Just before we go away for a few days at the south coast, here’s some great gardening pictures from our friend in north London, Debby H. The cosmos patch is still going strong (above) and bright and colourful. The next is the cana lilly, now flowering for the first time this year (below).
“Then there’s the wonderful Ornithogalum (below) with four flowers now clearly visible.” it does look wonderful Debby!
Then there’s the sedum (above) and the great Zephyranthes Lilly flowers (below).
“And just up the road from here is a great front garden with a wonderful array of tomatoes all along the front border. There’s also sun flowers and other plants I don’t recognise.” That front garden is crazy! Love those climbing tomatoes! Cheers for sending those Debby.
Big shout again to Dr Strangedub of the excellent Echo Chamber show on KFAI for the debut play of Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s newest tune called “Times and Tings” at 47.00 mins in after the classic track “Apprentice Dentist” from the great Lone Ranger. Tune in here.
As you know the good Doctor S with DJ Baby Swiss presents the show every Wednesday morning (available on archive here too) featuring the best in reggae, dub and downbeat and well worth tuning into from 8 am.
News just in! There’s a new EP release from Jasmine & Madtone and it’s up on Bandcamp here featuring the two tracks that were on The Rhythm Doctor’s excellent mix on Gilles Peterson’s Breakfast show on Worldwide FM. Expect more new music from Jasmine & Madtone soon!
We love a bus here at Weeds but it’s a different story when we think of bus stations. They never had a good reputation and they still conjure up scenes of just missing buses by a split second, waiting for the first bus in the morning in a different city after sleeping upright on a plastic seat all night after a gig years ago or aimlessly walking from stop to stop looking for the right bus scratching one’s head when on holiday in a different country.
Thanks to our good friend Debby H the reputation may be changing going by the photographs she took of the great flower display outside Nantwich Bus station (which has 4.5 star reviews on Google by the way fact fans!) Just look at those hanging baskets! We reckon there may be some comfrey liquid involved but we’re not complaining.
We love the named herb tubs under the massive hanging baskets (top and below image) and would love a cutting of the Mint Basil as we’ve never grown it before. Big shout to the gardeners/volunteers/bus drivers who maintain the patch as it’s immaculate, no deadheads on those hanging baskets we see. Thanks for those pics Debby, they are great. Now if only the Weeds’ garden was as tidy.
Weeds up to me knees give a big shout to Chris The Rhythm Doctor who was interviewed on this week’s Gilles Peterson’s breakfast show on Worldwide FM. After a while of waiting for the show to go up online yesterday, the show is now finally up in all its glory on Mixcloud.
At 1.37.00 on the show is the interview featuring Chris chatting about his early days in Birmingham and Coventry, a good bit about the Jazz Funk days and bit on his involvement in the early days of House music. Trouble is, there’s loads more that can go in there! Any chance of a part two or three, Gilles?
At 2.33.00 in there’s an exclusive mix from Chris. Cheers to him for playing two Jasmine Tutum & Madtone tracks alongside lots of great eclectic stuff including the brilliant Don Cavalli “Fire Fire”, Arina Singh and the crazy dub of The Detonators “Lift Off” (which as the legend goes, after hearing it, Jerry Dammers contacted the tune’s producer John Collins and got him to produce The Specials’ Ghost Town).
Do check RD’s label Almost Unknownon Bandcamp here and expect more releases on the label. And as we keep mentioning, do check out his Monday morning show hereon IDA Radio (Tallin) which has a fine mix of tunes for the start of the week.
Here’s the full tracklistings of the mix as it’s a bit sketchy on the Worldwide site at the present moment:
01. Uku Kuut – Visions of Estonia (PPU)
02. Collage – Uni,Tule Silma Peale!/Sleep,Come On The Eye! (Melodiya)
03. Treee vs Hüpnosaurus – Suveöö/Summer Night – Rhythm Doctor Rub (Umblu)
04. N.Ae. – Fatum/Fate (Polskie Nagrania Muza)
05. Arina Singh – Persian Glitter Carpet (Unreleased) 06. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry – Livicate (Unreleased)
07. Maarja Nuut – Kutse Tantsule/A Call To Dance (Self Released)
08. Gunars Rozenbergs – Disko Roze (Melodiya)
09. Konstantin Orbelyan – Vocalese (Melodiya)
10. Medey – The Hunter Suite (pt 1) mix Stanton Davis (Melodiya)
11. The Detonators – Lift Off (Special Request) 12. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – What Is Man (Unreleased)
13. Don Cavalli – Fire Fire (Rag Records)
14. The Outlaws – Crazy Drums (His Masters Voice)
15. Chyskyyrai – Khara Tüün – Rhythm Doctor radio edit (Indigenous Lifeforms)
16. Vladimir Tarasov – Monotipijos 45 (Melodiya)
17. Skeet – Meathouse (Almost Unknown)
18. Mad Musician – Jazz In (Tribe Recordings)
19. Ajukaja & Ats – Signal (Mida)
On Sunday 11th August 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations have yet another version of COOL, this time COOL 5 via Shortwave Gold. Like the last COOL shows, it’s summer vibes galore and tunes to listen to whilst on the sun lounger. Towels and suntan lotion at the ready please!
Then via WRMI on Wednesday 14th August 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz they’ll be bringing you a back to school special of KMART, your “official supermarket shortwave radio station”. Expect voucher give-aways, extended opening hours and the best blue light specials on the planet (*All subject to availability of course). Tune in and enjoy an alternative to shopping via the shortwave dial.
Thanks again to Mike and Julia for the pics of their back garden when they returned from their holiday. “We now have two sunflowers and those purple things in our wild patch are chicory. The flowers close up at night when the bees have gone home.” Brilliant Mike!What we love here is they’ve got an olive tree, called Olive (of course). She’s in the top laft hand corner of the picture and as Mike says “seems to be benefiting from the high temperatures”. Excellent!
And here’s a great rich coloured clematis and a “Ms Mars” sunflower, all looking wonderful. That’s it with holidays when you come back you will notice the difference in your garden.
Reggae is one of those genres that if you think you know a little, you’ll always be suprised. By pure fluke we found the above tune from Ranking Toyan – Kill No Man whilst looking for another Toyan tune on youtube. We then remembered the horn version on the LP Aggrovators Meet The Revolutionaries we bought in a second hand shop many moons ago and used the title track on a “Radio Clarion Vs KDUB” shortwave mix. That thing called the internet can be great sometimes!
A big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. As we’ve said before, if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here for a cracking good show. At around 37 minutes into the 24th of July show you’ll hear Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate” just before a lovely garden related tune from Sister Julie called Garden Binghi.
Have a listen to the whole show here as it’s wonderful stuff! Thanks again the good Doctor!
The garden is doing alright this year, it’s July already and some things are doing well and some not. We don’t know if it was the peat-free compost we got from the local supermarket but the peppers and tomatoes didn’t do much so we had to buy some plants from B&Q and Lldl istead.
The Hydrangeas are doing great for the first time in years and we have a lot of greenery going on in the side bed (above) even under the shade of the big tree next door. The poppies and the pot of lettuce on the weird wooden coat hanger are grand with not much interference from slugs. There’s a nice poppy just flowered next the lemon verbena (we’re having a cup of lemon verbena tea at the moment) and if you look hard enough you may see a tomato plant or two!
Yesterday while killing a bit of time we popped into a library in Clerkenwell in the afternoon and picked up the book All Gates Open: The Story of Can by Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt. We whiled away a bit more time than we thought as next thing we knew, the librarian was ringing a schoolbell and shouting “It’s 5 o’clock and the library’s closing”.
What was great was in said book there was a mini interview with Mark E Smith and Irmin Schmidt. Little did we know that in 1977 that Mark E Smith rang Irmin and asked if Can would come over and do a joint gig with them. Now how good would that have been? In Dazed & Confused a few years ago here Irmin says of The Fall frontman “What I took (from the interview) is that I met a very lovable person.” Ahh isn’t that great? A book well worth having a look at!