Not at all a bit previous

We’re starting to think of next year’s gardening even if at the moment we wouldn’t want to actually go out in our garden as it chucking it down but it’s never too early to start thinking of next season.

We bought a lot of herb seeds last week to restock up on the pots just outside the kitchen (plus some poppies to chuck in the wild area) and hopefully get a few herb pots going on the windowsill. We’ve just noticed on one of the seed packets that the original common name for Borage was “burrage” or “llanwenlys” a Welsh word for “Herb of Gladness.” We’ve also just found out that the herb is used in the German green sauce known as Grüne Soße or Grüne Sosse. Good stuff!

Remember even if you’ve got a few seed packets in your seed box that may be out of date don’t worry they are worth trying (except Parsley that really needs fresh seed to start germinating). It’s all in the preparation!

The days when the lute ruled

Tomorrow Sunday 6th November 2022 from 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz shortwave there will be another episode of WREN in a renaissance style. The hour long show will include tunes with “harmony that places a greater concern on the smooth flow of the music and its progression of chords.”

There’s another mix in a renaissance style from One Deck Pete at 17 minutes in featuring: Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, Deega, O.G. Jigg and Baroque Baroque. Tune in and enjoy another journey back to the time when the lute was all over the musical charts.

Much more music…

This morning we were happily reminded of a tune from a time gone by from Dimitri From Tokyo/Paris called Love Love Mode (Disorient) which we heard on an early episode of a regular mixcloud programme we’ve been tuning into recently called the Catface Show.

The show is presented by Bob Catface and the shows are 30 minutes in duration featuring a great mix of downtempo and all sorts (and we mean all sorts) of great music. Well worth a listen! Link to it here.

Imaginary Stations on RTM.FM

Big shout to all at RTM.FM in Thamesmead, south east London for broadcasting the Imaginary Stations show monthly from this Saturday at 6pm UK time online here.

RTM.FM is also home to our good mate Jesse Yuen who broadcasts the excellent downbeat/bass/”not a” reggae show North of the River Swan every forth Sunday of the month. Here’s the last episode which featured at 1.09.00 in a repeat of “A weeds up to me knees dub special” from a couple of years ago.

Here’s the tracks for A weeds up to me knees dub special (tracklistings for the actual show are on the Mixcloud comments).

David Harrow – Sugar Dub (Workhouse Digital)
Overseerer – Madlab (Soundclash)
Sammy Dread ft Danny Dread – Follow Fashion (Volcano)
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng version (Archive)
Jazz’min & Madtone – Open up your dub retouched (Blossoms Kitchen)
The Mighty Quark – Smokescreen (King Syndrome Sounds)
Dennis Brown – Shaka the Great Warrior (DEB Music)
An excerpt of Kukan Dub Lagan – It’s about her (MikelaBella Records)
Ralph Myers & Jack Herron band – Savannah (Emperor Norton)
The Rhythm Method – Ranking Nico (Red Megaphone Music Cassette)
Jah Mason – Request Dub (Belleville International)
Johnny Clarke – Roots Natty Congo (Striker Lee)
Tyler Ov Gaia – A portal into another world (Believe France)

It don’t get (that much) better than this

And here’s one tune to lift the spirits. It’s from the mighty Mighty Sparrow (aka Slinger Francisco ORTT CM OBE) called Tour of Jamaica. With lyrics like the below it’s quite hard to beat!
“Look at confusion, rum punch in meh hand
I drink one and beg for one moreBut when ah catch mehself, I drink about four”
If all goes well the sparrow will be singing his way through the ionosphere on the shortwaves soon. As the song goes “‘Til we meet again bye-bye!”

Dub, Gardening and Art makes sense

Big shout to our good gardening friend Gerry Hectic for sending us a pic of what he harvested from his garden this week. Looking great! We are nearing the end of the main growing season but there’s still some time left. Send us your growing pics as we love them here and find them inspiring and send us a tune too!

Gerry sends us a great dub poetry recommendation from Lil Obeah Meets Isuru called Chaos Is Dub, a lovely bit of reggae from the excellent Romanian label Sound of Art to Come. Cheers for the pic and musical tip Gerry!

Grab yourself a Blue Light (Special)

Do you enjoy shopping? Do you love bargains? We do here at Weeds and will be tuned in this weekend for the return of the supermarket themed station KMRT in the imaginary stations series. It’s a back to school shortwave special too!

Experience the thrill of a bustling supermarket live on shortwave this Sunday 18th September 2022 via WRMI on 9395 kHz at 2200 hrs UTC. There will be lots of blue light specials, bargains galore and also an appearance of “A cleaner required to Aisle 5 please” a mix from One Deck Pete featuring tunes by George Feledichuk, Guerrilla Biscuits, We Buy Records, Horace Andy and Eric Hilton.

Have a look at the trailer above to get you in the mood and have a couple of credit cards at the ready. Expect some great tunes “while stocks last” and some crazy price giveaways “75% off on selected items only”. Shortwave is the only place this weekend to find yourself that special offer!

Much more music

Fingers crossed all stops will be pulled out this weekend via WRMI with the broadcast of TOOTS vs WELK. This programme in the Imaginary stations series will be a showdown of music from Toots Thielemans in the left hand corner and the great Lawrence Welk in the right. The transmission will be on air on 9395 kHz from 2200 utc on Sunday 28th August 2022. Tune in for a great musical encounter!

At 16 mins in there’s One Deck Pete with A Harmaccordian mix Kimmo Pohjonen & Frane Milčinski, Les Negresses and Errol Dunkley featuring Dreadful Julio amongst others.

And for a Monday afternoon here’s a nice downtempo number from Aux25 called No Turning Back (Adham Shaikh Remix).

Ambient music for watching the weather forecast

So we’ve had some rain here in London and it’s done the garden some good. God knows how much more we’ll get over the next few days but we’ll be grateful of whatever we get. We’ve left out some B&Q buckets and the odd old saucepan out to see what we can catch.

Talking of watering, here’s a nice chilled out set found whilst looking for some downbeat tunes for a forthcoming shortwave mix. It’s by Past Palms and the five track set is called “Ambient Music for Watering Plants“. We’re loving all the tracks on this but it’s Meditation III: Philodendron that is the one for us at the moment. And here’s what Philodendron giganteum looks like. How mad is that for what is usually a pot plant?

Welcome back my friends to the WELK that never ends

Thanks to everyone who’ve been sending us their accordion classics since last week’s transmission of WELK.

Thanks to John F. who alerted us to Kimmo Pohjonen. We had no idea that this sort of madness existed, talk about taking the accordion to the next level! We love Kimmo’s get up but don’t think the local allotment committee would allow this sort of gear to be worn on-site especially in this forthcoming heatwave. A great tune by the way.

And he reminded us about this great tune by Les Negresses Vertes a band we here have seen a few years ago but had well forgotten about.

And also Slim of the Urban Voodoo Machine, Slim Cyder Co etc. Here’s the great man in action with Joe Ely from a few years ago.

He also mentioned the Grace Jones tune “I’ve seen that face before” a reworking of Astor Piazzolla‘s “Libertango”.

Steve Barker had also said about the maestro Astor Piazzola amongst lots of others (Clifton Chenier, Rocking Sidney, Boozoo Chavis and Amédé Ardoin and many more) which we’ll look into soon. He also mentioned Flaco JImenez and this tune with Ry Cooder.

And last and not least Mark Paytress who sent us this classic and called it “perhaps my fave squeezebox tune of all time” and he may be right! The Three Suns “Delicado”.

Keep on squeezing as they say and thanks to everyone who have got in touch with their recommendations.