Category Archives: Reggae

Get those buckets out, possibly

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This scene is from a couple of years ago but this weekend we may go back in the time machine and relive it as it’s going to be 2°C overnight on Sunday, supposedly.

We’ve got spuds that have sprouted and even some coriander seed that have propagated outdoors so it’s better to be safe than sorry. We reckon give it a couple of more weeks and we’ll be out of the danger zone but then again remember that snappy old-time gardening saying “Button to chin, till May be in, cast not a clout, till May be out. If you lose your seed spuds you will get angry and swear and shout”.

The sun’s out this morning, the sky is blue but it’s still nippy. Whether we’ll be in the garden today for long is another thing. So for this sunny morning, here’s a tune by Billy Hope with Riding West which has a bit of a Steptoe and Son vibe to it.

Tune of the afternoon

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We’re ashamed to say we’ve never heard this tune before. It’s from the great King Sunny Ade and it’s a dubby version of Ja Funmi and it is wonderful 7 minute piece of music.

We found out about this tune from listening to a great mixcloud show called Jah Wobble’s 10 Commandments of dub. It’s just a collection of the tunes, no interview with Wobble or anything but the tunes are all good ones! For the full track listings see here. Well worth listening to if you like a bit of dub.

(Internet) radio connects us all

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A big thanks to The Rhythm Doctor for playing Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s What is Man/Promised Land (Blossoms Kitchen dubplate mix) on this week’s Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio at 5.33 minutes in then followed by The Nairobi Sisters Promised Land dub.

So you fancy an excellent Monday morning listen tune into IDA Radio (Tallinn) at 9am – 11am for the best in jazz, downbeat, dub, ambient, reggae and lots of other eclectic stuff. It’s well worth tuning into! There’s lot of the shows archived here.

Sophisticated frost protection for beginners

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Here’s an example of one of our cheapskate frost protection schemes in situ in the bed at the bottom of the garden. We’ve got a couple of split bin bags down to keep the weeds out and the soil warm, an old vase, some glacé cherry containers and an old plastic cloche we found in the street years ago. They may be not look pretty but they will hopefully work to keep that damn frost out!

Thank goodness, there wasn’t a frost last night. Now the SE23 weather forecast has changed a bit, tonight is still supposedly going to be 5°C, tomorrow 9°C and from Friday night to Sunday night there’s lows of 3°C during the wee hours. So the protection will be back on for the next few nights and of course be taken off during the day if it heats up a little like when the sun came out today for a couple of hours.

We’ve seen online all sorts of frost protection from old clothes, net curtains to random bits of fabric draped over bamboo canes in a teepee. It’s not about what it looks like more about if it’ll work or not and what you have at hand, punk rock style.

And here’s a nice chilled tune made by a punk rocker so it says on Bandcamp, it’s from “Dan Rincon, longtime drummer of the prolific psych-punk band OSEES’” and the tune is called MotorRhythm, Wooden and it’s a good one if like us, you like a bit of out there downbeat.

A fine Friday morning tune (even though the weather isn’t)

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It’s supposedly going to be a sunny weekend so we may be going out in the garden and even sticking those indoor sowed vegetable plants out to harden them off so they get used to the weather they’ll be eventually facing outside. Take them out when it starts to warm up in the morning and bring them in when it starts getting cold.

To cheer us up we’re listening to a wonderful tune called Promised Land from The Nairobi Sisters (Terrie Nairobi and Judy Mowatt). It’s a different slice of reggae and it’s the version which is the tune (the one on the Gayfeet pressing is in our opinion a slighty better mix to the Flames release as there’s more of the killer hand drums). We only found out recently the tunes has been sampled by a few people including A Tribe Called Quest for “Whateva Will Be”. A tune for a Friday!

The Flames release is now available again thanks to the excellent Death Is Not The End bandcamp that has a wealth of great stuff to search through.

We’ll throw in the scratches for free

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We love a seven inch single here at Weeds and were going through some old mixes and found this one called One Deck Pete presents The Skybird Singles Club. It’s from a shortwave broadcast of Radio Skybird from August 2023 and thought it would be good to post it up here. We hope there’s a couple you haven’t heard before. Here’s the tracklistings:

Rotary Connection – Like a rolling stone
Weekend – The view from her room
Earl Curry – One whole year baby
Felice Taylor – I feel love comin’ on
Toby Nelson – You don’t need me

Watch your eyes

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Sadly we in Europe won’t be able to see the forthcoming eclipse next Monday but here’s the next best thing, KSOL – The Eclipse Edition from The Imaginary Stations crew. It’s a show that will bring you an eclipse experience without looking up skywards.

Treat yourself to some path of totality classics from DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore over the hour and at 16.04 minutes in is a 15 minute mix from One Deck Pete with “Can you seen Baily’s Beads?”.
Tracklistings:
A Man called Adam – Moon
Cosmos – Summer in space (Mark’s Harmonic 33 mix)
Cedric Im Brooks – Blackness of Darkness
Cornell Campbell – Stars
Do remember to wear eye protection when you listen to this show!

Here’s the great trailer for KSOL:

And a treat from the great DJ Algoriddim on the Stars rhythm:

Seed Spuds and Maunsell Sea Forts

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This device above may not the most sophisticated of gardening devices but that old window frame found on a skip many moons ago perched on some bricks is working well as a cold frame.

A few weeks ago we thought we’d chance it with a couple of seed spuds under it and today noticed that they are starting to show through. We put a liitle bit of soil around them (a mini version of earthing up so to speak) just in case a frost decides to show itself. Hopefully in a few weeks we should be in a frost free zone and we’ll take the protection off for good, but until then…

Soundtrack to this post: Big shout to Thomas from the excellent Explorations in Dub for sending us this track out of Poland called Streams of bubbling dub from Muflon Dub Soundsystem and a nice chilled bit of dub it is.

 

And through the Explorations in Dub blog here we found this great Maunsell Tower dub related track from Banco de Gaia called My Little Country (Rob Bong’s Roughs Tower Dub). Big shout to all the Sealand crew! We do love a seafort here and we are a bit partial to dub too so it’s a winning combination. Cheers again Thomas.

Tulips from Lew-is-sham

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Yesterday we popped into that shopping emporium Lewisham Lldl and spied some gardening bargains. There were various variety packs of mixed summer bulbs and corms and we picked this one which was “Flower Masses Collection” for around £6. No idea if it is an actual bargain or not, but there’s 40 bulbs in there including one dahlia that went in a large pot near the house with a transparent plastic bag over it to keep any cold weather out. Also there’s some gladioli, lilly and african corn lilies that went in the ground probably a bit early but these things burn a hole in our pockets and we’re far too impatient to wait until the risk of frost is over sadly.

The bulb planting reminded us of a daft story from the Westminster City Council Gardening days that was covered in the Sounds From The South spot that we used to do many many moons years ago for the gardening programme The Dirt on Manchester’s Fab Radio International (show below). We wonder where Watford Mick is now?

There’s also a silly episode about when a gardener met some of his punk heroes in his council regulation Donkey Jacket here.

Best of luck with the weather and happy gardening over the bank holiday break!

 

Here’s hoping

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The weather isn’t looking too great for the Easter weekend so who knows how much gardening we’ll get in. This week we’ve tried to do an little bit in the garden (weather permitting) after work for an hour or so. As you know a lot of small chunks out there really does add up and in the long run saves you a good bit of time.

The first tune for tonight is from a good few years ago which shamefully we’ve never heard of before or even the artist for that matter, it’s from Axel Boman and it’s called Sunrise Over Slussen. It’s on the strange side with a lovely piano riff, a great percussive sound and even some noises that Joe Meek would be very proud of towards the end. Very odd but very catchy. Lovely stuff!

The next is a cracking piece called Champion Sound Dub from Ono-Sendai Sound out of Tilburg, Netherlands. It’s a heavy understated piece and one that’s been played over and over a few times today.

And the final one from The Impossible Dreamers with a tune called Spin was heard on this week’s Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn) and it’s from 1982 can you believe! What a mad tune.