There is a land far far away

Talking of RTM FM, a big shout to Jesse Yuen of the excellent North of the River Swan radio show (which is on a break for the time being) for sending us this morning some excelllent pictures of his parents garden in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia where he is at the moment. It’s a brilliant space and has some out there plants we could only dream about having here!

It looks a wonderful space and a lovely place for chilling out in! He’s sent us some close ups of flowers from the yard too. Great stuff!

And here’s the last North of The River Swan (until later this year hopefully) as Jesse (as it says on the mixcloud) “is taking some time off to recalibrate the compass and recharge the radio batteries”. Take it easy and we look forward to your return to the radio and to your shortwave debut. Cheer for the gardening pics, do send us more.

A song for a wet and windy Tuesday

How the weather has changed since Easter Sunday. We had a nice afternoon of sunshine but after the sun went in, out came the cold and it’s mainly been rain off and on since. Never mind the bad weather though, the tune above from Godspeed called Nightcrawling will lift the spirits and sometime in the near future will be bouncing off the ionosphere from the transmitters of WRMI over the shortwaves.

Punk rock? That’s shallot

As it was a glorious day yesterday we spent much of it tinkering about in the garden (above). Notice the hessian shopping bags (mid-centre left) hanging on the found-in-the-street tree-like coat stand. Those bags will be filled with Lidl’s best peat-free compost and contain potato plants in a few weeks time. Dada gardening at its best.

The shallots we put in a couple of weeks ago “under glass” (which is just an old window frame found in the street balanced on some house bricks) are off to a flying start. We’ve tried growing shallots before but they rotted even before they got this far so we must be doing something right this time.

We tided up the side bed by the Dad corner (below) and replanted a couple of penstemons we bought off QVC a year and a bit ago and also made some sort of bug hotel (there isn’t a roof on it so is that more of a bug campsite then?) Those giant garlic bulbs are now coming on a treat as well.

Also we cleared a little area by the pond (below) and added a mini veg bed. We stuck some large wire mesh (originally some shelves from our old mini-plastic green houses) over the top of it to deter the cats, putting in a line of old house bricks in helps visually section the area off too. It gets a bit of shade so we’re thinking the lettuce seeds we put should be okay as in full sun they tend to go to seed. Let’s see.

Hopefully we’ve another couple of days worth of gardening to do over Easter if this lovely weather holds out. Have a good Bank Holiday weekend!

Listening to last week’s On The Wire which has a deep dubby bias while we write this post. Well worth listening to as per. Big shout to Steve, Fenny and Jim.

Can you get a better view than that?

Big shout to Rich R for getting in touch with us after a good few years with pictures of his garden in the Lake District. We don’t think you can get a better view than that from a back garden. We all moan about the winter but there’ll be no more moaning if the pic below was the view from your front door.

We get a bit frustrated here with the Ladywell Fields Heron, Lewisham Parakeets and the south London sliced-bread snaffling Fox posse but up there they have proper wildlife to contend with: badgers, deer and rabbits which eat everything veg wise if they were to grow it. So Rich grows wild fruit and strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and a bit of marjoram. The back garden is literally on the side of a mountain, made up of 5 terraces and rises to about 500 ft. How good is that?

It’s a good looking garden Rich and the carpet of bluebells look great and we’re loving it here, more pictures please as the season cracks on!

Tune of a Thursday lunchtime

Cheers to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending this deeply dubby recommendation (above). It’s from Aspartate and it’s called Apart (Version). All we know about it is produced by someone called Mark Bailey and it’s on the D.Construction label out of Germany and their Bandcamp is here.

And talking of chilled out dub, here’s another lovely example. It’s by Dub Addiction and it’s called Ecological Dub (Calm Down Remix). It will be featured on a lounging mix on the shortwaves very very soon.

London Bridge is burning down

Big shout to our very good friend The Rhythm Doctor (of The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio – Tallinn on a Monday morning here) for telling us about this excellent collection on Bandcamp from Don Cavalli.

It’s called Don Cavalli chants down babylon and what an EP it is! There’s 4 top tracks including this above, his interpretation of The Wailers Fire Fire AKA Bunny Wailer’s Love Fire. We implore you to listen to this EP and make a purchase.

KZOO calling, KZOO calling

Tune in to Imaginary Stations this Sunday 26th March 2023 at 2200 UTC on WRMI on 9395 kHz for KZOO a show which is all about kazoo’s, kids piano’s, güiro, washboards and all sorts of home-made instruments which weren’t encouraged by the music teacher. Tune in and enjoy!

 

Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, get a job

Here’s last night’s broadcast of WORK on Imaginary Stations on WRMI on Shortwave. There’s an hour of work related tunes from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore and at 7 minutes in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “Work (The old fashioned way)”. Here’s the tracklistings:

Eric Coates – Calling all Workers (excerpt)
Willie Hutch – Brothers gonna work it out
The Blue Orchids – Work
Culture – Work on Natty
Chairmen of the Board – Working on a building of love
The Silhouettes – Get a Job (Extract)

So ditch the sarnie box, kick off the Toetectors and interview slacks and tune into WORK.

My old man’s a dustman he wears a dustman’s hat

Here’s last nights transmission of the Imaginary Stations show on WRMI which is a KBIN special with WSTL vs WELK. As usual the show is an eclectic mix of tunes from DJ Frederick and the crew and features a One Deck Pete mix called “A bit of welk whistling” at 06.04 minutes in. Here’s the tracklisting:
Charles Kellogg – How Birds Sing (WSTL)
Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin – Loango weaver (WSTL)
Meekmocha – 2 Hop Whistler Dub (WSTL)
Ghostown – Accordeon (Instrumental version) (WELK)
Jackie Mittoo & Peter Tosh – Whistling Jane (WSTL)
NO FINGER NAILS – Good & Intelligent ft. Mannaroman (WELK)

A big shout to Justin Patrick Moore who played this Lou Reed tune last night called City Lights which has had some rather scathing reviews over the years but we find the song rather catchy with a nice upbeat bassline.

Another page in your diary

A couple of events to stick in the old diary. The first is a Seed Swap in the Corbett Community Library, Torridon Road, Catford, London SE6 1RQ on Saturday 25th March 2023 from 10am to 3pm. More on the event here. Thanks to @LewishamGardens for alerting us to this!

And on WRMI this Sunday 5th March 2023 Imaginary Stations presents a KBIN mix up special with WSTL versus WELK. Expect some whistling, yodelling and squeezebox classics at 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz. Get that accordion at the ready!