A massive birthday shout out to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim for Thirty years of the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire. Well worth tuning into Live on a Saturday night from Midnight to 2am on Sunday or on Listen again here. Cheers for the One Deck & Popular and Madtone radio plays in the past, it’s appreciated!
On last week’s show Fenny replayed his first record he ever spun on the show, one that I’ve never heard before by the ace Mark Perry (I’m very partial to Mark’s delivery of Reggae, ATV’s Life after Life is one of my favourite ever tunes!) with a cover of a BB Seaton/Ken Boothe’s “Whole world’s down on me.” I didn’t even know of that one either. Cheers to On The Wire for passing on their musical knowledge yet again!
While we’re on the subject of great radio shows, a big shout goes out to our good friend Dr Strangedub for playing a track off Hayereyah’s new CD on this week’s (September 10th) Echo Chamber on KFAI available on listen again here. Big up the radio!
Thanks to the Rt Hon David Rodigan for informing us about this video of the excellent single from Protoje featuring Chronixx the tune of which we stuck on weeds a few weeks ago. Have a look at the smartly dressed taxi driver, does he look familiar?
This morning I had a look at the excellent vertical veg website (run by Mark Ridsdill Smith who picked out that corker of a tune from Bessie Banks on The Dirt the other week) and found some great tips for growing tomatoes. I’ve a few plants in the ground, one in a well overcrowded hanging basket (plonked inside another hanging basket, novel eh?) and others in reused ready-mix cement buckets up near the house.I’ve staked them up with bamboo canes, give them a regular water, a weekly feed and take off any sideshoots so all the plants energy goes into making the fruit. When the plant has formed about 4 or 5 trusses I nip out the top except the hanging basket one which I’ll leave. Most have been raised from seed except the ones kindly given to us from Dig This Nursery, who will be having their annual tomato festival on the 9th of August and know a thing or two about toms!On vertical veg, Mark speaks to a guy called Nick Chenhall who runs the website Tomato Growing about growing the ‘umble tom in growbags and containers. Some brilliant tips on the video (see it here) like feeding them little and often (dilute the feed more than you usually would) and one mad one I’ve never heard before, adding a cup of used washing up water to your watering can once every couple of weeks which acts as a wetting agent, and helps bring back moisture to areas that have dried out.
Even better, at the end of the video the guy from Tomato Growing is seen serenading the toms in his polytunnel with a classical guitar. It’s that old music/gardening connection again, brilliant! Me, I will be playing mine some happy hardcore and see if that gets results!
Temples – Move with the Season (Beyond the Wizzards Sleeve remix) – Heavenly
It’s been a lovely day today so there’s been a bit of flymo-ing, weeding, sowing root veg of the beetroot and carrot variety and this evening, big action with the garden hose, all the while wondering if all those tales about watering in sunshine are true.
Then this evening it starts to chuck it down. Brilliant, as usual I am bang on with my timing. To accompany this tale of gardening woe here’s some mad Eroll Alkan/Richard Norris business on a well trippy tip and if it weren’t so blimmin warm I’d get me kaftan on. But then again if I did, I wouldn’t be able to give it large to the tune below.
Thanks to our good mate Will J for passing this mad tune on. Is that the sound of bagpipes? And I do love the punk rock style ending!
Augustus Pablo – Thunder Clap/ Ken Boothe – Ain’t No Sunshine
In the video above there’s a scene from a pub called The Enterprise which I’m convinced was the one in Camberwell where in the 1980’s I had my first “sunday afternoon stop back” to a soundtrack of old reggae, classic soul and clinking beer glasses plus a free plate of chicken, rice and peas from the generous landlord Louis when everyone else was going home to their sunday roast. In the good old days London pubs used to close at 2.30 then reopen at 7, bonkers!
Talking of which, the weather’s also been bonkers today, while I’m writing this, it’s tipping it down with added thunder and lightning. Yet at just gone 9 this morning the sun was blazing, so a bit of early “tipping about” was in order so I tidied up the beds down the left hand side of the garden. This can you believe was once where a couple of greenhouses stood before one of the previous owners smashed them up. Criminal isn’t it? I’d love a greenhouse (with heating, hi-fi and disco lighting of course!)The beds nearest the house contain peas, one solitary cabbage, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, beetroot and carrots. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the beds, (I mean just one solitary cabbage!) some rows go north to south and some go east to west. The raised bed to the side of them (made from a couple of scaffolding boards found in a skip) contain runner beans and raspberries (I was given a bag of roots with shoots that a friend of mine was going to chuck out when he was thinning out his raspberry patch on his allotment.) The bed furthest away has a dwarf plum tree, three tomato plants, a couple of courgettes, a pumpkin which is now starting to wander, some borage for the bees to the side and a couple of houseplants that are having a “summer break” in the terrarium/fishbowl thing in the middle. Pick and mix jazz-gardening or what? Talking of tomatoes, I heard a great tip on last week’s episode of The Dirt, don’t forget to give your tomato flowers a light shake to help the pollen on it’s way. Good eh?
I found out the other day there was a tomato with the great name of Reggae Roma (aka the humble italian plum tomato that you get in tins in the supermarket.) I mean with a name like that, we had to grow one here! There was only one place that would know about getting them and that’s Dig This Nursery in New Cross (a garden centre, an organic food shop with a second-hand record shop in the back, what more do you want!) It’s my nearest tomato specialist and has over 90 odd varieties of tomatoes! Yes, 90+ varieties!
Tonight I popped in after work and a big thanks goes to Mihaly for sorting us out with a couple of roma plants. He’s one person who knows a thing or two about tomatoes if anyone does and knows a bit about growing them (some info here.)
The plants will be put in the ground first thing in the morning, in a hole filled with with a couple of ripped up comfrey leaves and then well watered to give the roots a healthy start.
We love the name here (it’s supposedly because the hanging fruits look like dreadlocks, huh?), what next, a cabbage named “trap”, a strain of dub-step carrots and a variety of onions that are “balearic”? Get on one matey!
A big shout (again) to Tim Sweeney for bringing us this great mix via his radio show Beats in Space from the Italian DJ Bottin from Venice. A mix and a half full of surprises on a diverse disco tip featuring some great edits from 70’s Germanic rockers Can and Faust and even includes some clucking hens (well, humans impersonating them!) If this don’t make you feel uplifted, nowt will.
One for blasting out loud into the back garden an hour to midnight on a friday while standing outside with a glass of bevy in your hand staring up aimlessly into the night sky looking for the International Space Station (even though it’s cloudy.) Mad stuff!
Tracklistings: Redbone – Cycles (Bottin edit) Can – Don’t Turn The Light On (Zopelar edit) Faust – It’s A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl (DiMovi edit) Franco Battiato – Up Patriots To Arms (DMV edit) FK Club – Unsane La Nuova Fattoria – Disco Pollo (Bottin edit) Bottin – Poison Within (feat. Steve Strange/Visage) Bottin & Rodion – Progresso Leyo & Special Mike – Don’t Stop The Tape Elitechnique – Love Triangle (Bottin remix) Artifact 5 – 15 Minutes (Love Supreme edit) Carmen Villain – Obedience (Bjørn Torske mix) Bottin – Parody Bottin – Lies reprise (feat. Lavinia Claws)
A big shout to our good pal across the pond Dr Strangedub for sending us a couple of charts of reggae tunage in a summer style. As you know the good Doctor with DJ Baby Swiss presents the excellent Echo Chamber on KFAI every Wednesday morning (available on archive too) featuring the best in reggae, dub and downbeat. Here’s a selection of summer 2014 listening (in no particular order):
Top 7 Reggae songs
1. Sunshine Music – Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
2. Watch How You Walk – Inspiration – Jah Wobble & PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)
3. Hope – Dubcatcher – DJ Vadim (ft. Rio Hemopo & Sabira Jade) (Sonar Kollectiv)
4. Caruru – Magnetica – Quantic (ft. Lara Renno) (Tru Thoughts)
5. Never Give Up – Knowledge Shine Bright – See-I (Fort Knox)
6. Postman – Twice – Hollie Cook (Mr. Bongo)
7. In This World – FutureWorld – Thomas Blondet (ft. Leyla Chatti) (Rhythm & Culture)
Top 10 Summer Reggae Albums
01. Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
02. Twice – Hollie Cook (Mr. Bongo)
03. Dubcatcher (Mr. Bongo) – DJ Vadim (Mr. Bongo)
04. Send ’em to Outta Space – Yabass & Friends (Atomic Sounds)
05. Inspiration – Jah Wobble presents PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)
06. Serious Time – Mungos Hi-Fi (Scotch Bonnet) 07. Knowledge Shine Bright – See-I (Fort Knox) 08. Dubmatix In Dub – Dubmatix (Renegade/Echo Beach) 09. World Citizen – Black Slate (Unit 8) 10. Destiny – Raging Fyah (Soulbeats Records)
Thanks to Steve Barker and the On The Wire Crew for these two half term specials played on last week’s show:
Prince Buster’s All-Stars – Idi Amin – Prince Buster A tough horns led 1970’s instrumental with a nice dub to boot!
Vivian Jackson & The Prophets – Sipping I & I Chalice – Prophets Going back in time with the Jesus Dread and a tune in parts reminiscent of Carl Malcolm’s classic “No Jestering.”
Two tunes to play loud on the i-pod while walking around the back garden in the dark with a torch looking for those pesky slugs and snails.
Another tune from the Tuff Scout Camp, this time from Dionne Reid with “She Can’t Dub” the B side of the “She can’t” single. Loosely based on the classic Bob Andy “Unchained” rhythm (a corker of a track too), this has “summer tune” written all over it. Big shout to all at Tuff Scout for releasing it and to the Rt Hon David Rodigan for playing it on his show.
Weeds up to me knees 