May 2022 be a good one…

A big Happy New Year to all our gardening, music and radio friends from across the globe and from around the corner. May 2022 be a good one for you all, we hope your vegetables and flowers do well, that you find some great tunes this year and may Solar cycle 25 be with you.

We had a little tidy up this afternoon as the weather was so mild, we took the pump out of the pond and gave it a clean and a dry and have put it away until the spring. We also got a little fire prepared for a New Year’s Eve mini burn up later.

To end the year here’s firstly a wonderful tune from Grey Frequency called Chimes (Rai Internazionale) from the forthcoming Shortwave Transmissions project from Cities and Memories.

And in the background whilst writing the post we had on This is a music show 146 with the top 25 tunes Your Host found thrift shopping in 2021. As he explains on the website here: “This Is A Music Show” is a weekly hour-long music program featuring records found secondhand at thrift stores, garage sales, and flea markets. Each show features a wide variety of music from around the world. Some tracks are good, some a great, some are terrible, but it’s all interesting (I hope).” A show you have to listen to if you love music!

And at number 20 on this year’s countdown is the classic The Cables “Be a man”. What a tune! Here’s to a great new year!

Second Annual Report

Here’s the audio of this morning’s broadcast on WRMI of the KMTS End of year transmission. This programme features two shortwave radio themed mixes from us at Weeds up to me knees. The first mix opens up the proceedings from 00.00:

“Keep it chilled for KMTS
Grey Frequency – Chimes (Rai Internazionale)*
Audiovert – Another Universe*
Lapa – 45th Parallel
U Roy talking about King Tubby’s pirate radio adventures
KUNTARI–Orchid
(*Both tracks from the Cities and Memory shortwave project, more info here)

Then follows some eclectic programming from our good friend from across the pond, Ye olde DJ until 42.10 and then:

“The Circles of your mind”
Upcoast Channel 5 – CODAR
Lullatone – Sunday Morning Shopping with a Stroller
liloieee – Train tracks
Paul Davidson – Midnight Ridim (from the Jamaican release of the single Midnight Rider)
Gats – Schneewittchen 
Love Unlimited – Under the influence of Love

Hope you enjoy the show and do turn it up loud. As the station says on their mixcloud:

“The KMTS transmission service winds down our 2021 activities with this fast radio burst of test tones, sounds and songs.

So click on the radio, turn out the lights, and let exotic sounds from distant mountain top towers, take you on a trip to a land that is far away…”

There will be more to come in the following weeks and months so keep ’em peeled!

Reggae and radio, what a combination

Merry Christmas to all of our friends near and far and we wish you all a great festive season and a grand new year. We hope you have a great growing season next year, that all your veg and flowers do swimmingly well and your compost heap rots down well and gives you some great organic matter.

We were going to stick up the Mikey Dread “Dread at the Controls” live on JBC Radio recording from December 1978 as usual but just found some completely different show recordings with some excellent footage too. They’re a new one to us and there’s a few of them as well.

Have a great day today, keep safe and away from the endless Dad’s Army reruns and remember this is the only day you can officially have a glass of Bailey’s and some Cadbury’s Roses before lunchtime without people thinking you’re odd.

On the way to the peak of normal

Now we’ve reached the winter solstice we’re on the way to longer days and hopefully warmer ones too. This morning was a cold one and there was a frost. The dahlias need forking up, cleaned up and stored indoors and the garden needs a general tidy up before the real cold weather sets in.

For the first time in years we’ll be having Brussels sprouts fresh from the garden on Christmas day as the don’t look like they’ve “blown” (here) and/or nothing’s wiped their rear end on the stalks (see story here). Compared to the ones in the organic shops they’re small but who cares as they look good enough. They take a while to grow and we’ll let you know after Christmas dinner if they tasted alright.

Just after Christmas is the KMTS End of year broadcast on the shortwaves via WRMI on Monday 27th December 2021 at 0000 utc on 9395 kHz. There’s a couple of mixes from One Deck Pete including “The circles of your mind” featuring these two great tunes below. If you haven’t a shortwave radio you can always click here on the afternoon after for the listen again of the show.

Anyway a big cheers to all our friends around the globe (and around the corner) and hope you all have a great festive period and remember it won’t be long now until we can start sowing and get out again, let’s hope 2022 is lots better than 2021.

A tune for a Thursday

We were first made aware of this LP earlier in the autumn and only today were reminded of it again. It’s by Stinky Jim who does the ace weekly radio show Stinky Grooves on 95bFM in Auckland, New Zealand. Have a listen to the show here.

The track we love off the LP here is Flingers & Flayers above but there’s some other great tracks on it and it’s an LP well worth exploring!

Reasons to be cheerful part 201

Big shout to our good radio friend across the pond DJ Frederick Moe for alerting us to this ace track (with an equally ace dub) from Roger Rivas called 10 Plagues on the Happy People record label. Turns out Roger is the organist from The Aggrolites, is from Los Angeles and also the A side is available for free here. Big shout to Happy People records for their altruistic ways! “What a tune!” as they say.

Ere’ got any vintage obscura mate?

We’ve just discovered a brilliant internet radio station called Vintage Obscura that plays a cross section of tunes across many genres. As it says on their twitter here all tracks are: more than 25 years old and have fewer than 30,000 views on YouTube.

This is a tune that is just playing now Lillian Allen with Unnatural Causes. Wonderful stuff. Do yourself a favour and tune in here.

 

Rising to the top in a cosmos style

It’s near enough November and the cosmos (we assume they’re cosmos but we can’t remember where they came from as we didn’t sow any cosmos seed unless they were part of a beebomb or a wild flower mix) is throwing out some beautiful flowers and there’s a few buds still left to open. Let’s hope the cold weather and frosts holds off.Talking of weather, we’ve had a good few inches (feet even?) of rain over the last few weeks so the pond is near enough full to the brim (above). Who would have thought it looking at the pond at the start of this year below (before we relined it here).

And just to let you know This is a Music Show 138 is up on the cloud…

How we learned to stop worrying and love the bin

When we first moved in we didn’t really know that much about composting and stuck everything into the classic wooden compost bin like large twigs, sticks and evergreen prunings. No wonder years later they still hadn’t rotted down. We filled that wooden bin right up and also had a pile of cuttings and prunings that we piled up at the bottom of the garden and covered with a tarpaulin (below) for some strange reason.

We considered either burying it, having a monster of a bombfire (the neighbours would have loved that and so would’ve the fire brigade) or paying someone to take it away or hire a skip. None of those ideas were followed up as we had a brainwave: Why not get one of those brown refuse bins and fill it to the brim and within weeks the stuff will soon disappear. I mean they now cost £80 a year from the council but imagine how much it would cost if you had to get a skip or pay someone with a van to take it up the dump?

Now that brown bin has been a godsend with material that we can’t stick in the compost bin and every week we love filling it to the brim. We cut our branches as small as possible (except any Pyracantha as that’s a killer to break down), we jump up and down on the contents and also leave the top open and leave it in the sun so it can dry out and then load it with more.

Got any good tips on how to put the most in your weekly brown bin without having that lid open when the garden refuse people come and collect it? Do send them as we’ll use them don’t you worry!

This post was written with the latest This is a music show (137) on in the background. There’s some great stuff as per (including this lovely Jamaican Ballad above from Joe White and Chuck backed by Baba Brooks and His Recording Band) so if you love music via shortwave radio you’ll love TIAMS! Big up Daz Man for posting up the show and to Your Host for doing it.