What was funny, yesterday we were considering giving the lawn a cut after work as the weather was sunny and bright in the morning. Come 5pm the heavens opened, there was a flash hailstorm and then overnight there was a frost. The weather eh?
To take your mind off the cold here’s a nice dub from Mikey Dub which is the B side of the also great “Causeless shall not come” by Don Hartley. Cheers to Thomas at Explorations in dub for sending us this.
Thanks to Debby H for sending us pictures of her collection of indoor plants. Because until recently, she didn’t have a garden; she has an abundance of them. As we here at Weeds are not very good with houseplants, we love to see other people’s. The flowering cactus (above) looks great.
Now the picture above is brilliant, the Orchid is blooming and there’s a healthy looking Pineapple. We didn’t even know you could grow them here, even indoors! More on growing Pineapples here.
Debby wrote “I grew the Strelitzias AKA Bird of Paradise plants (above) from seed about 5 years ago. We are hoping they may flower sometime.” Wow and when they flower…
“I also grew the Canna (below) from a tiny plant. Last year it flowered continuously with beautiful bright red flowers. The Canna lives outdoors in the summer. We put the Strelitzias out too, but they hated it and wilted every day there was any sun! Strange because they generally live outdoors in warmer climates.” Brilliant stuff Debby, thanks a lot for that and do send us some picture updates and also when the strelitzias flower as that’ll be great.
Here’s A Ten Inch Mix from One Deck Pete which was recorded especially for the Imaginary Stations show WS10S, a celebration of the Ten inch single that was broadcast last December. Here’s the tracklistings:
Jasmine Ntoutoume & Madtone – What is man? – Blossoms Kitchen 10” Dubplate
Zap Pow – Broken Contract – Inbidimts/Trojan Records 10”
Ellis Island Sound – Republica Evescarra (played at 45rpm) – All City 10”
Les Kidnappeurs (Main Theme) (Revisited By Jackson) – Barclay 10”
Nicola Conte – Jazz Pour Dadine (The Dining Rooms Remix) – Schema 10”
Enjoy!
It’s been four years since the passing of the great Andrew Weatherall can you believe. We saw on Facebook a link to this great mix from Outlaw Yacht Club, Leeds 2013 (from a great night presented by our good mate Chris Madden) and we just had to share it. The mix starts off with Big Youth, Ari Up, Dr Who in dub then goes into rockabilly and much more and you know what? It’s downloadable. RIP Andrew Weatherall.
It’s been exactly a fortnight since we lugged that bag of seed compost on two buses from the nearest B&Q and then sowed various seeds on the kitchen and the upstairs windowsills (post here) but we’re now seeing some action (it’s the tomatoes that are popping up first rather than the chillies). It’s been less time since we sowed the sweet peas (a week perhaps?) below.
There’s people who say they’d rather buy plants than seed as “they haven’t the time” to wait for the seed to grow. They forget after the seed has been sown and it has the right conditions it’s the seed that does all of the hard work in the background. All you have to do is make sure the compost is kept moist and all’s okay. Then all the gardener has to do is get on with their own lives (eat, sleep, drink and be merry) while the seeds get to work. There’ll be a bit of pricking out and repotting in the future but that’s hardly hard work and then the plant will just keep on growing hopefully.
Seed sowing, give it a try, you’ve got nothing it lose and it’s far cheaper. If you’ve got your own transport you won’t be lugging bags of compost on two buses either.
Cheers to DJ Frederick for letting us know about this great quaility half an hour recording of last week’s imaginary stations show WDWD – Off The Map Radio broadcast by Shortwave Gold. It was recorded in Belarus by Aleksandr Myadel (cheers Aleksandr for putting it up on youtube).
At 13 minutes in there’s One Deck Pete‘s “I’ll take the high road too” mix and here’s the tracklistings:
Stereognosis – Farewell
Outward Bound – First Cue
Tetsuo – Not taking the bus
Hidden Orchestra – East London Street
Tubby Isiah – Lost dub
If you want to hear more of the show, ten of the latest Imaginary Stations episodes are up online here at our Mixcloud. The show is also looking for some financial help to cover the production and transmission costs so we can continue to transmit on shortwave, more on that here:
Here’s a couple of tunes for a Friday evening. First an Augustus Pablo classic called Melody Dub which is a B side to the tune Unfinished Melody. It’s a stripped down bass and drum instrumental with a crisp high end, whisps of double-tracked melodica floating back and forth into the mix interspersed with short piano and keyboard parts. Definitely a less is more tune.
And another example of said style is the B side Roman Stewart’s I was lonely called One Heavy Duba for obvious reasons. As far as we can remember, the (slightly pressed off-centre and very scratched) copy we own was bought on a second-hand shop crawl of Nuneaton in the late 1970’s. Distance memories of boxes of scratched seven inchers nestled in dirty beer crates between rusting fridges and old washing machines with the smell of mould and damp coming from them, ahh the good old days that we’ll never see again etc…
As we’re working from home we do have a bit of an advantage that we can do a litle bit of gardening at lunchtime during good weather. Today as it was on the warmer side we decided to sow a few more seeds. The kitchen window has become a little crowded so we utilised some spare space in the raised beds under plastic out in the back.
The second covered raised bed is starting to fill up too. The celery cut from the base is starting to grow, those volunteer giant garlic bulbs are doing well and we have some parsnips in the middle so we decided to put some pots of sweet peas either side. Hope they like the heat under the plastic as we haven’t had decent sweet peas for a few years now. The below pic is going back a few years but it is inspiring us to have some sweet peas back in the garden again.
A big hi goes out to Stevyn from the great fanzine/website Iron Feather Journal for sending us this picture above of the first issue of Steroid Abuse up on the wall of his Nandalow Bookshop in Hokkaido, Japan. “The pic is a view into the bookshop, notice at the top of the door (top left) a poetry paper scroll, also featured in the drawing of the inside view (pic below)” “The pictures hanging include the old late King of Thailand who loved dogs and Richard Francis Burton’s tomb in Kew Gardens”. We love that duck!
Do have a look a the Iron Feather Journal Website here for all sorts of interesting stuff. Thanks Stevyn as well for all of the support for Weeds, Madtone and Steroid Abuse over the years!
Also here’s a wonderful couple of tunes that were on a free record with Iron Feather Journal 17 many moons ago which we’re sure we bought at Atlas Records in Soho. We could be wrong as it could have been by mail order but it was a long long time ago and our memory is a bit shot here. Both great tunes but we do love that Laura track.
Also a mention of the great project Stevyn is also involved in which is the Pink Floyd Breakfast Remix here on Towne Club Records, Japan. Cheers for all your support and big up IFJ, the Nandalow Radio show and the bookshop!
Big shout to the one and only Rhythm Doctor for playing One Deck & Popular‘s “Enrico” from many moons ago (at 30.56) on his excellent Monday morning “Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room” radio show last week on IDA Radio (Tallinn). Cheers!
Tune in tomorrow morning at 9am UK time for the finest in Reggae, Dub, Downbeat, Ambient, Jazz and other great tunes!
Weeds up to me knees 