Oi mate, that’s my Egg Nog okay?

A Happy Boxing day to all! Here’s the audio of The imaginary Stations Winter Holiday Special which was broadcast via Shortwave Gold on Christmas Eve on those shortwaves. There’s a load of festive tunes throughout the hour plus “A holday Mix” from One Deck Pete at 40.38 minutes in. Here’s the tracklistings:

Forgotten employee – The Backroom Tapes
Snow Palms – Evening Rain Gardens (Excerpt)
Kohei Yoshi – Cold Ice Dub
Frost – Munch RIP (instrumental)
Bodyswitch – Gee Whiz it’s Christmas
Jacob Miller/Ray I – Deck The Halls
Kibble – Warm Fireplace (Excerpt)

 

 

A tune for bin-night’s eve

 

Now here’s a tune that is getting under our skin. It’s from an artist called Paper Sailboat from Ottawa, Ontario and it’s called Numbers Stations. We can’t hear any recognisable number stations samples (but remember we are getting a bit mutton jeff in our old age) and this one really get under your skin, it’s nearly 6 minutes long but you wouldn’t think so. One for turning up loud knowing that the binmen will be here at the crack of dawn.

Gone are the days when the binmen in Coventry would knock your front door on Christmas Eve holding a bin bag saying “Merry Christmas from the Coventry Binmen”. It was like an adult version of trick or treating where if you didn’t comply, your bins wouldn’t be emptied for a couple of weeks, allegedlly. It’s a whole different world now…

Cheers to the good Doctor

If you want to hear a great Monday morning radio show which plays all sorts from Jazz, Funk, Dub and Downbeat you should tune into The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on a Monday morning from 9-11am (UK Time) on IDA Radio, Tallinn.

Cheers to The Rhythm Doc for airing a mix this morning from Weed’s own One Deck Pete called Dub in the waiting room. At 46.28 Minutes in on the show below is the mix and here’s the tracklistings:
Patrick Andy – Please Don’t Go/Version
U Brown – Black Star Liner
Augustus Pablo – Dub in Moonlight City
Wayne Wade – Man of the Living (Version)
King Tubby – Play Fool get wise (Version)
Dillinger – Bongoman
Jackie Mittoo – Congo Man
Prince Buster –Taxation

Tune in and dub out!

Keep this frequency clear

It was very sad to hear about Benjamin Zephaniah who passed away this morning. Thanks to Gerry Hectic for letting us know about this great tune. RIP Benjamin Zephaniah.

It’s just under a foot ain’t it?

Here’s the audio of yesterday’s imaginary stations show via Shortwave Gold called WS10S, a tribute to the 10 inch single. We’re not just talking 78’s we’re talking all speeds spread over a good few genres. It’s a great show and well worth listening to in its non-ionosphere reflected glory in stereo.

Also at 26.33 minutes in there is a mix from One Deck Pete called unsurprisingly “A ten inch mix”. Here’s the tracklisting:
Jasmine & Madtone – What is man? Dubplate
Zap Pow – Broken Contract
Ellis Island Sound – Republica Evescarra (played at 45rpm)
Marc Collin – Les Kidnappeurs (Main Theme) (Revisited By Jackson)
Nicola Conte – Jazz Pour Dadine (The Dining Rooms Remix)

So chill out and tune into last nights’s show without actually tuning in, if that makes sense.

Bass and drum plus some gurgling and groaning

Last night we found a wonderful track on Bill Laswell’s Trojan Dub Massive Volume One compilation on Bandcamp. It’s a version of Delroy Wilson’s Have Some Mercy (first heard on the John Peel show many years ago) and George Faith’s To be a Lover called Lovers Skank (Spanglers Clap) by The Upsetters. Crazy minimal dub with all sounds of strange things over the top.

This track also appears on the vintage King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi recording from Jamaica in 1975 (Thanks to Who Cork The Dance for cleaning the tape up) at 11 minutes in. As the great U-Roy says while the track is playing “It’s kind of scratchy, very very scratchy but the brother asked to play…” Tune!

Here’s an excellent interview with the great U-Roy where he talks about King Tubby’s electronics wizardry at 11 minutes in.

Baby, it’s cold outside

It’s cold as cold here and it’s time for a good tune to warm up those slippered feet. It’s the original version of Ijahman Levi‘s classic Jah Heavy Load from the grand old year of 1976.

We can’t find the dub of this but the tune in its full glory is played at 2 minutes in on this “recorded straight off the Medium Wave in glorious mono” of John Lydon on BRMB (261 Metres) in interview with Robin Valk from 1979 complete with a european station breaking through in the background with really adds to the recording. A great listen by the way.

Here’s a later released version of the tune with a excellent dub which we really want here. Keep warm out there!

Morning all from Estonia

Big shout to our good mate The Rhythm Doctor for sending us a weather report out of the studio window of IDA Radio, Tallinn this morning. They’ve just had some snow out there and the top temperature in Tallinn for this forthcoming week is predicted to be -5 C. We’re certainly will not be complaining about the weather here!

If you want to listen to something great on a Monday morning tune in here for a two hour selection of Jazz, Reggae, Electronica and downbeat from 9am. It’s a show well worth tuning into!

Dreams less sweet

On Saturday afternoon after our Mystic Meg-like prophetic dream, the “vibes” (or more than likely the guilt) forced us out in the garden to do some tidying up. We only did a couple of hours but it was a pleasure to spend some time out the back.

We tidied up the patio and moved the carrots in the big pot we found in the street from the bottom of the garden up nearer the house. It’s all tops and does need thining out but there are baby carrots there and the decorative foilage ain’t bad. If anyone asks we’ll them they’re some sort of exotic microferns.

And we finally cleaned the leaves off the pond netting and gave it a good once over around it and it does make a difference to the look of it. With this weather God only knows when we’ll be able to get out there again though next Saturday is looking dry.

And finally we retrieved some beetroots, not many but enough to boil and to fill a small bowl and stick in the fridge to eat this week. Cheese and beetroot in a white bread sarnie, a treat you can’t beat!

And here’s a few random tunes for a Sunday evening.

 

 

We can’t control the weather but we can control the music

The above picture was the weather we had at the start of the week and by all accounts will return tomorrow. That’s all we need but the heating’s on at the moment and the stereo has been turned up high. The first tune of the night is Straight to Mad Professor’s head from the set Mad Professor meets Channel One: Round 2 by Mad Professor and Channel One. It is one subtle dub!

 

We heard a Hugh Mundell dubplate on this week’s excellent Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn). While we were looking for it we found a great Augustus Pablo Dub of Feeling Alright.

 

And the best “out there” tune of the night is from a LP called Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol.1 on the excellent Sublime Frequencies label from out of Seattle. No idea who it’s from or what it’s called, all it says on the notes is that it’s in the Sumatran Dangdut style. It has a hook that sounds like an interval signal from a numbers station which we can’t place, that is sometimes played on a rasping bagpipe sounding keyboard. The LP has a wonderful cover too, what more do you want? Wonderful stuff which will worm its way into your brain as it’s so catchy.

Let’s temporarily forget the crap weather and dark times and listen to some decent tunes to soothe, inspire us and give us a break so to speak.