Monthly Archives: April 2023

Sunday morning listening to Dennis

Posted on by
Reply

We just found this recent show out of the blue (no pun intended), it’s Ross Allen doing one of his foundation music specials on his Meltdown show on NTS. This time it features the great photographer, PIL logo/Metal Box designer, Urban Shakedown/Basement 5 founder and many other things Dennis Morris. It’s not just an interesting listen, it’s a must listen!

We were reminded that in one of Dennis Morris’s books there’s a great picture of the Sex Pistols on an old-school coach (nothing as grand as having a loo or those tables with fancy lamps on it that football teams used to travel on cup final days in the 1970’s) on the M6 travelling away from Coventry the morning after their gig at Mr George’s in December 1977. It was a completely different world then, it’s all double decker coaches now and they have loos and even sarnies and tea and coffee on offer now!

Whilst the radio show was playing and remembering that photograph a tale came to mind and apologies if we’ve mentioned it before. It was a story we heard in 1978 from a chap we went to college with whose older brother was a car mechanic. This bloke did talk a lot of rot and this story beats the lot. He told us just before Christmas 1977 his brother got a call at his garage in Coventry to go to the motorway to fix a coach which had broken down. When he got there he saw it was a band on tour and was told it was the Sex Pistols. What was really odd though after a while he saw that all of the band (and their staff) were all dressed in suits and flared trousers and all of the punk image was a big act just for publicity (so he told us). Probably one of the best punk stories we may have ever heard. How the band kept that fact hushed up for all these years we will never know. You heard it here first.

Going back to reality and the radio show, the first tune Black Skin Blue Eye Boys from The Equals featuring Eddy Grant (Dennis mentions a couple of great Eddy Grant stories by the way) that starts the proceedings took us back in time to an excellent reggae 12″ influenced by that great tune (below the original).

There is a land far far away

Posted on by
Reply

Talking of RTM FM, a big shout to Jesse Yuen of the excellent North of the River Swan radio show (which is on a break for the time being) for sending us this morning some excelllent pictures of his parents garden in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia where he is at the moment. It’s a brilliant space and has some out there plants we could only dream about having here!

It looks a wonderful space and a lovely place for chilling out in! He’s sent us some close ups of flowers from the yard too. Great stuff!

And here’s the last North of The River Swan (until later this year hopefully) as Jesse (as it says on the mixcloud) “is taking some time off to recalibrate the compass and recharge the radio batteries”. Take it easy and we look forward to your return to the radio and to your shortwave debut. Cheer for the gardening pics, do send us more.

Gardening connects us all

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s the recent Imaginary Stations episode from RTM FM which was broadcast last Thursday. It’s called the Scented Garden, a nod to John Peel’s Perfumed Garden show and also gardening related, both well up our street here at Weeds. There’s some great stuff from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore as per and also a mix called “A tribute to council gardeners everywhere” from One Deck Pete at 2 mins in. Here’s the tracklistings:
Dudley Perkins – Flowers (Instrumental)
Hugh Masekela – Grazing in the Grass
Beyond The Wizzard’s Sleeve – Winter In June
Dennis Brown – How can I leave

Talking of the great John Peel here’s a piece from 11 years ago about said Disc Jockey for DJ Frederick’s (he of the Imaginary Stations show) excellent fanzine Paper Radio which is all about that great connecting force, those radio waves. Have a butcher’s here. And whilst we’re there:

A song for a wet and windy Tuesday

Posted on by
Reply

How the weather has changed since Easter Sunday. We had a nice afternoon of sunshine but after the sun went in, out came the cold and it’s mainly been rain off and on since. Never mind the bad weather though, the tune above from Godspeed called Nightcrawling will lift the spirits and sometime in the near future will be bouncing off the ionosphere from the transmitters of WRMI over the shortwaves.

They went WEST

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s Sunday night’s WRMI Imaginary Station’s WEST show which features tunes of a West nature. At 2.40 minutes in is One Deck Pete’s “We’re going up West” mix. Here’s the tracklistings:
Phil Western – 5 6 7 8
Quantic (Ft Louis Towers) – Westbound Train
Ennio Morricone – Sixty Seconds to What
Western Standard Time Ska Orchestra – Tunnel Vision Dub
The Flaming Ember – Westbound #9

Go west and enjoy!

Punk rock? That’s shallot

Posted on by
1

As it was a glorious day yesterday we spent much of it tinkering about in the garden (above). Notice the hessian shopping bags (mid-centre left) hanging on the found-in-the-street tree-like coat stand. Those bags will be filled with Lidl’s best peat-free compost and contain potato plants in a few weeks time. Dada gardening at its best.

The shallots we put in a couple of weeks ago “under glass” (which is just an old window frame found in the street balanced on some house bricks) are off to a flying start. We’ve tried growing shallots before but they rotted even before they got this far so we must be doing something right this time.

We tided up the side bed by the Dad corner (below) and replanted a couple of penstemons we bought off QVC a year and a bit ago and also made some sort of bug hotel (there isn’t a roof on it so is that more of a bug campsite then?) Those giant garlic bulbs are now coming on a treat as well.

Also we cleared a little area by the pond (below) and added a mini veg bed. We stuck some large wire mesh (originally some shelves from our old mini-plastic green houses) over the top of it to deter the cats, putting in a line of old house bricks in helps visually section the area off too. It gets a bit of shade so we’re thinking the lettuce seeds we put should be okay as in full sun they tend to go to seed. Let’s see.

Hopefully we’ve another couple of days worth of gardening to do over Easter if this lovely weather holds out. Have a good Bank Holiday weekend!

Listening to last week’s On The Wire which has a deep dubby bias while we write this post. Well worth listening to as per. Big shout to Steve, Fenny and Jim.

This Easter go West

Posted on by
2

This Easter Sunday 9th April Imaginary Stations will be going in a Westerly direction at 2200 UTC on 9395 kHz via WRMI. In one word they’ll be going WEST, there’ll be some Westbound trains, themes from Westerns and even some spoken word from Adam West. So get your compass out, tune in your shortwave radio and enjoy everything Westward Ho! from 2200 UTC on Easter Sunday.

At 2.42 into the show One Deck Pete will be presenting a 15 minute mini-mix called in true Pete “Alright treacle?” Beale style “We’re going up West”. Tune in for an Easter Western treat!

A tune for a frosty morning

Posted on by
Reply

It was a lovely day yesterday, the sun was out and it looked like spring had finally sprung but the lack of cloud last night gave us a bit of frost this morning. As Shaw Taylor used to say about watching the weather forecast especially after putting plants in “Keep ’em peeled”. And here’s a nice tune…

It’s a bit early doors but…

Posted on by
Reply

We bought some seed potatoes a couple of months ago and they’ve been happily sprouting (AKA chitting) in the back room by the window. As we mention every year, the late great Joe Maiden used to say that Good Friday was traditionally the day to put your seed potatoes in. What with Easter falling early some years it may be better hanging on a couple of weeks when the risk of frost has disappeared but as usual we’re contradicting ourselves.

We’ve grown spuds for a few years but we’re so fed up of scratching about under the surface of the plant looking for early potatoes, leaving a few in when we’ve harvested it and having a few “volunteer” plants grow the next season combined with general impatience we decided we may change the way we grow spuds. We also saw Monty Don on the telly the other week chatting about growing spuds in buckets and tubs so a “lightbulb” moment occured.

This morning we simply stuck a seed potato in a small bucket which was half full with some general purpose peat free compost freshly aquired from Lewisham Lidl. We buried the spud about an inch deep and stuck an old plastic mini cloche over the top. As soon as the shoots come to the surface we’ll put an inch worth of compost over the top and will repeat the process until we’ve filled the bucket. This way at the end of the growing season we will just knock the whole plant out of the bucket with all of the spuds intact. No fuss, no bother. If only life was that simple.