Category Archives: Free Radio Skybird

Cool Runnings

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Here’s the studio audio of Imaginary Station’s COOL from Sunday 30th June 2024 transmitted by Shortwave Gold to Europe via shortwave. The programme features cool tunes for this summer of ours (even though it’s been a bit grey here today) featuring DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

At 3.47 in there’s a mix by One Deck Pete called “Summertime and the living is easy”. Here’s the tracklistings:
Jimi Tenor with Cold Diamond & Mink – Gaia Sunset, Part 1
Glass Beams – Mahal
Augustus Pablo – Satta Dub
Chancha via Circuito – La Victoria ft Lido Pimienta & Manu Ranks

Get some suntan lotion on and enjoy the sunshine!

I suppose you’d like to know how much it’s worth?

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After a text alert to Weeds HQ this week that records were dumped locally, we found a 1970’s shopping bag with rope handles with “Lanzarotte” enblazoned on it containing some LPs outside a garden wall down the road. No A&M God Save the Queens or Bullet Dubs in there but the record above stood out for us on the bizarre sleeve stakes. We’ll be bringing the battered 1970’s Lanzarote shopping bag with miscoloured thick rope handles next time BBC Antiques Roadshow hits the Horiman’s Museum and see what they think about that great piece of antiquity.

By the way our favourite specialist on The Antiques Roadshow is the glass expert Andy McConnell. And here’s something we didn’t know about him until we read about it this morning here: “A trained journalist, Andy spent 1972-76 in California, interviewing & touring the US with many of the greatest rock & folk bands. The theme continued into the early ‘80s when he produced promo videos at Island Records, for acts including Tears for Fears, Kid Creole & The Coconuts and Steve Winwood. Leaving Island in 1983, he production managed a black music series for Channel 4, Rockers Roadshow.” The above is one of the said shows which contains some great footage of Mikey Dread and others we’ve never seen before. Andy has gone up even more in our estimations now!

As for the Lanzarote bag we also found this great LP from Milt Raskin in it which has an excellent sleeve and is a nice bit of exotica well suited for this sunny summer. More on this LP here. DJ Frederick and Gerry Hectic, do you know this one?

Here’s to more sunshine!

Tune of the night

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As we were looking for some tunes for a shortwave mix the other night we came across this track. It’s from a few years ago and one we hadn’t heard of before. It’s by Chancha via Circuito called La Victoria featuring Lido Pimienta & Manu Ranks and it’s a winner! It’s from the LP Bienaventuranza.

And as one of the comments on the Bandcamp says “I don’t think there is a better album cover. Frame worthy, and the music matches its brilliance!” Excellent stuff!

News on this week’s Imaginary Stations broadcasts here.

Words in papers, words in books

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Big thanks to Gerry Hectic our man from the south coast for sending us his “Wise words or not” mix. It’s a great one as ever with lots of tunes that we’ve never heard before (Yvonne Baker being one of them, what a great track) and a mix to investigate. Here’s the tracks:
Moritz von Oswald Trio – Chapter One
Mike Leander And His Orchestra – The Letter
The Harvey Averne Dozen – The Word
Yvonne Baker – Didn’t Say A Word
The G.G. All Stars – (Same Folks) Dub Wise
Felipe Gordon – No Words (Byron the Aquarius Dub Mix)

Gerry’s mix was inspired by WORD on Imaginary Stations on Sunday which is now up online on the Imaginary Stations Mixcloud below. The show featured books, (Radio Phonic) laboratories, dictionary rock, abbreviations and ampersands and lots more from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

The first track on the show from The Real Tuesday Weld called Last Words is how you use shortwave samples in a tune!

At 21.13 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “A Word to the Wise” and the tracks are:
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)
The Medallions – The Letter
Giorgio (Moroder) – Stop
Capital Letters – Smoking My Ganja
Jourbert Singers – Stand on the word
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)

Cheers again to Gerry for sending us his mix and here’s more WORD related tunes.

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!

Rotating one’s Yagi

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This Sunday 5th May 2024 on the shortwave bands, Imaginary Stations bring you a radio premier, Test Cards on Radio. It will be beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz.

The show is a must for fans of test cards and TV trade test transmissions alike and will feature all kinds of frequency tones for radio calibration purposes, an exclusive ten minute chat with Stooky Bill (*subject to availability) and test card related music from around the world. So get up on your roof and rotate your yagi, adjust your brightness and vertical hold and tune in on Sunday.

Music to drive any frosts away

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Here’s two great tunes for a Tuesday evening to drive any chance of the frost away.

The first is a lovely middle eastern-inspired mix of an Adrian Sherwood live track. It’s a wonderful piece of instrumental reggae called Sinnervisions from the great Spy From Cairo who makes some brilliant music that we have featured before and this one is really up there! More about his stuff here.

 

And from 2015 from Blackboard Revision we have Blackboard Horns from Lee Scratch Perry, Danny Boyle and Danny Red. Wonderful horns with some fantastic bass!

 

And here’s another track or two from each of the artists for good measure!

 

Get those buckets out, possibly

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This scene is from a couple of years ago but this weekend we may go back in the time machine and relive it as it’s going to be 2°C overnight on Sunday, supposedly.

We’ve got spuds that have sprouted and even some coriander seed that have propagated outdoors so it’s better to be safe than sorry. We reckon give it a couple of more weeks and we’ll be out of the danger zone but then again remember that snappy old-time gardening saying “Button to chin, till May be in, cast not a clout, till May be out. If you lose your seed spuds you will get angry and swear and shout”.

The sun’s out this morning, the sky is blue but it’s still nippy. Whether we’ll be in the garden today for long is another thing. So for this sunny morning, here’s a tune by Billy Hope with Riding West which has a bit of a Steptoe and Son vibe to it.

Whistling three sheets to the Wind

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Cheers to Justin Patrick Moore for sending us this great instrumental from Luna called Drunken Whistler and a lovely little number it is. For some reason it reminded us of something that may have been on Andrew Weatherall‘s excellent Live at Antenna Studios mix (below) which we have mentioned a good few times.

If you haven’t heard the mix before it’s well worth a listen, there’s a track from Manfred Mann of all people called Just for me (“And there, I saw trees reaching to the sky. And birds full of colour and flying high”) and Harpers Bizarre with Witchi Tai To. Excellent stuff of the eclectic kind! Cheers again Justin for sending us the track recommendation.

Music for snoozin’

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Here’s the audio of yesterday’s Imaginary Stations show WZZZ, all about the art of sleep and dreaming. It was a horizontal themed show with music to drop off to and songs to dream to. 

 

There’s some great tunes throughout the hour from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore (have a look at his great new book here) and at 1.52 mins in there’s One Deck Pete with a 15 min mix called “You may say I’m a dreamer”. Gerry Hectic‘s answer mix “You’re not the only one” is here if you want to complete the set!

Here’s a tracklisting:
Jah Wobble – Fading (Instrumental)
L. Pierre – Fan-dance
The Barbados Steel Orchestra – Barbados My Island of Dreams
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – The Night
Owen Gray – Midnight Track

Have a good day and if you fancy a lazy Monday snooze, drop off to WZZZ!