Category Archives: Reggae

It’s in mint condition mate, honest

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We’ve just looked at that John Peel auction that Gerry Hectic alerted us to last month (original post here), that had a couple of lots which contained our fanzine Ded Yampy. Looks like they’ve been sold! £190 and £140 (above) but that’s nothing compared to a John Lennon signed LP for £10,000 (below). Who’s got the money for that?

We’re now thinking of getting into the auction game ourselves and our first “lot” will be the 30 or so reggae 12″ers we found at a south London market last year. We were so excited with finding them we put on a poker face while flicking through the boxes as not to alert the seller/other record hunters that we had found some gems (or so we thought).

We omitted to check the condition of the records at the time as we were so excited. On the bus home we took a look and were shocked to see how bad they were. We learned a lesson that day, check the condition! Even a good clean didn’t help (above).

That is nothing compared to the time we popped out for a pint of milk and came back 2 hours later relieved of £20 but the owner of some great rare old reggae sevens procured from the back of a Peckham nail bar that once been a record shop. Our excuse this time was that the lighting was dim in there so didn’t look too hard at the actual vinyl. More likely our eyes and brain were on dimmed if you have a look at this one from The Wailers (above). There’s even a phone number scratched into the other side. Check before you buy, excitement or no excitement!

Answering the call of the cosmos

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It has finally come, the day the first cosmos flower appeared. We may have lost a few plants to the slugs earlier on this year but the few we started off in pots and are now undernearth the dead cherry tree have got buds on them and this afternoon one actually opened. Cheers to Debby H for starting us off on this cosmos journey. Anyone else got any cosmos pictures to post up here? One deck pete at gee mail dot com if so.

And today also saw one of the cardoons showing their first purple dyed spikey top with more growth to come in time we hope. The bee on it seems happy enough.

And for a Saturday evening here’s  a couple of excellent tunes, the first being from Cantoma (AKA Phil Mison The balearic fare dodger) called Light Before – Ambient Outro. It’s one piece of ambient chillout to end the day with!

 

And a lovely bit of dub from a set called Mid City Dub Encounters Vol.1 by Irie One and Lord Sekou on Jah Thunder Records and this track is called Kalimba Dub.

Shivering Sands calling live on channel

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Here’s an excellent radio programme featuring those Maunsell delights Shivering Sands. It’s a 24 minute great listen so tune in here for a very interesting listen. Thanks to the The Maunsell Seaforts Appreciation Goup on Facebook for posting this up!

And when we put Maunsell dub into Bandcamp it came up with this, a great version of United Melody by Addis Pablo no less.

 

There’s Mullein in my garden, what am I gonna do?

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We looked up Mullein in our “well interesting” or “well out there, man” (whatever your point of view about this book is) “Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” by Scott Cunningham (Llewellyn Worldwide). It’s a bonkers book and one that never fails to make us smile.

 

A bike’s a bike, how do you describe a bike?

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We love those 1970’s information films here and have spliced the “Lock Your Bike” classic film from 1974 over the top of a little bit of BiggaBush‘s excellent Beat Dem in Dub. A big cheers to BiggaBush for giving it the thumbs up and Gerry Hectic for linking the tune with the original video. What’s a frame number?

 

Big shout to Dr Strangedub who debuted the tune on the brilliant Echo Chamber here on KFAI at 96.40 mins in. If you love reggae and dub you must tune into this weekly show. Listen closely and you may even hear a couple more public information dub instrumentals. Big up the Echo Chamber!

Here’s another couple of classic films from time gone by.

As Half Man Half Biscuit once sang “It was loft ladders what killed our Martin”. If only Martin had watched a public information film before his trek into the loft as he would be around to tell his tale now.

Slow down a little via shortwave radio

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A big thanks again to DJ Frederick and all the Imaginary Stations Crew for broadcasting the Downbeat on Shortwave 2 show over the weekend via those radio transmitters at Shortwaveradio.de

The show featured a hands across the world collaboration between Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Catford Village, UK who played two 15 minute mixes each in a back to back style featuring some downtempo business to slow things down in our life.

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. There’s added texture to the show thanks to signals bouncing off the ionosphere/groundwave propagation and someone next door switching on their toaster.

Got a spare few grand?

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Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us the link to an auction this month called “The John Peel Collection” featuring all sorts of stuff from Peel Acres. There’s John’s copy of Joy Division’s Ideal for Living 12″ with a letter from Rob Gretton. Got £3,000 handy? Have a butcher’s at what else is up for grabs if you’ve got some spare cash here.

And we’re pleased as punch to see the fanzine Ded Yampy in a couple of lots (below). Nothing as pricey as the Joy Division rarity but still a couple of hundred quid we ain’t got. Did we really send him 3 copies of Issue 1?

Years ago we faxed John Peel a couple of pages over with details of one of our Steroid Abuse nights to see if he would read it out on his show. We were suprised when he started reading said fax out saying, “News just in that Steroid Abuse have a party in London this Saturday. I can’t tell you where it is, who is on or how much is it to get in as the last page of the fax has failed to come through.” How daft is that? Bloody faxes eh?
R.I.P. the great John Peel.

We’ve got a Barbara Hepworth in our garden (supposedly)

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Cheers to our mate Nic G across the pond for letting us know that the thing we found in the skip the other night is more than likely an example of sand-casting leftovers.

We’ve now got it as a sculpture at the bottom of the garden (just by the part under fence that is used as a cat/fox run) and with the sunlight on it this morning looks like a fox looking up at the sky.

We are hoping to pass it off as a mini-Barbara Hepworth next time Antiques Roadshow visits Catford and give the “specialists” some spiel about “Dame Barbara gifted it to my late father after he tidied up some flower beds in St Ives.”

We do think it looks similiar to a fox today. Who knows what it may look like at 3pm, sand casting leftovers perhaps? We do hope not.

It may be raining but who cares when this is playing

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The clouds are going grey and that day of supposed gardening may be not materialise but we found this and things seem to be a lot brighter in our life. It’s possibly the craziest version of Sleng Teng ever! Hats off and umbrellas up to the great Center of the Universe. Cheers to Jesse Yuen for inspiring us finding this.

And if rumour has it, all the secrets to life (and sleng teng) are possibly contained in the first few seconds of this.

Never mind the brollies, have a good Saturday grapple fans.

Quaking grass and shortwave space travel

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We’ve had this in the garden before and God only knows how it actually got there (have they self seeded themselves or are they the fruits of our anarchistic “throw them anywhere” sowing method) but it’s the wonderful quaking-grass. It’s only a small plant but is great close up and we’ve just found out that the seeds are good source of food for the birds.

We’ve got a flower on our courgette plant we sowed in a pot when we thought it may be a bit late so it’s always worth trying! How’s people’s gardens going? Do send some pictures please!

Also this weekend on the shortwave bands Imaginary Stations bring you Starship Skybird. The show is broadcast on Saturday 7th June 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then again on Sunday 8th June 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz (via the services of Shortwave Gold).

Start the countdown to this weekend when you can strap yourself in for a trip of a lifetime. Tune in, make yourself a cosmic cocktail if that’s your thing and enjoy the sounds of space.

There’s all sorts of space madness with music (and some great jingles) you may have never heard before from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore and at 6.15 mins in there’s One Deck Pete presents a ride into space on a 60+travelcard mix. Grab yourself a shortwave radio or tune in via here.