too early, but we cover them at night (and on cold days) with fleece and left over plastic and they seem to be doing alright. We will start earthing them up as we go along, as there’s nothing as bad as pulling up your potatoes and finding a load of green ones. We know that’s a long way off yet but it’s good to plan and prepare! Fingers crossed there’s no surprise frosts to come.

More numbers station business

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This evening we tapped in “Soulful Electronica” into the search engine on Bandcamp and guess what came up as an example of the genre? The seminal Conet Project put together by Akin Fernandez! More on the LP featuring numbers stations and the like here.

It’s been a long while since we looked at the tracklistings but one called (G21) Random Pop stood out so we played it. Listening to the recording, the station’s two note interval signal plays and in the background there’s a strange tune with a Tom Waits in German sounding vocal. The interval signal and the tune sounded very familiar to us, why did we know this one?

We had to dig deep but the name random pop was a clue of sorts as it was a title of a great track from Juche out of Cincinnati, that we had used on a shortwave mix of old. That was it. Here’s the Juche track Random Pop that uses the G21 track as an influence. The rest of their self-titled LP is great if you love numbers stations and we would have loved to have it on the ltd edition cassette. You can’t beat a numbers station sample.

Waiting in the (roots) garden

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The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA radio is a wonderful mix up business of a Monday morning radio show and as you know, we love it here. This week’s show is a bit of a first, and features a great interview with Rakesh Rootsman Rak and a lovely reggae selection featuring Ernest Ranglin, The Twinkle Brothers, Aswad, I-Natural, Culture, Prince Lincoln and The Royal Rasses, The Natural Ites and more.

In the interview there’s talk of Rootsman Rak’s work which involves growing food, forest gardens, working with nature, permaculture and (as Gerry Hectic mentioned on his Facebook) “ethical gardening ideas”. Well worth tuning in and having a listen. Do have a look at Rootsman Rak’s site here and bit more about him here.

Cheers for The Rhythm Doctor for having some gardening reggae business on his show and Gerry Hectic for letting us know about it this morning.