As usual, looking for some tunes for a forthcoming shortwave mix we found a nice tune. It’s a great bit of Polish Rap from Litlost from the Olszak / Bitykradne – Night Bus EP called Promienie słońca Brooklynu. Really good stuff indeed.
We’ve just listened to this weeks Great Lives on Radio 4 with John Cooper Clarke about one Johnny Green (once hippy, driver, writer and the road manager of The Clash and Tour De France fan). It’s a great 27 minutes with contributions from his kids, Topper Headon and Chris Salewicz. It’s nice to hear old JCC’s distinctive voice again. To listen to the show click here.
On the subject of Johnny Green, here’s something about him on blackmarketclash.co.uk (here) about The Clash’s Bury St Edmunds gig in 1978 (where we were also in attendance). We love the line at the end which makes us smile “I considered the Camden Town rockabilly as my friend and a passport to beer and nuts”. We all love a passport to beer and nuts.
This weekend just gone saw the broadcast of WNTR by Imaginary Stations on Shortwave Gold. As they said on SWLing Post: “Winter vibes abound as per with the show, and the temperature outside may only a few degrees, but we will be transmitting as much winter warmth as we can!” Enjoy the warm vibes of WNTR.
At 43.19 in is One Deck Pete presents a festive dubwise mix.
Here’s the tracklistings:
Kohei Yoshii – Cold Ice Dub
Forgotten employee – The backroom tapes – A Merry KMART Christmas (excerpt)
Mal – Powder Snow dub
Michael Powell – Christmas Dub
It was bitterly cold here this morning at around the minus 2°C mark. We had a couple of bags of bark mulch delivered from B&Q, which the delivery blokes left by the back gate. From there, we dragged them down the garden, sliced the bags open with a pair of scissors, and topped up the garden path with a flinging of a rake to level it all out.
We were only out there for ten minutes at the most but we still came in chilled to the bone. Little and often but perhaps a little less often in this type of weather. Anyone else “braved” the weather today?
This week we read a facebook post from Real Seeds about why it’s best not to rush into starting seeds off too early, even though some chillies do benefit from an early start. The main point was that you usually end up with leggy plants far too soon, with nowhere to put them. As they said: “Resist, unless you have ample heated space and use grow lights.”
We have been in this position a few times before. We start the year being very keen and then in March end up with leggy tomato plants sitting on the windowsill (above). Seeing that the frost down here can be as late as mid April that ain’t much cop. To get a bit of an idea of when your last frost could be, stick your postcode into lastfrostdate.co.uk here. This is what we got:
We are going to resist for the time being, and have ordered some seed compost and in a couple of weeks time will get the heated seed tray out and start off some chillies, but until then we will do little and often in the garden if the weather allows. We got two big bags of multi purpose compost today and filled a couple of raised beds just before the sun went down. Total time in the garden, ten minutes. It’s a start!
It may be some while before we can get back out there again as there’s a cold spell coming. To cheer ourselves up we can always open up the seed tin and read the back of seed packets. Here’s a few nice packs we got for Christmas (below). Better (weather) will come!
A big thanks and a massive shout goes out to our good friend Stevyn from the excellent Iron Feather Journal fanzine in Hokkaido, Japan. He sent us a 5 tune mix which was put together earlier this evening at 11.45pm on New Years Eve (Japan Standard Time). It’s wonderful stuff and apart from the Hendrix intro, we’ve never heard any of the tunes before and we could imagine the late great Jose Padilla playing the Kitaro track on one of his “Cafe Del Mar” cassettes.
Here’s the tracklistings of Stevyn’s mix:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “EXP”
Hall & Oates – “Wait for Me” [Recorded live at the Montreal Forum in March 1983]
Space Battleship Yamato – Planet Shalbart
Kitaro – Aqua
Godiego – Flying
And additional notes about the mix: “Space Battleship Yamato AKA Star Blazers was my favourite anime when I was a kid, watching it on Boston US TV in the 80s” and “Kitaro was a customer when I was a college student in Boulder and clerking at the bohemian cafe Penny lane”.
A happy new year to you and yours out there in Hokkaido Stevyn! Cheers for the first mix of 2026!
Here’s a mix called “Have you seen me record middle?” that was inspired by a Facebook post the other day about the M Robinson “Follow you” single that had a lack of information on the label.
It led us to have a butchers through our 7″ singles yesterday and on this mix have included some (mainly Jamaican) singles with scratched-out artist/tune names and hand written tune details. Here’s the tracks:
Ewan & Jerry With The Carib Beats – Get on the right track (00.04)
Stranger & Patsy with Baba Brooks Band – Yeah yeah baby (03.23)
The Heptones – A change is gonna come (06.23)
Hugh Roy/Tommy McCook & The Supersonics – Mabrouk (09.07)
Bells Group – Kingston 13 (11.37)
Earl Curry – One Whole Year Baby (14.08)
If you love a scratched out label and lack of information on records, this one is for you!
An excellent cumbia-inspired track from Seattle-based Terror/Cactus titled Descalzo. We originally picked this up on the Names You Can Trust Bandcamp (here) earlier this year and recently rediscovered while putting together an upcoming shortwave mix. Ace stuff! Over and out for Boxing Day.
It’s a mildish 6°C on Boxing Day in London today, but thanks to our Downbeat on Shortwave collaborator Jesse Yuen, here’s some pictures of summer in Australia at the moment.
These photos of his parents’ garden in Perth are full of some great plants and landscaping ideas and we’re particularly loving that shaded retreat in the bottom picture. Their garden is looking great Jesse and thanks for the update!
Heard on the radio this morning, one we didn’t know about by The Heptones with a tune called Crying Over You, production services by one Lee Perry at The Black Ark studios. Wonderful stuff!
And here’s a version with Jah Lion on the microphone.
Weeds up to me knees 