Meanwhile back in the garden…

This week we bought six giant White Elephant Garlic from a nursery in Wales off ebay. We’ve been growing Garlic for a few years now and never seem to get the size that you do in the shops, so we thought if we bought some giant variety and even if we weren’t successful and got half sized giant ones we’d be happy. They are some size though, Yorkshire teabag for comparison

On the ebay site we bought them from mentioned you can eat the scapes (the tender stem and flower bud) too. “Chop into pieces and sauteé in butter or oil for about 5 – 6 minutes and serve like a green bean or add to salads and stir fries. Roast or BBQ the scapes whole and serve like garlicky asparagus with an ailoli dip or just some balsamic and olive oil.” You learn something new every day! Here’s some good tips about growing Garlic here.

Tuppence a bag

In a couple of hours this evening Sunday 23rd October 2022 at 2200 UTC/2300 UK time the imaginary station WREN goes flying into the ionosphere on shortwave on 9395 kHz thanks to those big cage-like antennas at WRMI. 

Expect all sorts of great bird related tunes from all genres throughout the show and at 43.33 minutes in One Deck Pete spreads his wings with Are you feeling Chirpy? It’s a 15 minute mix featuring Jiony, Hawk, Mr Bird feat John Skweird, Lee Perry and Mighty Sparrow.

This show is especially for all the twitchers out there! Bird watching slang of the day is Pish pronounced Fish – A noise made with the lips for the purpose of attracting birds and having them come closer to you so they can be identified.

If you haven’t got a shortwave radio no problem, just tune in to 9395 kHz on AM mode at 2200UTC/2300 UK time using this SDR here. This is not a fly by night radio show. Tune in or listen again.

STOP PRESS The show is now up online here:

Much more music…

This morning we were happily reminded of a tune from a time gone by from Dimitri From Tokyo/Paris called Love Love Mode (Disorient) which we heard on an early episode of a regular mixcloud programme we’ve been tuning into recently called the Catface Show.

The show is presented by Bob Catface and the shows are 30 minutes in duration featuring a great mix of downtempo and all sorts (and we mean all sorts) of great music. Well worth a listen! Link to it here.

The numbers station disco connection

A record came out of the blue here for no reason at all this evening, the excellent New York Shine On Me! off the Ambient House (The Compilation By DFC) LP which we first heard on the John Peel show.

It’s a lovely acid tinged number with a driving kick drum made by someone called Aqua Regia (a chap called Akin Fernandez) originally released on Akin’s record label Irdial Discs. Little did we know at the time there would be a shortwave radio connection and also one with The Ritchie Family of “The Best Disco in town” fame as it was only tonight in the comments of the youtube we discovered the sample. You learn something new every day.

Another release on Irdial:

Good vibes on a Friday night

Whilst researching a shortwave radio mix for the Imaginary station WREN – Renaissance Radio we came across Memotone out of Bristol on Bandcamp. There was some great music on there including a haunting track from a chap called O.G. Jigg (Willl Yates/Half Nelson/Memotone) called Earth MemoriesOn the shortwave mix we went for the 0808 version which like the original is short and sweet but oh what a tune! One to listen to while doing a windmill on a sheet of lino on the top of Maiden Castle upon a solstice eve.

Imaginary Stations on RTM.FM

Big shout to all at RTM.FM in Thamesmead, south east London for broadcasting the Imaginary Stations show monthly from this Saturday at 6pm UK time online here.

RTM.FM is also home to our good mate Jesse Yuen who broadcasts the excellent downbeat/bass/”not a” reggae show North of the River Swan every forth Sunday of the month. Here’s the last episode which featured at 1.09.00 in a repeat of “A weeds up to me knees dub special” from a couple of years ago.

Here’s the tracks for A weeds up to me knees dub special (tracklistings for the actual show are on the Mixcloud comments).

David Harrow – Sugar Dub (Workhouse Digital)
Overseerer – Madlab (Soundclash)
Sammy Dread ft Danny Dread – Follow Fashion (Volcano)
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng version (Archive)
Jazz’min & Madtone – Open up your dub retouched (Blossoms Kitchen)
The Mighty Quark – Smokescreen (King Syndrome Sounds)
Dennis Brown – Shaka the Great Warrior (DEB Music)
An excerpt of Kukan Dub Lagan – It’s about her (MikelaBella Records)
Ralph Myers & Jack Herron band – Savannah (Emperor Norton)
The Rhythm Method – Ranking Nico (Red Megaphone Music Cassette)
Jah Mason – Request Dub (Belleville International)
Johnny Clarke – Roots Natty Congo (Striker Lee)
Tyler Ov Gaia – A portal into another world (Believe France)

It don’t get (that much) better than this

And here’s one tune to lift the spirits. It’s from the mighty Mighty Sparrow (aka Slinger Francisco ORTT CM OBE) called Tour of Jamaica. With lyrics like the below it’s quite hard to beat!
“Look at confusion, rum punch in meh hand
I drink one and beg for one moreBut when ah catch mehself, I drink about four”
If all goes well the sparrow will be singing his way through the ionosphere on the shortwaves soon. As the song goes “‘Til we meet again bye-bye!”

Tunes doing well on a Wednesday evening

A big cheers to Stinky Jim out of Auckland, New Zealand for making us aware of his release Spacial Awareness this morning and what a release! We don’t really know how to describe it apart it’s a right old mix up business of a set and one that we love here. This is something that will grow and grow on us and hopefully will do the same to you.

Most of the tracks are on average five minutes but they don’t seem that long at all and to be honest with you it would do no harm if they were extended time-wise. It’s a set of suprises too as we’re going through it again bits are jumping out at us which didn’t before.

We still not sure what’s our favourites are as it’s early days yet but Loose Carry cheers us up no end. Great steel pan hook that comes in and out mixed up with a bit of the Incredible Bongo Band which gives a great smiley vibe and it’s a lovely bit of bonkers (in the best way possible). This is the stuff!

Another lovely one here is Cry For The Ute a good groove with lots going on around it that you just got to keep listening and enjoy, “Yout them a take over” it’s subtle stuff. At the end a loop that blends in seamlessly will get you thinking “I know that, what the hell is it?”

We don’t want to go on anymore, have a listen and decide yourself. It’s excellent stuff in our book. Cheers Jim!

Just to let you know Jim also broadcasts the long running radio show on 95bFM out in New Zealand called Stinky Grooves no less and another radio show well worth listening to. The archive is here.

Gardening website of the month

A big shout to our good gardening/music/radio friend from across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for starting us off on our new feature. We at Weeds (with the help of our gardening mates online and offline) will try and bring you once a month a gardening website that will hopefully inspire us all.

The first of the series is the excellent The Italian Gardening Project which is just brilliant. It was started to keep the old Italian gardening traditions alive (Nostalgia for Yesterday … Lessons for Today) and here’s a more in-depth explanation of why it was started (here).

The gallery on the site featuring some fantastic gardens and there’s some great videos about seed saving and tomato staking amongst lots more good stuff too.

One of our favourite posts is Canning Tomatoes with Mr. Ciccone. There’s some nice memories about a day of preparing and canning the produce with someone who knew a lot about the art and it sounded like a great day out including the supping of “espresso corretto, espresso “corrected” with a splash of whiskey” and some nice food imbibed with some home-made wine. Do go and have a look at the website as it’s well worth it and is bound give you ideas.

And Justin has picked an apt tune from the great Bunny Wailer as there’s some fine examples of fig trees on the website too.

Dub, Gardening and Art makes sense

Big shout to our good gardening friend Gerry Hectic for sending us a pic of what he harvested from his garden this week. Looking great! We are nearing the end of the main growing season but there’s still some time left. Send us your growing pics as we love them here and find them inspiring and send us a tune too!

Gerry sends us a great dub poetry recommendation from Lil Obeah Meets Isuru called Chaos Is Dub, a lovely bit of reggae from the excellent Romanian label Sound of Art to Come. Cheers for the pic and musical tip Gerry!