Category Archives: Events

A bit of downbeat for the weekend

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Here’s the fourth episode in the Downbeat on Shortwave series with Jesse Yuen and One Deck Pete that was broadcast this weekend on Imaginary Stations via Shortwave Gold.

Jesse and Pete bring you two 15-minute downtempo mixes each over the hour-long show. We’ve posted up two recordings, the above the clean studio version. The recorded off the radio, mono version complete with atmospheric sounds literally, is below. Enjoy the tunes!

Jesse Yuen Mix 1
Stress Assassin – Me We
Pugilist –  introspect Ft. Tamen
Drug Free America – Baby Doll and the Dolphin Burger (video edit)

One Deck Pete Mix 1
Deadbeats – Got it going on (Space Hopper original)
Stereo Total Vs Mad Professor – Das erste Mal dub trip 2
Transglobal Underground – Templehead – Burundi Beat mix
Madtone – It is AI but WE created it

Jesse Yuen Mix 2
Leslie Winer – King of sleep
99 Cents – Adrenalin Spaceboy (Dub Boy Extended mix)

One Deck Pete Mix 2
変化への恐れ – Shinogi シノギ
Mad Professor – Boombox version 2
Kuna – Decade Dub
Space To Crash – Holding Hands

We didn’t see Gene October sadly

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A million thanks to Araba for getting us tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show this week (above, the crowd in full swing). We didn’t take half as many pictures as we should have, but here’s a couple of snaps of stuff that really caught our eye!

More sinks of the Belfast variety

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Thanks to Gerry Hectic for sending us a picture of his first flowering lily in his pond complete with Belfast sink in the corner filled with some water plants. Lovely flower and that water looks a lot clearer that our pond at the present moment too Gerry!

Belfast sinks and taking cuttings

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We’ve a couple of weeks off work so we’re trying to get some jobs done around the garden, weather permitting. The first job was done on Monday, which was getting rid of a load of roots of a climber that had taken over a large Belfast sink. Once they were taken out and transferred by a B&Q quid bucket to the wild area at the bottom of the garden, the massive sink was moved by hand using some bits of wood, a garden fork and spade.

The sink is now in its new position and we’re using all the space to the maximum. It now contains three tomato plants (complete with canes found in the street), a couple of Defender marigolds and some freshly sowed free herb seeds (thanks to Penny Golightly for the marigolds and passing on the information of the free seeds from the Wildlife Trust as part of their 30 Days Wild initiative. By the way, the offer is still on here.)

And now after years of not doing so, we are finally getting to realise that taking cuttings isn’t that hard, all you have to do is keep your fingers crossed that they take. Here’s some cat mint (nepeta) that has now taken and even flowering.

 

This evening going to hit the sack early as we’re off to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show tomorrow, we’ve never been before and have no idea what to expect. We’ll be bringing you a report as soon as we can. We’ll be the ones walking around the site with the large framed rucksack on our backs.

Local news

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Thanks to Penny Golightly, here’s news of a great little plant mart in Lee next Saturday May 17th from 2-4 p.m. outside 2-6 Micheldever Road, Lee SE12 8LX and the event is a fundraiser to get money to plant more trees in the area. There’ll be a wide range of plants for sale at a good price as well as lots of other stuff (cakes, books and CDs, cream teas and 2 botanical watercolour workshops at 2.30 and 3pm). Looks great! Cheers Penny!

See you by the heel stone

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Spotted in a charity shop in Lewisham this morning, this excellent solstice-related jigsaw puzzle. Let’s hope every piece is there or it may be a right pain in the neck when it comes to completing said ancient monument.

 

We thought of a daft thing, wouldn’t it be great to travel back in time and bring the game to a cave and see if stone-age man/women/kids would enjoy the game. We reckon they would be delighted with it especially knowing that it was on sale for the bargain price of 4 quid.

And on the subject of those sacred stones we just found this excellent film on youtube! We even spotted an example of the famous “Punk Kicking Dance” (that we’d never be able to do now) at 3.51 mins in. Happy belated Solstice.

More on the Stonehenge Festival Campaign here.

The Dream Academy

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Big shout to our good radio friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore on his first book published by South London’s Velocity Press just a couple of miles away from Weeds HQ in Rye Lane, Peckham. 

The book is called The Radio Phonics Laboratory and as it says on Velocity Press’ website “explores the intersection of technology and creativity that shaped the sonic landscape of the 20th Century”. If you love Karlheinz Stockhausen, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Robert Moog and the like, go and buy one from the Velocity website here.

By request of the author here’s a daft dream we had around the time said book went to print. We’ve no idea what relevance the dream has in the scheme of the universe and also what Freud would have said but we can only put it down to a couple of tabs of co-codamol before bedtime to stop toothache.

The dream was about a man who fixed vintage valve radio sets in an old factory in Coventry that also housed an exhibition about radio propagation, “Which is a very interesting subject” the man told us.

The factory was in a street off a back entry behind Cedars Avenue in Coventry where Delia Derbyshire was brought up. In the dream we imagined we woke up and were going to travel back to Coventry to find this non existent factory and the radio exhibition housed within it. Then we woke up!

It’s not much of an exciting “we won the lottery and now live on a luxury Richard Branson type island” dream and doesn’t make much sense, unlike the great book from Justin Patrick Moore. We promise we will never divulge our dreams again but the long and short of it is, if you love a bit of electronica, you’ll love this book!

In the beginning (there was Jack)

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This morning whilst on an early morning mission to Deptford we caught this poster in a pub window. It’s for Wednesday’s May Day celebrations featuring an appearance of Fowlers Troop and the Deptford Jack in the Green (more on them here which even includes a Hawkwind and Pink Fairies connection!)

The great John Rogers has got a interesting little film that explains the celebrations a little more. Looks like a fun day!

All this talk of May Day revelry reminded us of one spring evening years ago when we were going to London Bridge station and followed a man dressed as a tree walking with a lady who was sporadically ringing an old school bell. We made a bit of a detour so we could capture more of the madness and just before we turned off for the station we had to see what it was all about. “Excuse me mate, could you explain more about your get up” we said to the tree man/man tree to which he curtly replied, “Mayday?” We were told that day and by a bloke with a painted green face.

 

And talking of John Rogers, here is again the two part excellent walk of the “Magic” River Quaggy, which is a “much watch”.

Local seed event alert

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Thanks to Ruth for getting in touch about this great event on Sunday 25th February 2024 from 1-4pm held at the AFRIL allotment of refuge at One Tree Hill Allotments SE23 3NP. It looks well interesting, there’s a bit of a seed swap, a free vegan lunch, a tour of the garden and at 2.30pm talks, a workshop and a Q&A session. It’s free and more details and tickets can be obtained here. Thanks for letting us know Ruth!

And this is a pic of a scarecrow at One Tree Allotments from a couple of years ago. We think that the coat has been changed for a yellow one now but it is still there and still creeps us out when we’re passing by. It’s those hands placed casually in the pockets that does it.