Monthly Archives: January 2025

Big shout to Thompson & Morgan

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Thanks to all at Thompson & Morgan blog for including a tip of ours in their new article “Money saving garden tips: cost-effective seed sowing” here. It’s a great article and a great blog to check out.

By the way we hope that anyone who has sowed early like us is having some success and the seeds are starting to germinate. Looks like the chili seeds we had that said “Sow by end of 2023” haven’t, but that’s a risk you got to take with out of date seeds. Good luck with what you stick in your seed trays!

 

Yoga, not yoga

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A big thanks to our musical mate Gerry Hectic for this ode to “a mind and body practice that can build strength and flexibility”. It’s by the wonderfully named Odion Livingstone and called simply Yoga. Excellent stuff which will make you smile, the mention of “Do the handstretch” and “Chest expansion” cheered us up no end. And as it says on his Bandcamp “Odion Livingstone is a Space Station chanelling signals and sounds from the past to the future.” Now there’s a nice description of an artiste.

And another Yoga influenced track by The Dubvisionist with Deva Dub.

 

And let’s not forget Tai Chi which is not Yoga. Here’s a nice bit of pushing hands with Lou Reed and Master Ren.

The pirate radio/Rare Earth connection

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Here’s a wonderful track (complete with the classic radio being tuned in intro) from a forthcoming shortwave mix that’s called MV Ross Revenge (For Ever!) and it’s by Morschen43 from Le Puy, France. The Ross Revenge was/is the home of the great Radio Caroline (and Radio Monica) from 1983 which once nearly became a cropper on the infamous Goodwin Sands. More on Goodwin Sands and the irregular cricket matches and utter lunacy that sometimes happened there (and still does), here.

Talking of pirate radio stations here’s a snip from the Radio Nordsee/Radio North Sea International film and for years we’ve always wanted to know what the track playing for the first ten seconds was and tonight we’ve found out what it was thanks to the powers of the internet. It’s the start of a song called Big John is my name by Rare Earth.

In the clip does the DJ Leo van der Goot just play the first 30 seconds of the tune and then fades it out or is there another version where the start ends the track so to speak? We would like to know, any ideas?

And if you want more of Rare Earth in a percussive style this one below is crazy! Uncredited edit allegedly by the great François Kevorkian.

Who would have thought it, in January too!

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We had no idea that the weather would be so nice today, the north of the UK have had power cuts and storms galore yet the sun was out in SE23.

We took advantage and cut down the dead wood on some rosemary, thyme, oregano and some mint in pots (the only way to grow mint unless you want to plant to take over your garden). Above is an example of some other dead wood in the sun.

We also moved some dormant plants about and gave them a little watering in. There’s a forecast of rain tomorrow but we had a nice “red sky at night” so we’re a bit confused. Not sure if we’ll be able to get out tomorrow but it was nice while it lasted today. Roll on the spring!

Can we have a bit of freedom (blues) please?

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Here’s a couple of cuts of the classic tune MPLA, the first from The Revolutionaries on the Channel 1 record label and a lovely horns cut it is too.

The second is a banging dub cut of Freedom Blues (aka MPLA Riddim) on 1st Rasta Records out of Camberwell SE5 7ZJ. We’d love to know more about the label as the location of 1st Rasta Records is in an area (with a bus garage) that is very close to our hearts There’s next to nothing on the label on Discogs except a few records by artists including Frankie Paul, Tommy Trouble (great name) and Johnny Rodgers.

Many moons ago we had a PO Box at the same place and used to collect records every Saturday, in the days promo companies would send out those things called vinyl records. One cold winter’s morning, a 12″ promo in a very warm card envelope was handed over to us by a whistling postman (wearing shorts of course) from said SE5 sorting office. When we took it home we found it was warped as anything and had been left next to the radiator for a couple of day we reckon. As the song goes “What can you say, who can you blame?” Anyone know more on 1st Rasta Records?

And here’s where it all started:

Limited copies come with an extra “via the ionosphere” mix

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A big thanks to DJ Frederick and Imaginary Stations for broadcasting Downbeat on Shortwave last weekend via the transmitters of  Shortwave Gold. The show featured two 15 minute mixes in a downtempo style back to back from Jesse Yuen (Australia) and One Deck Pete (London, SE23).

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. Fading and extra noises thanks to the ionosphere/groundwave.

Big shout to Jesse Yuen for getting involved and into the spirit of this shortwave radio project of ours.

Starting them early my friend

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It’s still only January but we’ve started some seeds already. Last year everything seemed to go wrong with the seed sowing as they germinated and then just stalled for a good few weeks and then died. We have no idea what it was, was it to do with the cheap compost we got at a supermarket? Was it those damn aphids who feasted on the basil plants on the kitchen windowsill later in the season? Was it some sort of delayed damping off?

 

Who knows but we weren’t best pleased as the batch contained some rare chilli and some choice tomato varieties. We ended up buying some chilli plants and a nice bushy tomato plant from B&Q in the end which all done well but it’s not the same.

We’ve now wiped the slate clean and put the memory of last year’s failings out of the way and started afresh with some proper seed and cutting compost in pots in a heated propagator we received as a present a few year ago (cheers Maz and Marc!)

Seeds sown this week: mint, dill, basil, chives, parsley, san marzano tomato, cerise tomato, chilli habanero, chilli Jalapino (the last 3 out of packs that say sow by 12.2023) and some seeds we dried off our chilli apache plant last year. We also sowed some catmint even though we were warned years ago that “you’ll have every cat in the neighbourhood in your back garden”.

In a few weeks every windowsill will be full with pots on saucers, jam jars and plastic freezer bags on top of plant pots as cheap alternative to greenhouses.

 

Anyone know any good tips for stopping those aphids? Someone the other week mentioned neem oil and we’ve just looked online and may try it. Anyone ever used it? Any tips to one deck pete at Gee mail dot com please.

A blast from the past

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We were looking back through the blog for a tune to accompany a forthcoming blog post  and found this video from 2016 here. It’s from Mind Enterprises with a great tune called Idealistic with a spoof video of a “better than well” guru cult complete with a lovely bit of Tai chi-like dancing throughout it. Do have a pen and paper and your credit card details handy for the end!

Music opens up a whole can of worms (and more)

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We’ve had Bargain Bin DJ (an A5 24 page fanzine) for a couple of weeks now (“print in the old fashioned way” as the song goes) produced by our good friend DJ Frederick from Groveton, New Hampshire.

If you love those bargain bin finds, this publication is for you. We don’t want to give too much away but issue number 1 has a review of Record Time magazine (the newest edition of said publication has all sorts of musical features from Polka to Sex Pistols inspired novelty records), Lawrence Welk, Kado Wilson, Forgotten 45’s from 1955, Sounds of Synanon, Moondog and Surf-Punk New Hampshire hero, Jonee Earthquake.

An excellent read if you love music found in the cheapo section or in a box hidden away under some damp smelling jumpers and coats in a charity shop. Cheers to Bargain Bin DJ fanzine for alerting us to the tune above under “sound-alike or plagiarism?”. A great track off an LP called Mood Indigo by Jean Jacques Perrey, “influenced” possibly by a tune called Telstar. We reckon it’s more than likely to be a tribute to the great Joe Meek. It’s a great one and we love the run out which we want it to go on forever.

If you want to find out more about obtaining the fanzine drop Fred an email at radiothriftshopnh@gmail.com

And here’s two sides a Bargain Bin classic of ours. An excellent single from Jamaican singer Jimmy James (he of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds later in his career). Wonderful stuff.

 

Even council gardeners love a bit of ambient

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Here’s a long and lovely track from Irrelevant called Touches. This is the Ambient Council Worker Mix from Gordon Strange. Excellent stuff, glad to see that council employees get a namecheck! Are there any tunes specifically about council gardeners you reckon?