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!
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!
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).
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?
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.
Big shout to all the bus and train spotters out there! This Sunday grab yourself a shortwave platform ticket and hop on aboard CTRN via WRMI at 2200 utc on 9395 kHz for some locomotive classics.
Below is an old CTRN from last year with all sort of railway tunes including a mix from One Deck Pete at 40 minutes in called “Off the rails”.
Here’s the track listings:
Instantly Distant: Samples, Foley and Field Recordings – Bank Negara Station
The Lamplighters – London Station
Commodore 98 – Mind the gap (interlude)
Dennis Brown – Westbound Train/Version
Dub Syndicate – Night Train
It’s going to be hot this forthcoming week, we’re looking at nearly 30°C in SE23 and we think the garden is going to enjoy it. So get the watering, weekly feed and any fiddling with a hoe out of the way early and then park yourself in the shade and enjoy the weather.
The courgette/zucchinni plant we stuck in a pot as we couldn’t find any space (above) is doing well, giving us some nice flowers. The area around it with the raised beds of potatoes (below) are also on their way but impatient as we are, we keep looking around the plants and still only getting golf ball sized spuds.
The one raised bed of tomatoes are now setting fruit and we’re checking that there’s no side shoots forming and tying the main stalk to the support canes when we remember.
And on the wildlife tip, we’ve put another “pothole pond” down the wild bit (below) after being influenced by Bill Shimmers’ great pond here. We stuck some wood leading into the water after Bill mentioned in his reply of our effort on Twitter. “Any water body adds extra wildlife habitat to a garden. One thing I always include, any steep sided ponds need a sloping shelf or ramp to allow critters to get out as well as in. Stones or branches will do.” Our one is not exactly steep but we’re including the sticks to add further disguise to the former B&Q product container.
And in our main pic this week are the inhabitants of our pond, well part of the mob that are in there at the moment. And the big question is where do they disappear to? Enjoy this great weather when pondering on that thought.
Now here’s a nice track for a “Will it rain or will the sun come out again?” Friday afternoon. It’s from Danijel Zambo out of Augsburg, Germany and called Concertina. It’s a chilled affair which will feature on the show WELK on WRMI very soon. Have a good weekend and may that weather be with you
“Well it’s that time again when the comfrey does a grow”. As you know, we like to do gardening on the cheap and there’s nothing more economical than making your own comfrey plant food. The darker it is and the smellier it is, is always a sign of a good vintage and definitely one to pour out of an old plastic orange squash bottle 1 part comfrey to 10-15 parts water (depending on the thickness/darkness of the feed). There’s lots online about the magical comfrey liquid including how to make it and how good it is. Have a look here for more info. Do remember to wear some gloves as the leaves can irritate the skin.
We have stripped the plant at the bottom of the garden (above) which is out of the way from view and the plant is looking well bare but don’t worry those leaves will be back in no time to harvest and if you do let the flowers grow the bees love them.
As for our comfrey brewery, ours is kept well out of the way of smelling distance of humans and has at most times a lid on it. We use an old 80’s Boots fermenting container (remember those Boots wine/beer making kits?), a good old housebrick and a little bit of water. What goes in is the leaves and stalks and add nettles, Green alkanet and borage to give it an extra kick. We wait till the liquid is well dark and very carefully strain the liquid (you get any of it on your clothes and you’ll forever be smelling it.) It’s good stuff and a nice thing to pass on to felllow gardening friends but make sure the container it’s in don’t leak or you’ll never be hearing from them again!
Weeds up to me knees 