Category Archives: Dub Gardening

When the chips are down

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The back garden path was looking well worn what with weeds growing between the 1970’s inspired crazy paving, very loose slabs and all that combined with a sinister lean towards down the hill. Let’s say it wasn’t the most safest garden path to walk on so the other weekend we made a start on trying to improve it.

First job was to rid the path of the slabs and chuck them by the pond. It’s looking like a concrete jungle up there at the moment so it’s better we don’t show any pictures! The concrete underneath the path would take lots of work to get out so we thought we’d best leave it in.

Over a couple of evenings with 6 bags of woodchip (on offer on Wickes), some decking boards and a couple of lengths of 1″ x 1″ procured we had a go at a wood chip path, allotment style.

We remember a mate telling us a few years ago that there was a craze of people going around pinching estate agents boards for their wooden posts which were being put to better use at local allotments in the production of wood chip paths. We wonder if that was a real thing or were we having our leg pulled? Well anyway those 1″ x 1″ came in well handy for making that path safer and looking a lot better.

Music is a can of worms, part whatever

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We’ve just finished a mix for a forthcoming shortwave radio transmission which features this classic by Felice Taylor called “I feel love coming on” which was written and produced by Paul Politi and the great Barry White. We knew the Felice Taylor tune well but just now discovered the Barry White and The Love Unlimited version. We love the spoken intro, Barry White in fine style.

Talking of the great Barry White, it brought us to thinking of this classic by Love Unlimited “Under the influence of love” which is a top tune and available on Discogs for less than £4.

Little did we know that Felice Tayor did a version of it (love the Four Tops musical reference in it) and the legendary Radio Jackie used the instrumental version by the Bob Keene Orchestra as their theme tune. We do love these musical connections!

COOL down the pace

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Last weekend’s transmission of Imaginary Stations (the show that features music you probably won’t hear elsewhere on shortwave) is now up on Mixcloud. This episode is the station COOL “Cool tunes for Summer moods” featuring some music that evokes sunshine even though London last weekend wasn’t experiencing much of that.

23 minutes into the broadcast in is a mix from One Deck Pete called a “Seven Inch Single Summer Special” featuring
Earl Brown – Get Together
Stereolab – Miss Modular
Freda Payne – Unhooked Generation
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng Version/Roots Radics Dedication To Flabba Holt 2 Martel Robinson – Follow you

So get out in the garden, perch yourself on a deckchair, stick some headphones on and blast the show for maximum pleasure. “Summertime and the living is easy” as Our ‘enry once sang.

This was before the storm

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This morning we knew it was going to be stormy later today so went out early in the morning to put the couple of garden brolleys on their sides and then spotted that a couple of branches from the tree next door were precariously being held up by the fence. They had been blown down in the night and we didn’t even hear any wind and thought all of that windy weather was happening later today (which it did).

About an hour later it was all sorted and everything looked safe and back to normal and the bed below had a lot more light on it than before. Sadly we lost some trusses on one of the tomato plants perched below and god knows if it will survive. You can’t win them all!

And after all the excitement this morning here’s a tune to cheer us up from Minyo Cumbiero called Cumbia del Monte Fuji. There’s a nice dubbed out syn drum middle bit here too. What a tune!

We heard it on the radio

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Cheers to our good friend The Rhythm Doctor for playing this chilled out piece of summer inspired balearica from John Beltran called La Hermosa Vista on his excellent Monday morning radio show “The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room” (all shows available here). If you want two hours containing some great tunes from chilled, funk, reggae, jazz and a lot more on a Monday morning you want to be tuning into IDA Radio – Tallinn from 9-11am UK time. Here’s this week’s show:

Crimson and clover

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Here’s the audio from last night’s Imaginary Stations show on WRMI, a tribute to all things Hippie/Hippy called WHPY. Tune in and turn on to some mind blowing sounds from the Imaginary Stations crew including at 18.50 a mix from One Deck Pete called “For all the wallies out there”. Here’s the tracklist:
Can – Vitamin C
Bongo Isaac, Itekted, Dread I Benji – Perfect Love and Peace Dub 1
Emma-Jean Thackray – Ley Lines
Richie Havens – Going back to my roots

Greetings, tomato pickers

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We must have a lot of time on our hands at the moment as we’re giving the tomato plants a weekly dose of comfrey liquid and as the plants aren’t of the bushy variety we’ve been religiously  sideshooting (aka pinching out) each plant (we’ve just noticed in this photo we missed one near at the top, damn!) We need to get out more, we really do!

All sideshooting is, is where the plant is trying to grow another stem, you nip it out so all the goodness goes into making the fruit. For God’s sake when you do it make sure you’re not nipping out the flower trusses. We’ve just looked online and it said it’s better using your fingers than a pair of secateurs as the plants form scar tissue better making less chance of any diseases forming. We can’t believe that fruit are actually forming now, God is it June already?

Talking of tomatoes here’s a brilliant Bob Flowerdew talk on tomatoes that contradicts what we’ve just said (he says don’t grow them on single cordons try two or three). We’ve put this video up a few times but it’s well worth watching.

We still would like to know what Bob Flowerdew’s top 10 all-time tunes are though. We reckon it may include some interesting stuff and possibly a bit of “More Yes, Genesis and Floyd”, not ‘alf pop pickers.

This one goes out to all plant givers and seed swappers

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One thing’s for sure is that the whole idea of seed/plant swapping, finding stuff in the street and the idea of giving not to receive (but then someone gives you something out of the blue) is well up our street. It cheers up the garden for less pence and there’s a possibly that you’ll be growing stuff you’d never even think of growing. This morning we noticed some fruit on one of the chili peppers we were given the other week. We reckon the weekly dose of liquid plant feed helps and we were just thinking even the comfrey plant we made the feed out of was given to us by a mate earlier this year.

Sometimes you don’t have to look that far to find stuff. Once we awoke up to a lovely empty champagne box on our doorstep with no explanation here that is now looking a bit older with some mint in it by the pond.

Or the time when we found a silver birch seedling in a plastic bag in the street here when we were on the way to a mates. That was back in 2017 and it’s grown a fair bit since! And here’s the tree today.

A big shout to everyone who has swapped, given and received and all the tweeters that have put us in the direction of cheap seeds at the likes of Lldl and Ebay. We salute you and may your garden be abundant and we hope someone leaves a gardening gift on your doorstep, gives you a pot of something out of the blue or you walk past a garden wall that has something interesting with a “Take me” note on it. Big up the “Giving circle” or whatever it’s called.

Calling all Wallies, calling all Wallies

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What with all this great weather we’re having at the moment, we’re reminded of the old free festivals that used to be about. Festivals like Stonehenge and Deeply Vale where The Fall used to love to play and also where The Ruts were formed. If you love all that free festival business have a look at this site here. It’s a brilliant documentation of when festivals didn’t have 30 or so big name DJ’s/Bands playing each day and where you weren’t searched for cans of Carling Black Label on your way in. There were certainly no artisan bread stalls and WI tea tents selling home-made victoria sponges in those days though there was some alternative home-baking going on. RIP to Wally Hope (above on flyer) who was a part of getting the punk band Crass together and the nude dancer William “Jesus” Jellett. There’s a great bit in Paul Gorman’s blog where “Jesus” is pictured dancing at an early Sex Pistols gig here.

Sort of related to all of this Free Festival malarkey, Imaginary Stations bring you WHPY this Sunday 18th June 2023 at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz via WRMI. They’ll be broadcasting a special programme live from the Skybird mobile studio van parked up in a free festival in a car park in the hippy haven of Woodstock. They’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete called “For all the Wallies out there” featuring tunes by Can, Bongo Isaac, Itekted and Dread I Benji, Emma-Jean Thackray and original Woodstock artiste Richie Havens.

So don your best 1970’s long afghan coat even in this heat, grab something strong to drink if there is anything still left in the communal fridge and play your imaginary recorder or shake a home-made tambourine along to the far out sounds of WHPY.