We never knew that. Part 303

Reggae is one of those genres that if you think you know a little, you’ll always be suprised. By pure fluke we found the above tune from Ranking Toyan – Kill No Man whilst looking for another Toyan tune on youtube. We then remembered the horn version on the LP Aggrovators Meet The Revolutionaries we bought in a second hand shop many moons ago and used the title track on a “Radio Clarion Vs KDUB” shortwave mix. That thing called the internet can be great sometimes!

Big up the Echo Chamber on KFAI

A big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. As we’ve said before, if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here for a cracking good show. At around 37 minutes into the 24th of July show you’ll hear Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate” just before a lovely garden related tune from Sister Julie called Garden Binghi.

Have a listen to the whole show here as it’s wonderful stuff! Thanks again the good Doctor!

On the radio

On Sunday 4th August 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations have another version of COOL, this time COOL 4 via Shortwave Gold. Like the last COOL shows it’s all about those summertime tunes, 1950’s sun tan lotion adverts, deckchairs, long drinks and cool nights. If you’ve loved the last few summer shows you’ll love this one. Shortwave on, sunscreen on and tune into COOL.

Calling all the Skywatchers out there

A big hi to Rich R up in the Lake District for sending us this great picture yesterday. As he said “Saw this weirdness in the sky this evening. I wonder if such a phenomenon has a name?” We have no idea what it can be, anyone out there in Weeds land can tell us what it actually is? It really looks great and we have never seen anything like this before.

Is it someone messing around with a mirror or a ship of extraterrestrials landing from 60B, Who knows? Talking of the great planet 60B (the second planet from the sun Kruger if you have forgotten) here is for the millionth time is our favourite ever clip from youtube. You can’t get any better than this.

Who’d be a (radio) pirate?

Big shout to Jon at Coughing Pigeon on Brum Radio which is one hell of an eclectic show and well worth listening to if you like a bit of mix up from some acoustic chilledness, reggae, dub and all sorts. Thanks to Jon for playing a rough mix of Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate?” at 11.04 on the recent show of 19th July 2024 (below).

Play it again on a Tuesday…

This came up in our youtube feed just and we’d forgotten how good it is. We love it even more as we imagine that the blokes in the band are standing on a platform at the Elephant & Castle railway station with the old London College of Printing building at the back of them. This is such a good tune! £25 on discogs and worth it, we reckon! Love a 12″ with an extended mix and a dub version too.

There’s a sheep in me garden what am I gonna do?

Thanks to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a pic of a woolly intruder in his back garden the other day. We like the look on the sheep’s face who could be thinking “What is this human doing in MY field?”

One advantage is there’s a good chance that may be some sheep droppings left which could be a pain in the neck but looking online it looks like they’re high in both phosphorus and potassium which is great for the garden. Just like the classic horse manure it has to have time to age (as it’s far too strong and if used straight away would burn the plants) and you can even make a compost tea out of it to apply to the garden in liquid form. We’d suggest a thick pair of gloves if you intend to pick some up this weekend. Cheers for that Rich! More on sheep manure here.

Last of the summer whine

After all the comments about how bad this summer has been, it looks as the weather has listened and now changing to some super warmth over the next few days and to celebrate here’s a lovely tune from Augustus Pablo/Enos McCloud.

Keep them peeled!

To paraphase the man like Shaw Taylor on Police Five, “Keep ’em peeled”. In this day and age people chuck out stuff with a view to someone else using it, “recycling” is what they call it. From old vacuum cleaners to 1990’s inkjet printers, people are leaving stuff out on garden walls, skips and next to rubbish bins everywhere for other people to take advantage of (if you can find the right inner bag and plug socket for the vacuum cleaner or suss out that major fault with the printer).

You can be lucky though, like we were the other day. On our daily excercise stroll we saw a few Iceland bags full of neatly pruned Irises with lovely cleaned roots that looked like they had been washed. Of course we took a bag, and why not?

A lovely space in our garden was made for them by pulling up some lemon balm by the tree that has other Irises beside them and then given a good water. Not bad for free eh? Meanwhile we have a multimeter with testing leads on the printer and still can’t find the fault. Stick to gardening freebies!

Spuds and signs

This weekend we sampled our first potato harvest after putting the Maris Piper seed spuds in the garden back in the March here. We made sure to forgot all about them this year as we usually are looking to see if the potatoes are forming not long after the plant flowers.

Even when we were being very careful with the garden fork we still punctured a few and brought up the odd green spud. Now that’s something you don’t want to ingest, the same being for the strange tomato-like fruit that sometimes form after the plant flowers. Don’t go anywhere near them!

On our travels today we found some great looking plant markers on a couple of tree seedlings around Devonshire Road SE23. They look great, very graphic. Love the baby oak one!