Category Archives: Free Radio Skybird

From Beatles to Bigfoot to Aetherius

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Here’s the audio of Imaginary Station’s From Beatles to Bigfoot broadcast last weekend via Shortwave Gold, a show full of the songs of Lennon/McCartney covered in a way you’ve never heard before. Also beatles soundalikes, plus UFOs, flying saucers and a Yeti Choir (*subject to availability). It’s a odd mixture but a very nice odd mixture featuring contributions from all of the Imaginary Stations crew.

At 14.04 mins in One Deck Pete brings you a UFO themed mix called “A pint of lager please Earthman”. The tracks are:
Tena Stelin – UFO
Jah Warrior – Unidentified Flying Dub
The other self – Men from Venus
The Psychedelic Aliens – Blofonyobi Wo Atale
Meridian Brothers – Guaracha U.F.O (No Estamos Solos…) (excerpt)

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.

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.

 

Oh to be by the sea!

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A few days ago we heard from our good friend from Japan, Stevyn from the great Iron Feather Journal fanzine who is away on holiday at the moment. He said “Hokkaido is minus 10 and there’s tons of snow so we took a mini vacation and flew south to Okinawa (pic above) and now relaxing by the sea side”. He sent us this picture below from his holidays of part of a jungle with a genuine viper warning! That’s brilliant Stevyn. We hope you had a great Christmas and that you’re having a great holiday, cheers for the pics.

Keep WARM this winter

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Here’s a track we found by pure chance last night while putting together a shortwave mix. It’s from Mice Parade (who sadly we’ve never heard of before but will now research) with a track called Warm Hand in Farmland and it’s the Stereolab remix from a couple of years back. It’s one crazy track, part brass, part acoustic, part hip-hop and part mad and over 5 minutes long but it don’t seem it.

We may be imagining it, but is the piano sampled from the start of The Persuaders theme tune by John Barry used in the latter part of the tune? We’re sure of it.

And if our memory isn’t playing tricks on us The June Brides used The Persuaders theme as walk on music once when they supported the great McCarthy (which featured one Tim Gane oddly enough). Coincidence or a tenuous link to play McCarthy’s brilliant Frans Hals tune again? Who knows.

Now that Darragh has gone

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It seems like a while away now but the weather over the weekend was awful, blustery and wet. We’re back to some sort of normality for this time of year, cold and wet! Cheers to Rich R for the picture from last week just as the storm was arriving in the Lake District. Great to hear it wasn’t too mad up there.

Reggae is outernational

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Big shout to Thomas from Dub Explorations for letting us know about this excellent tune by Professor Skank from Greece entitled Jah Jah Is Coming (The rootsman version). This has taken a couple of days to worm its way into our brain here at Weeds and now we can’t get it out of our heads. A must have tune!

Gathering a beat for a cold thursday morning

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Cheers to Gerry Hectic for sending this over, a track with nice vibes for a cold Thursday morning here in SE23. It’s Leaf Erickson with The Gathering (featuring John Robinson, D Strong & Wildelux). Great stuff Gerry!