Category Archives: Reggae

‘ere, can you spare us any bubble wrap or jam jars for the garden mate?

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It’s been a lovely day here in south London today and it looks like the temperature will drop again a little from tomorrow. Looking at the weather forecast for the next week it could be anything from 6-10 degrees C overnight so hopefully no frosts.

We’re taking no chances here as don’t want to lose any plants overnight even though they have been hardened off over the last few weeks. We’ve put three tomato plants out and some sweet peas but we’re still covering them at night with some improvised protection from bubble wrap, jam jars and the terrarium we found years ago that is now a bit cracked at the side and missing its glass top and now has some polythene on the top. Who cares what the frost protection looks like as long as it’s doing its job! More sunny weather please.

And we started a day with a great tune and we end it on another one. It’s by Jah Version out of Lisbon, Portugal with Friendship (Vocal Dub). Turn it up.

Super Cosmos

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Cheers to Debby H for letting us know about how her cosmos seedlings are getting on in the last post. We took her lead this week and sowed some of the seeds on Tuesday afternoon and come today we are seeing some results. Wonderful stuff, it didn’t take long did it? Remember 2025 is the year of the cosmos!

And for this sunny Saturday morning here’s a track that was played on the great On The Wire (a radio show well worth listening to as we always say) the other week, a track previously unknown to us here at Weeds from Ijahman Levi called Chariot of Love from 1977 and it’s a great single and now re-released on 7″ with a great dub too!

Radio Freedom

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Typically we finished a shortwave mix and just after it was sent off, we found another one we could have used while looking for something completely different. This one is from many years ago from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry vs The Moody Boyz called International Broadcaster (feat. Roots Manuva & LSK). “Adjust your treble, get rid of the trouble.”

More radio connections

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Big thanks to Kit G0JPS for sending these two radio related tracks. The first is (Paul Thorpe, recording as) Voodoo Trombone Quartet with a track called Medium Wave. Great fun stuff.

 

The next is (Paul Thorpe again under the moniker) Braces Tower with a shipping forecast tune called The General Synopsys.

That’s what is great about music, you think you know a bit and then you realise, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know” as the saying goes. Cheers Kit, two great tunes and we will do further research on Paul Thorpe as he sounds like an interesting fellow.

Seven seven inch singles selection

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One of the good things in life is looking through a pile of seven inch singles and not thinking too much about the tunes and putting together a mix (in the old days it would be on one of those cassette tape things). Below is a quick one put together this evening after looking through a couple of piles of records that haven’t been played for a while.

We were influenced by a post by The Rhythm Doctor on Facebook about a recent mix of his from 7” singles for MOJO Estonia and Sugar B‘s “supermix” show on Charisma FM 87.8 Mhz where all sorts of reggae singles are played in any order.

Here’s the first Seven seven inch singles selection in the pot and here’s the tracklisting:
Jah Cure – Longing for version/drop leaf rhythm
Alton Ellis & The Flames – Ain’t that loving you
Ras Ibuna/Village Bunch – Diverse Doctrine Version
Pablove Black – Chaunting Dread
Anthony B – Stop Fight
Jah Woosh – Shine Eye Gal Version Part 2
Yabby You/King Tubby’s – Chant Down babylon Version

We welcome other mixes and don’t worry too much about the genres just put them on and if they sound good…

This is a warning!

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Pic: The grass outside this morning.

The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.

You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!

Pic: John “good bloke” Craven

Stations that only exist in our imagination

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Here’s a couple of shortwave shows in an Imaginary Stations related style, the first on Wednesday 19th March 2025 at the new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI is another episode of the excellent Shortwave Music Library by DJ Frederick. A show well worth tuning into if you the like all sorts musicwise.

This weekend coming, Imaginary Stations hoist the sails on the pirate ship Skybird again and brings you another audio voyage in the Free Radio Skybird series and it’s the third and final planned broadcast of the station this year.

Tune in on Saturday 22nd March 2025 at 1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also on Sunday 23rd March 2025 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz. As with last week’s show, expect some great tunes, onshore and offshore classics and lots of interesting bits and pieces as usual. At 28 minutes in there will be a mix called Who’d be a pirate (again) by One Deck Pete. Tune in!

 

Snails causing trouble again/Dub causing trouble again

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Here’s a lovely remix by Willam Doyle of Snails by Tunng and what a great tune it is for this cold Friday evening. It’s dreamy with some eastern flavours

And  now a mad spoken word dub track out of France by Khoe Wa called Spoken.

 

Have a good weekend and hope that sun comes back soon!

Are you sure it was sunny here this weekend?

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Where has that sun gone to, the one that appeared here the weekend and the same one that contributed to Sunday being 17°C? You will laugh, as over the weekend we even put some plants out in the back garden to harden off. It’s only March and we’re thinking about hardening off plants, we must be crazy. The above pic is a of self-seeded tomato in front of some suncream, after sun and insect repellent, a taste of things to come you reckon?

Do remember that frost prediction site here as that will come in handy if you’ve got that “we’ll get those seeds/plants in early” feeling like us. It’s nearly there but do wait a little before sticking those plants out. Have you seen the forecast for this week?

Radio connects us all, yet again

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Big shout to The Rhythm Doctor for playing this tune at 33 rpm (it’s supposedly meant to play at 45) this morning on this week’s Waiting Room radio show (the best Monday morning radio show if you like all sorts of eclectic tunes) here.

We’ve never heard it before and as soon as it started up, it sounded very much like a Jah Wobble bassline then there was the inclusion of BBC World Service sign on of the bow bells so we were hooked. It’s the B side of this record here and it’s by Prophetic Four As Dub Assassins and called Pursuit, a wonderful piece of music from 1981 as dub mixed up with radio recordings are all the rage here.

And the next tune played was this below, can it get any better? Tune in to Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn) on a Monday at 9am here.