Category Archives: Reggae

We’re the tomatoes in the dustbin

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In a post the other day here we were discussing our impatience about putting tomato plants outside in the garden. Yesterday we saw a Facebook post where someone down here in London had taken a picture of their tomato plants outside in the garden with “Now there’s a good job done, all of my 30 odd tomato plants are outside in the ground. I doubt if there’ll be a frost now…” Looking at next week’s weather, it looks brilliant during the day and not too cold in the evening so we’re now even more confused than ever.

We had a plant on the kitchen windowsill with two flower trusses begging to go out and today we gave a broken council food recycling bin a good clean out and put a few holes in the bottom and now the two trussed plant is in it and up near the house. It should be well hardened off anyway and tonight it’s covered in bubble wrap just in case. It’s one less plant on the kitchen windowsill.

Above is the food recycling bin with the tomato in it and funnily enough it fits in with the other plant pots including one of the cuttings from Honor Oak Park station geraniums (we now think they are really pelargoniums) which is now flowering!

Shout to all the twin cities reggae radio crew

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A big shout to our good friend Dr Strangedub who presents The Echo Chamber (with DJ Baby Swiss ) on KFAI out of Minneapolis, Minnesota for playing Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s Earth Citizen on this morning’s show at 37mins in (tune in here).

As we have said many times before, the Echo Chamber is the show to tune into on a Wednesday morning at 8am UK time for 4 hours (count them) of reggae, dub, downtempo and all sorts of bass heavy stuff and more. Cheers again Dr Strangedub!

And here’s a great track from the show called Don’t worry what the people think about you (Dub) from Dubblestandart & Jasmine Tutum.

A report from Bristol

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Thanks to Kit, G0JPS in Bristol for letting us know he did a bit of garden clearance yesterday (Easter Sunday) which included “removing a huge tangle of cleavers (if the name isn’t familiar, you’d know what they are straight away when you see the picture of them) and the sad deceased remnants of a fuchsia bush.”

“Found this nice little sectioned off bit (above) under the wreckage; so gave it a good hoeing, sowed it with foxglove seeds, and rehomed a small thyme plant rescued from a supermarket car park. And pinched your idea of sticks and things to keep the cats off.” Brilliant Kit, we love your choice of metal sticks and wood that will keep the cats and probably the foxes off too we reckon.

He added  “Thinking that it’s a bit of a blank slate now, the words Tabula Rasa popped into my mind so here’s a couple of tune suggestions:”

They are two excellent tunes that we’d never heard before. The first is Tabla Rasta who were from Crete with Mystic Dub and Brother Dan from Sweden with Bay Leaf and Thyme Dub. Excellent musical recommendations Kit, do keep them coming!

When it’s spring again, I’ll bring again, Tulips from Warwick-shire

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Thanks to Mike & Julia for these great pictures (it’s Mike taking the photographs this time) from a Tulip Festival in Warwick the weekend just gone. We know there’s many festivals dedicated to the Tulipa genus in places like Holland (even though their origins are native to central Asia, as they thrive in extreme hot summers and harsh, cold winters) but we’ve never thought they’d be one in Warwick. By the looks of these varieties, looks like it was a good day. Cheers for the photos Mike!

And we knew there was a variety called John Peel, we’d never thought they’d be one called Rasta Parrot, but there is!

There’s a downside to being a bit keen…

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We’ve spoken to a few gardening friends of late who have tables, windowsills and even parts of rooms filled with seed trays and seedlings galore now waiting for the chance of frost to pass so they be planted outside. We reckon another few weeks and these lot we have indoors (above) can go out. There’s even some flowers forming on one of the geranium cuttings we took.

We’ve even got a tomato plant with a truss of flowers with another forming and a nearly three foot, giant sunflower on the windowsill (above). It’ll be like the day of the triffids if May don’t come soon, it really will. For everybody in the same boat, hang in there, it won’t be long!

‘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…