Category Archives: Tunes to cheer you up

A life on the ocean (air)wave(s)

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This weekend, a show called Great Lakes Pirate Radio Ships from the Imaginary Stations crew was broadcast to the far flung reaches of Europe via those old shortwaves. It was a programme that celebrated the spirit and sound of those offshore stations of old. Here it is in its full glory below.

At 33.27 there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “Have you ever been to Windermere?”. The tracklistings are:
Imandra Lake – VööImandra
Lake Radio – Culture Veins
Zap Pow – River Stone (Lee Perry Prod.)
Morschen43 – MV Ross Revenge For Ever!
The Cats – Swan Lake

And as the song below goes from Morschen43:
“To you, web radio director, presenter of radio show,
And for all music programmers!
Real people!, real music!
Said their radio slogan”

By the way there’s a great archive of the pirate radio ships here.

Who’s been on me harp (without asking)?

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Big shout to Fenny for playing this on last week’s On the Wire. It’s a wonderful bit of music from Cerys Hafana called Helynt Ryfeddol which features a triple harp. It’s a tune that reveals itself with every listen and one that will fit in just fine on the next instalment of HARP from Imaginary stations.

Cosmos and reggae make Saturday night alright

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Big thanks to Debby H for sending us a great picture today (above) of possibly the last cosmos of the year in her garden. She said, “If the weather brightens up later on, I will go out and deadhead them, then maybe they will keep on flowering.” Great stuff! We hope they do keep flowering.

Now we love the cosmos, we can’t stop seeing them about. Here’s one spotted on our early morning travels in SE23 this week, they’re a bit blurred but you’ll get the gist.

And a few doors down we saw a nice raised (vegetable) bed with some trellis used as a squirrel, pigeon and general pest deterrent, what a clever idea.

And from gardening we move onto the subject of music which goes hand in hand here on Weeds. We heard Skinshape x Horus – N’Téro (feat. Modou Toure) on last week’s Ross Allen NTS show here and it’s a lovely slice of reggae! Catchy as anything too.

 

Here’s a nice bit of dub called Order Dub for a Saturday night off the Self-Titled EP from Nadia McAnuff & The Ligerians from SoulNurse Records out of Tours, France from the golden year of 2022. It’s a subtle bit of mixing but lots going on if that makes sense.

 

And we just found by pure chance now on Bandcamp a do over of a version of Dennis Walks‘ Heat Don’t Leap by the one and only Gregory Isaacs called Gone is the Love from a good few years ago. Great tune!

And funny enough there was a few cuts of the original “Heart Don’t Leap” and more great tunes on On The Wire the other week. Listen in here!

Do you reckon the weather will hold out for gardening tomorrow? It was perfect here this morning and afternoon. Fingers crossed!

September’s weather has come in August

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We’ve got some time off work for a week now and typically there’s a good bit of rain on the way. It’s good for the garden (as it’s parched), the pond (water levels are low) but not for us (lounging around in the sun doing nothing is fun, can’t lounge around in the rain!)

The garden is going to go wild with all this rain and of course mixed with a bit of sun that may come out from behind the clouds this week. Above is a reminder of what plants in the sunshine look like just in case you have forgotten. This is the salvia we got from B&Q a few weeks ago and it’s loving where it is.

 

 

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!

Let’s get cool in the pool

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Here’s a lovely chilled-out balearic mix from a long time friend Will J, who actually introduced us to the exellent Echo Chamber radio show on KFAI many many moons ago we remember (Dr Strangedub of said show’s raised beds were the feature of last post funnily enough!)

Reminiscent of those old C90’s from Jose Padilla and the balearic bailiff himself Phil Mison, the hour’s tape includes some excellent tracks including this one:

It’s a mix well worth playing loud when the sun comes out next (or even when it’s raining as it will cheer you up). Good stuff Will!

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.

Music for a Monday night

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Cheers to our mate Will for sending us this musical recommendation, a collection called Bootlegs II by Tribilin Sound and there’s 34 tracks for 10 US dollars which is a bargain. The opener The Poor Man Cumbia has a bit of the warped out sounds of an off-centre pressing and is a do over we think of Barrington Levi‘s Poor Man’s Style. Wonderful stuff!

And we love the mad remix of José María Arguedas’ Carnaval De Tambobamba. There’s a little bit of everything on this set from Massive Attack and Madonna and well worth investigating.

Out with the bubble wrap, out with the bubble wrap!

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Sometimes it’s small things that make you think. We were just reading the “What to do in the garden in May” piece on Penny GoLightly’s excellent blog here. She mentioned “The month has started with a mini heatwave, but I’m not rushing to plant out most of my seedlings too soon” and we have a bit of a realisation and checked the weather forecast for SE23 and thought “Ahh, she has a point”.

Its looks likes there’s going to be a little bit of a change in temperature this weekend to say the least. From those glorious summer vibes to a humbling 13°C tomorrow. Funny enough we just found a pic (above) from May 17th 2020, look at those sophisticated forms of frost protection and thats in mid-May!

To be honest we did get a bit carried away and put a couple (and more to be honest) of tomato plants out and yes there are some chillies seedlings that have been repotted and left out overnight. We’ve even dismantled a cold frame (aka took the bricks off holding down the polythene and folded up said polythene and chucked it in the bin). Looks like all of that will have to change this evening, alongside the flip flops and shorts going back into the wardrobe.

We’ll be bringing the chillies in tonight just to be on the safe side as it may drop to 4° C and we have a massive roll of bubble wrap purchased initially for selling stuff on eBay that will come in very handy.

We feel a bit sorry for the bloke on Facebook the other week who put out all his 30 odd tomato plants saying there won’t be a frost. He may be alright, but it does seem a bit nippy in the evenings next week. Good luck and may the (frost) protection be with you and enjoy those rays of sun rays today as you may have to put the jumper back on tomorrow.