Category Archives: Shortwave radio

International vibes yet again

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This Sunday 19th May 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations bring you Skybird Radio International which will be beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold.

SRI is a worldwide affair as you can imagine with tunes from around this globe of ours from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore. There’s also a mix from One Deck Pete which will include tracks by Marlena Shaw, Manjeet Kondal, Tubotito & Rags, Adrian Sherwood and Esher Suarez.

Gerry Hectic (also a contributor to our Countryfile style calendar 2025) has produced an answer version to the One Deck Pete mix and here it is in its glory and what a mix it is. Thank you Gerry, it’s appreciated.

Gerry Hectic presents “A May themed answer” mix
One Deck Pete & Popular – Enrico (Hay-eer-yah’s Continual Harmonica Cut) BCR
Loretta Heywood – Satta Massagana (The 6/* Blues Mix) – Tangential Music
Marlena Shaw – Love Has Gone Away (Disco Version) – Blue Note 12”
Sababa 5 – Bezani – Batov Records
Natasha Kitty Katt ft. His Bitter Truth – Galactic Love – F*CLR Music

Stereolab on shortwave

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People complain about listening to music on shortwave radio, they say “The quality is no good” “It’s in mono” and “there’s fading and crackling and lots of weird noises that change the sound of the music”. That’s the reason why we love it!

Here’s nearly half an hour of Test Cards on Radio from last Sunday including the mix from One Deck Pete called “A Trade Test Transmission” at 5.49. It was recorded by Aleksandr Myadel in Belarus, cheers to him for putting it online.

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.

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

Spring has spung?

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We’re supposed going to be seeing highs of 19°C today in SE23 with a bit of a high wind and drizzle, madness! Looking around the garden this morning (to the beautiful audio background of swearing scaffolders working on the estate behind the bottom of our garden), it looks like sprung may have really sprung this time. Those seed spuds we put under the bin bags the other week (above) are starting to sprout (we had to lift the plastic to find the sprouts at first and give them some guidance) and there’s progress in the ones under the window frame even from a couple of days ago (below).

And meanwhile in Portland, Maine …

Thanks to our good radio/music friend Justin Patrick Moore for passing on a photo from his cousin Joseph taken in Portland on Thursday. Crazy weather indeed!

And here’s another in our series of Maunsell Seafort influenced music, a tune from Magic Panda out of Norfolk.

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!

 

Who needs patience when you have a bin bag or two?

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We’ve had those seed spuds for a couple of weeks now and they ain’t half burning a hole in our pockets. We’ve an egg box with a handful of them chitting away by the back room window, a couple went in in the cold frame (an old window frame found in a skip, balanced on bricks) and we’ve just put two in each raised bed down the side even though it’s a liitle bit early to be putting in Maris Pipers.

We stuck a bin bag over the bed, made a rough hole in the plastic so light will show through and stuck the seed potato directly under it. We then covered it with compost and now we’re keeping our fingers crossed that they survive any forthcoming frosts. On two of them we have put some old wire shelving from a plastic greenhouse to stop certain felines (ours) stop digging up the soil and leaving presents. Seed spuds we wish you luck!

And music today is one from a long time go from Cosmos called Summer In Space (Mark Harmonic 33 Mix). It’s a lovely chilled out number for a Sunday.

And as we have a lack of patience when it comes to gardening here’s Nish Wadada with Patience Dub. It’s a lovely bit of dub!

Music for snoozin’

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Here’s the audio of yesterday’s Imaginary Stations show WZZZ, all about the art of sleep and dreaming. It was a horizontal themed show with music to drop off to and songs to dream to. 

 

There’s some great tunes throughout the hour from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore (have a look at his great new book here) and at 1.52 mins in there’s One Deck Pete with a 15 min mix called “You may say I’m a dreamer”. Gerry Hectic‘s answer mix “You’re not the only one” is here if you want to complete the set!

Here’s a tracklisting:
Jah Wobble – Fading (Instrumental)
L. Pierre – Fan-dance
The Barbados Steel Orchestra – Barbados My Island of Dreams
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – The Night
Owen Gray – Midnight Track

Have a good day and if you fancy a lazy Monday snooze, drop off to WZZZ!