Thanks to Penny Golightly, here’s news of a great little plant mart in Lee next Saturday May 17th from 2-4 p.m. outside 2-6 Micheldever Road, Lee SE12 8LX and the event is a fundraiser to get money to plant more trees in the area. There’ll be a wide range of plants for sale at a good price as well as lots of other stuff (cakes, books and CDs, cream teas and 2 botanical watercolour workshops at 2.30 and 3pm). Looks great! Cheers Penny!
Thanks to Kit, G0JPS in Bristol for letting us know he did a bit of garden clearance yesterday (Easter Sunday) which included “removing a huge tangle of cleavers (if the name isn’t familiar, you’d know what they are straight away when you see the picture of them) and the sad deceased remnants of a fuchsia bush.”
“Found this nice little sectioned off bit (above) under the wreckage; so gave it a good hoeing, sowed it with foxglove seeds, and rehomed a small thyme plant rescued from a supermarket car park. And pinched your idea of sticks and things to keep the cats off.” Brilliant Kit, we love your choice of metal sticks and wood that will keep the cats and probably the foxes off too we reckon.
He added “Thinking that it’s a bit of a blank slate now, the words Tabula Rasa popped into my mind so here’s a couple of tune suggestions:”
They are two excellent tunes that we’d never heard before. The first is Tabla Rasta who were from Crete with Mystic Dub and Brother Dan from Sweden with Bay Leaf and Thyme Dub. Excellent musical recommendations Kit, do keep them coming!
We’ve just finished another shortwave mix and being on the ball as ever, just discovered a genre called rebajada where DJs play cumbia tunes at the wrong speed for better effect. Sounds like one of those happy musical accidents (just like Ruddy Redwood forgetting to leave a vocal off, hence dub). Here’s the origins:
“The Rapson (soundsystem) had been playing for six or seven hours non-stop,” “The motor overheated and started lagging, and that’s when the rebajado sound came out. The music slowed down dramatically: the voice in the track deepened like in a slow motion scene, the accordion notes stretched out and there was more space between each scrape of the guiro. People kept dancing, captivated by this new sound.”
mexiconewsdaily.com/culture/cumbia-rebajada-monterreys-accidental-music-genre/
We found the tune above Manzanita – Paga La Cuenta Sinverguenza from Peru played in a rebajada stylee and it’s a tune.
And here’s the original. Crazy stuff!
It’s been a lovely day here in south London today and it looks like the temperature will drop again a little from tomorrow. Looking at the weather forecast for the next week it could be anything from 6-10 degrees C overnight so hopefully no frosts.
We’re taking no chances here as don’t want to lose any plants overnight even though they have been hardened off over the last few weeks. We’ve put three tomato plants out and some sweet peas but we’re still covering them at night with some improvised protection from bubble wrap, jam jars and the terrarium we found years ago that is now a bit cracked at the side and missing its glass top and now has some polythene on the top. Who cares what the frost protection looks like as long as it’s doing its job! More sunny weather please.
And we started a day with a great tune and we end it on another one. It’s by Jah Version out of Lisbon, Portugal with Friendship (Vocal Dub). Turn it up.
While doing a shortwave mix the other night we came across this duo we’ve never heard of before called The Secret Whistle. It’s a great name and turns out they’re from Portland, Oregon and they make some fine tunes. Here’s two here.
Here’s the audio of Imaginary Station’s From Beatles to Bigfoot broadcast last weekend via Shortwave Gold, a show full of the songs of Lennon/McCartney covered in a way you’ve never heard before. Also beatles soundalikes, plus UFOs, flying saucers and a Yeti Choir (*subject to availability). It’s a odd mixture but a very nice odd mixture featuring contributions from all of the Imaginary Stations crew.
At 14.04 mins in One Deck Pete brings you a UFO themed mix called “A pint of lager please Earthman”. The tracks are:
Tena Stelin – UFO
Jah Warrior – Unidentified Flying Dub
The other self – Men from Venus
The Psychedelic Aliens – Blofonyobi Wo Atale
Meridian Brothers – Guaracha U.F.O (No Estamos Solos…) (excerpt)
We were looking back through the blog for a tune to accompany a forthcoming blog post and found this video from 2016 here. It’s from Mind Enterprises with a great tune called Idealistic with a spoof video of a “better than well” guru cult complete with a lovely bit of Tai chi-like dancing throughout it. Do have a pen and paper and your credit card details handy for the end!
We’ve had Bargain Bin DJ (an A5 24 page fanzine) for a couple of weeks now (“print in the old fashioned way” as the song goes) produced by our good friend DJ Frederick from Groveton, New Hampshire.
If you love those bargain bin finds, this publication is for you. We don’t want to give too much away but issue number 1 has a review of Record Time magazine (the newest edition of said publication has all sorts of musical features from Polka to Sex Pistols inspired novelty records), Lawrence Welk, Kado Wilson, Forgotten 45’s from 1955, Sounds of Synanon, Moondog and Surf-Punk New Hampshire hero, Jonee Earthquake.
An excellent read if you love music found in the cheapo section or in a box hidden away under some damp smelling jumpers and coats in a charity shop. Cheers to Bargain Bin DJ fanzine for alerting us to the tune above under “sound-alike or plagiarism?”. A great track off an LP called Mood Indigo by Jean Jacques Perrey, “influenced” possibly by a tune called Telstar. We reckon it’s more than likely to be a tribute to the great Joe Meek. It’s a great one and we love the run out which we want it to go on forever.
If you want to find out more about obtaining the fanzine drop Fred an email at radiothriftshopnh@gmail.com
And here’s two sides a Bargain Bin classic of ours. An excellent single from Jamaican singer Jimmy James (he of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds later in his career). Wonderful stuff.
Big thanks to Paul Greenstein once resident of East Dulwich now of Melbourne, Australia for sending us a couple of photographs of his gardening related exploits. Above is his garden at the moment (That sunshine makes us weep here as the weather is on the cold side in SE23 at the moment) and here’s some accompanying words from Paul:
“Garden looks a bit wild from this angle. There’s an Oregano bush that’s taken over one of the veg boxes. Apricot tree in the foreground. We had a good crop of Apricots this year after the tree was almost destroyed by the local possum. Apricot mead is on the cards. We’ve learned that you have to net the tree once it’s pollinated or the possum wins. Just out of sight is a Bramley tree that’s currently netted – this time it’s the parrots that eat all the fruit. Australian wildlife; either it’s trying to kill you or it wants to eat your fruit and veggies.
The weather is a bit crazy at the moment, we are getting 2-3 day runs of high 30’s (Celsius), then high 20s, with thunderstorms. On really hot days, we are banned from lighting fires (which makes a lot of sense). Still, this is nothing, we live in Melbourne, which is considered ‘temperate’ – i.e, it can get really cold here. Other parts of Australia like Tropical North Queensland, it’s shorts and a vest all year round…”
If you remember Paul also keeps bees in his garden and as he told us in his post last year here he had some Mead fermenting (above) and “each mix includes around 1.5k of honey. World’s oldest alcoholic drink apparently..”
We only made it once here and it tasted like battery acid so we didn’t even bother again.
“Mead Bottled! The cherry is made with Morello cherries, the rhubarb grows in the garden. The cherry is around 15%ABV, the rhubarb around 11%.” Looks absolutely wonderful, unlike the stuff we produced. Cheers for the report and the pictures Paul, they’re appreciated.
Talking of Mead we found this the other day advertising Penge’s first ever Wassail. We hadn’t a clue what it was, but the mention of “Bring something to make lots of noise – saucepans and wooden spoons are perfect” made us very interested.
Thanks to @rbrt1k on twitter who sent us a link to the wikipedia entry for the word/event. “Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Christmastide and Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.“
Big shout to the Penge Wassailing event and we hope all goes well and you make a right old racket so we all can get a good harvest this year of apples. And potatoes, and carrots and onions etc. Big up with the wassailing!
Cheers to Rich R for sending us these great pictures from quite a cold Lake District at the moment. It may be cold but wonderful views though, cheers Rich! Do keep warm up there.
Thanks to Rich sending us this great record too Fish, Goat and Sufferah with Warm the Nation. Great stuff.
Weeds up to me knees 