Mr Scruff – Band on the wall, Manchester – 2.11.2013
Here’s a lovely one that’s been on play again all week at the Weeds HQ, a great 5 hour mr scruff mix from earlier this month with a nice reggae interlude (from 1.03.00 featuring Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Al Campbell) amongst loads of other good stuff. It’s even downloadable for nowt for a limited period too! One to play full blast in the greenhouse while cleaning the mould off the windows!
The above classic is featured on it too. I only know this one through it being sampled on 80/90’tunes so it was great to hear the original, bonkers. Big up the scruffy one!
And while we’re there, here’s an extended mix of the Gregory tune Mr Scruff played, with the Christine vocal. A tune! Thank you one John Lydon for playing it on BRMB Radio in the late 1970’s for this one.
Yesterday I popped into Dig This Nursery which is just opposite the station in New Cross. Their record shop (spotty vinyl records) has now grown since the last time I was there, then it was just a couple of record boxes now it’s housed in a back room with lots more rows of vinyl and a nice little Reggae section and definitely worth having a look at if you are around the SE14 area (reminds me of a mini Rat Records.) A garden centre with a second-hand record shop, why hasn’t anyone thought of this concept before?
I saw an LP in there by the Calypsonian Mighty Sparrow which had a track on it called No Future, sadly not a Calypso cover of the Sex Pistol’s classic God Save the Queen but one about the evils of “hard drugs” which the lyric encourages the listener to “see a movie or take a hunting trip” instead of “taking a fix.” Cruel sports or hard drugs, I’d pass on both of them!
I was chatting to Mihaly one of the nice chaps there and he mentioned that when it came to plant feeding, they use well-rotted Horse manure. They use this method on their Tomato plants (they have an annual Tomato festival where they grow 72, yes 72 different types!) and it works like a treat. If all goes well I will be getting a bag off them in the spring to try and will do a weeds up to me knees plant trial (“this one has had the horse dung, this side hasn’t, can you see the difference?” etc). Also their seed range for kids has taken off too. Great stuff!
This might seem a bit previous but I’ve just found out the date of the next Potato Day & Seedy Sunday in London. Save up your seed, save up your quids and get up there!
Sunday 26th January 2014 11.00am-3.00pm London Potato Day & Seedy Sunday Sydenham School Dartmouth Road Forest Hill London SE26 4RD
It’s a good one to break up the post-Christmas/skint at new year comedown too!
Big shout (and Happy Birthday too!) to our good friend Doctor Strangedub for telling us that the last post but one (A blast from a bonkers past) reminded him of Bedward the flying Preacher, another non flying event. For those who don’t know about Alexander Bedward the flying preacher, let Prince Fari tell you about him.
A happy old tune from Junior Kelly played on this week’s excellent David Rodigan show on 1Xtra. One to kick off those steel toe-caps and chill out to on this cold Friday evening!
While going through a box of old fanzines the other day, I found a poster (designed by yours truly) from the attempted Levitation of Parliament event Twenty years ago (organised by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts and the London Pychogeographical Association). On a Sunday in October in 1994 an assembled mass of people conducted an experiment to levitate the Houses of Parliament from the square opposite. Unfortunately, due to possibly the wind being in the wrong direction, bad vibes or too many people wearing garments made out of wool, the experiment failed. A mad day indeed!
I finally got out yesterday and tidied up the family veg plot at the bottom of the garden, runner bean canes were cleaned up and stored away and the bottoms of the runner bean plants were left in the ground as they’ll add extra nitrogen to the soil. It was the first time for a while that I’d got out for a couple of hours in the garden with the fork. I was in bed until midday today, must have been the body going into a state of shock after that bit of hard work!
The wormery has been covered with sacking over a layer of fleece for the winter (if it gets bad I will move it into the garage as those brandling worms hate the cold!) I also used the old fish tank I found in the street a few months ago as a cloche to overwinter some Peas and Garlic. It could have done with having a few holes drilled into it for ventilation but I still hadn’t got around to it. Also sowed the same combo under the old trusty window frame found last year in a cold frame stylee. God know what will happen what with all the cold weather that we’re supposed to be having next week!
Cheers to David Rodigan for playing these two great tunes which we’re featuring tonight. The above is a lovely bit of 2013 dub with Pablo vibes and a nice throbbing bass.
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking of what to plant for next year as it’ll be great to grow something that the family will actually eat! Saying that, spuds, onions, garlic and carrots are winners here even if they are cheaper in the shops to buy, but who cares? The back garden is nearer than the local shop and home grown veg is tens times fresher! Remember, always grow stuff that you’re definitely going to eat (not what gardening magazines tell you what you should be growing) as it’s a big waste of time and effort if not and just ends up on the compost heap!
And to go out with here’s the “cross, angry, miserable” (just like me on a monday morning) Bounty Killer on a right bonkers tip (featuring a lovely horn sample). Not one to play loud early on a Sunday morning on the ghetto blaster down the allotment.
Jamtech Ft. Bounty Killer – Neva Know – Ghetto Trap
More on the ‘umble coach written by my good self from Steroid Abuse fanzine many many moons ago. Beware kids, there’s a wee bit of swearing thrown in for good measure. Turn off now if you’re easily offended! Just click on the image above to read the article.
Yesterday I was up at the ungodly hour of 4.50 am to get my son ready for his school coach trip to Belgium, which got me thinking…
Years ago in the Midlands was a travel company who would charter out their coaches for next to nothing. Word got around to the local punks who took advantage of the offer. Out of town gigs were now easy to get to and dead cheap, so the coach trips were well popular! Also, the coach was always driven by the same bloke who didn’t seem to care what went on and the punks used to turn a blind eye to his antics as long as he got them back home in one piece!
Some of stories will go down in Punk mythology. Like the time when the windscreen was “bricked in” in some sort of inter-town rivalry. The driver muttered something about “I don’t want to get the company involved so I’m not going to ring the AA” and had the bright idea of driving them all back without a windscreen as it was only ten miles down the road. Trouble is it was a winters night and it was snowing, madness!
Once on the way to a gig after everybody was picked up from the pub meeting point, someone on board realising the coach didn’t have a loo had the bright idea of popping into his mums house to using theirs as it was on the way to the motorway. His mum and dad must have been well happy when their son turned up at the door with a coachload of punks dying to go to the loo behind him. I bet there was a few net curtains twitching that night in the cul-de-sac!
Legend has it at one gig the driver got a bit over-excited, had a few drinks and even went down the front and done the “punk kicking dance” (as demonstrated above!) At the end of the night the punks were so worried that he wouldn’t get them home alive, a couple of them forcefed him coffee from his vacuum flask until he sobered up and then took him outside to “get some air” before the drive home. The sight of two Sid Vicious look-a-likes either side of an older bloke in a smart blazer and cap walking around a car park must have been bizarre. How he didn’t get stopped by the police on the way home I don’t know. Absolutely mental!
