Skybird, Shortwave and Soul

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Last night and the Monday night before, Skybird Soul on Shortwave was broadcast to Europe thanks to Shortwave Gold. It’s a bit of a nice spot for special Imaginary Stations projects on a Monday, and shortwave radio is ideal for getting rid of those Monday night blues.

The show has DJ Frederick and One Deck Pete going through their record boxes and playing some special soul tinged tunes. Tune in via Mixcloud and enjoy some great soul and soul related tunes.

Here’s the tracklist for the first half of the show from One Deck Pete.
Slowe – Too much to ask (Instrumental)
Tim Maia – Over again
Brown Spirits – Sunshine soul
Isaac Hayes – Ike’s mood
The Spinners – Message from a blackman
Freddie Scott – You got what I need
The Chosen Few – I’m so daggone mixed up
Lamont Dozier – I’m so glad (part 1)
Ty Karim – Lighten up baby
Jasmine & Madtone – All day all night

Please don’t tell us “summer” has ended

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We’ve heard today in true British Bank Holiday style, that the current lovely weather we’re having is coming to an abrupt end this weekend. Typical! But to cheer us up here’s a couple of great photographs.

The first (above) is Rich in the Lake District’s back garden. Doesn’t it look great! As he said, “The bluebells are really high now”. That’s one chilled out view there Rich, we bet it’s a nice calm place to relax in!

And above is Debby H‘s garden in north London, more specifically the cosmos bed. Debby told us “I can’t believe the number of flowers that we have already on our cosmos plants. They’re only small, about 30 cm high. We planted them out about 3 weeks ago and most of the flowers have come since then. In previous years we haven’t had these many flowers till late summer.”

“I planted the seeds in mid-February, whereas I have done it in March previously. I kept half indoors on a windowsill, and the other half were moved to our plastic greenhouse. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference to how they are growing.” It’s always good to experiment and see what happens. Thanks for the report Debby, we scattered our cosmos seed all over the garden this year and not sure if any have come up or those damned slugs have had them. We will keep you all posted.

And thanks to the great blog from Penny Golightly here’s news of some free herbs seeds here. Cheers Penny!

Bristol plant happenings

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Cheers to our gardening/radio friend Kit, G5KIT for sending us a picture (above) of a reecnt find. “These poor cacti and a lovely little succulent were just crying out to be rescued from a garden wall in Bristol. All dried out and the soil had gone crumbly. A little TLC and now they’re looking much happier!” Great to hear that Kit and they look great!

And he also let us know that he has some seedlings starting to appear: “They’re Chilli plants, a variety called Demon Red (nice ‘n’ spicy!) and apparently they’re attractive as well as tasty. The picture from the seed company (below) looks pretty good!”.

Thanks for that Kit and ta for letting us know. Any others finding stuff on walls and have seedlings appearing? If so do let us know at one deck pete (at) gee male dot com.

We love shortwave!

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Below is the studio version of this morning’s Imaginary Station’s WWLS – We Love Shortwave transmission from Radio Miami International featuring tunes and mixes from DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and Kit, G5KIT. If you love shortwave you’ll love WWLS!

At 22.45 there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called We love Shortwave. Here’s the tracklistings:

Radio Sweden Interval Signal
Triptica – Mysterious Radio Signals
Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – This Frequency
Shortwave Sounds – Reflections
Madtone – Spoken Words from Ibiza
Holger Czukay/Jah Wobble – Hiss n Listen
Gregory Morris & The 18th Parallel – Dub In Your Stereo (dub of Message in your radio by Kumar)

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!