Category Archives: “Radio connects us all”

Call this summer weather?

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The summer seems to have subsided and today was very ropey weatherwise. Where has all the good weather gone as The Kinks once sang?

To cheer us up here’s a picture of an odd looking plant growing in the wild bit at the bottom of the garden. We did a plant ID search using identify.planet.org and it turns out it’s Greater Quaking Grass or some sort of variation of it. As it’s in with lots of other plants in the wild section of the garden, it’s hard to see the “thin stems hung with pale green flowers, which look like raindrops as they catch the light” as described on Sarah Raven’s website. Looks like a small wasps nest or a mini cocoon to us.

And to cheer us up in an audio style here’s a great tune from 2021 from 3kuad called Screen Dub.

Don’t let the bad weather grind you down!

Popcorn Double Feature later showing

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Wow we didn’t even know it was a cover version! We prefer The Fall‘s interpretation but this ain’t bad though. While we’re there, we’re sticking this one below from The Fall as we love the Lee Perry original but this is great too.

One of those new fangled gramophone records

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Found in a charity shop in east Dulwich the other day, a nice 10″ with wonderful sleeve advertising the services of Knight’s in Bearwood, Birmingham. There’s music, gramophones and “dance bands supplied for dances, parties etc.” Great stuff! Nice label design too! Anyone out there with some great 10″ 78’s they want to post up? Well drop us a line with some pics.

Pictures from Kyiv

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Cheers to Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some pictures a fortnight or so which we’ve only got around to posting now. The first is how his good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD)‘s indoor banana plant is doing (above) and as you can it’s looking healthy! Love to know how his date palm is getting on.

And here’s a nice picture of how Wlad’s Dill and Potatoes make a good combination in the same container. We’ve sowed some Dill here a few years ago and actually got it to grow but didn’t really do anything with it sadly as we weren’t into the herb at the time but the Dill above is looking healthy. More on how to grow Dill here. Cheers for the pictures Wlad.

You don’t see that kind of thing at Chelsea

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The garden is doing alright this year, it’s July already and some things are doing well and some not. We don’t know if it was the peat-free compost we got from the local supermarket but the peppers and tomatoes didn’t do much so we had to buy some plants from B&Q and Lldl istead.

The Hydrangeas are doing great for the first time in years and we have a lot of greenery going on in the side bed (above) even under the shade of the big tree next door. The poppies and the pot of lettuce on the weird wooden coat hanger are grand with not much interference from slugs. There’s a nice poppy just flowered next the lemon verbena (we’re having a cup of lemon verbena tea at the moment) and if you look hard enough you may see a tomato plant or two!

Yesterday while killing a bit of time we popped into a library in Clerkenwell in the afternoon and picked up the book All Gates Open: The Story of Can by Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt. We whiled away a bit more time than we thought as next thing we knew, the librarian was ringing a schoolbell and shouting “It’s 5 o’clock and the library’s closing”.

What was great was in said book there was a mini interview with Mark E Smith and Irmin Schmidt. Little did we know that in 1977 that Mark E Smith rang Irmin and asked if Can would come over and do a joint gig with them. Now how good would that have been? In Dazed & Confused a few years ago here Irmin says of The Fall frontman “What I took (from the interview) is that I met a very lovable person.” Ahh isn’t that great? A book well worth having a look at!

Shortwave’s not hip? Who told you that?

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On Sunday 7th July 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz the Imaginary Stations crew will be bringing you COOL 2 via the services of Shortwave Gold.

Expect entertainment of the summer vacation kind via the ionosphere. They’ll be a live BBQ in the studio with running commentary (plus amateur firefighter), a specialist towel folder to give you tips on how to place your towel on the sunlounger when reserving premier poolside seats, alongside some summer tunes. There’s a mix from our very own galloping gardener One Deck Pete with “A 7 inch single summer special” at 4 mins in featuring Earl Brown, Stereolab, Freda Payne, Anthony Johnson and Martel Robinson. So roll out the beach blanket, blow up that beach ball and get yourself comfy and tune into COOL 2.

Then via WRMI on Wednesday 10th July 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz there’ll be the debut show of COOL which was broadcast to Europe the other week which we posted about here. Tune in and enjoy the “summer of shortwave” vibes.

Cool Runnings

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Here’s the studio audio of Imaginary Station’s COOL from Sunday 30th June 2024 transmitted by Shortwave Gold to Europe via shortwave. The programme features cool tunes for this summer of ours (even though it’s been a bit grey here today) featuring DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

At 3.47 in there’s a mix by One Deck Pete called “Summertime and the living is easy”. Here’s the tracklistings:
Jimi Tenor with Cold Diamond & Mink – Gaia Sunset, Part 1
Glass Beams – Mahal
Augustus Pablo – Satta Dub
Chancha via Circuito – La Victoria ft Lido Pimienta & Manu Ranks

Get some suntan lotion on and enjoy the sunshine!

Two for the road…

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Here’s two tunes for a balmy Saturday night. The first is a wonderful tune from Dubamine on Dub-Stuy Records called Mosquito Dub featuring a couple of samples from the great David Rodigan. “Every single mosquito had me for dinner, lunch and breakfast.”

 

And we just found this:

Then we end the evening with The Secret Soul Society with Stay. A very nice chilled tune indeed!

Keep those windows open tonight as it’s going to be a warm one.

MC Hammer Price

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Thanks to our good friend across the (big garden) pond Justin Patrick Moore for finding this brilliant game in a thrift store in Cincinnati this morning and mailing the picture over pronto. It’s very much in keeping with our last post about Antiques Roadshow and doesn’t the bloke putting in a bid put you in mind of Private Walker from Dad’s Army (below)?

We do love a thift store/second hand/charity shop here and we’re always up for seeing any charity shop finds from the best to the worst. Seen any overpriced Max Bygraves records at your local charity shop or some old net curtains that are more expensive than new ones? If so, take a snap and send us a picture. We will not name the shop and keep the location anonymous so they’ll be no comebacks. And going back to auctions, here’s a bit of fast chat business…

I suppose you’d like to know how much it’s worth?

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After a text alert to Weeds HQ this week that records were dumped locally, we found a 1970’s shopping bag with rope handles with “Lanzarotte” enblazoned on it containing some LPs outside a garden wall down the road. No A&M God Save the Queens or Bullet Dubs in there but the record above stood out for us on the bizarre sleeve stakes. We’ll be bringing the battered 1970’s Lanzarote shopping bag with miscoloured thick rope handles next time BBC Antiques Roadshow hits the Horiman’s Museum and see what they think about that great piece of antiquity.

By the way our favourite specialist on The Antiques Roadshow is the glass expert Andy McConnell. And here’s something we didn’t know about him until we read about it this morning here: “A trained journalist, Andy spent 1972-76 in California, interviewing & touring the US with many of the greatest rock & folk bands. The theme continued into the early ‘80s when he produced promo videos at Island Records, for acts including Tears for Fears, Kid Creole & The Coconuts and Steve Winwood. Leaving Island in 1983, he production managed a black music series for Channel 4, Rockers Roadshow.” The above is one of the said shows which contains some great footage of Mikey Dread and others we’ve never seen before. Andy has gone up even more in our estimations now!

As for the Lanzarote bag we also found this great LP from Milt Raskin in it which has an excellent sleeve and is a nice bit of exotica well suited for this sunny summer. More on this LP here. DJ Frederick and Gerry Hectic, do you know this one?

Here’s to more sunshine!