Reach for the sky

Posted on August 16, 2016 by onedeckpete

Crap sign

This morning I popped into a local greasy spoon for a bacon sarnie and noticed up on the wall a collection of “hilarious” signs (“you don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps” “don’t ask for credit as a smack in the mouth usually offends” etc etc) and saw this one above. Did people really laugh at these in the 1970’s? I somehow doubt it.

sunflower_2 Anyway there are no complaints in the Sunflower size department. The Mongolian Giant Sunflowers we bought on ebay earlier this year are certainly living up to their name. As the blurb said on the ad, “These sunflowers are monsters which grow up to 15 feet tall with enormous heads of up to 20 inches in diameter.” sunflower_1 Below is what they started out like in March. We love anything here that is advertised as “Giant”, “Special edition” or “Rare”. Big up the Sunflower! tall, tall, tall

Ten On-U’s from The Head Gardener

Posted on August 16, 2016 by onedeckpete

The garden of earthly delights Big thanks to The Head Gardener aka Shane Q from the excellent long-running radio show The Garden Of Earthly Delights (for who Weeds’ own Madtone did a session for a few years ago) for getting in touch and sending some tunes. We’ve just heard that the show will return soon, broadcasting from a new studio in a converted toilet block in Milton Keynes (how good is that?)

If you want to know of the sort of stuff that’s played on the show before then, there’s mixes galore here, here and here and there’s even one aptly named “Melvin, gardening on a Summers evening.” It’s a show well up out street!

Shane has sent us Ten of his favourite On-U Sound tunes and there’s some crackers here. Here we go…

1: Bim Sherman: Nightmare

2: Audio Active: Free The Marijuana

3: African Headcharge: Hold Some More

4: Gary Clail & The On-U Sound System: Privatise The Air

5: Dr Pablo & Dub Syndicate: Dr. Who

6: Andy Fairley: Jack The Biscuit

7: Creation Rebel: Creation Rebel

8: Little Axe: Hammerhead

9: African Headcharge: Somebody Touch I

10: Singers & Players: Water The Garden

Big thanks again to Shane and we will be listening when the show returns!

Charity shop seven inch one-pounder

Posted on August 15, 2016 by onedeckpete

We’ve been away for a few days at Camber Sands and visited some charity shops in nearby Rye hoping to find some second-hand shop cut-price specials. There wasn’t much apart from some expensive reggae, beatles non-bargains and quite a bit of overpriced rock n’roll but there was this by The Chi-lites for a mere quid as rediscovered on the Norwood Soul Patrol Rinse FM show a few months ago.

Dahlias on the wire

Posted on August 13, 2016 by onedeckpete

On the wire screenshot

A big thanks to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim from the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire for including the track A Dahlia state of mind by Madtone on their 6th August show. It’s the final track at 1hr 57mins in.

As ever the show is a quality two hours including tunes by Twilight Circus with Big Youth, King Tubby, Dub Dynasty, The Frightnrs, Noura Mint Seym-Ali, Prince Buster and a whole lot more. It’s on every Saturday at Midnight available live here or on play again here. One well worth tuning into!

By the way there’s a great RA exchange interview (here) with Stevie B that’s well interesting and was a bit of pre-holiday listening here at Weeds HQ the other week.

How did that get there?

Posted on July 31, 2016 by onedeckpete

Borage Earlier this year I bought a couple of packets of Borage off ebay and just flicked a light amount of seed here and there in a random fashion and forgotten where I sown it until now.

They’ve been appearing all over the garden from cracks in the pavement to the middle of OCD military-style sown veg beds. Thank god for anarchic type sowing!

I’ve just found this on wikipedia as well “Borage is said to protect or nurse legumes, spinach, brassicas, and even strawberries. It is also said to be a good companion plant to tomatoes because it confuses the mother moths of tomato hornworms or manduca looking for a place to lay their eggs. Claims that it improves tomato growth and makes them taste better remain unsubstantiated.”

The bees love it and I always stick a few Borage leaves in to add to the mix when concocting the evil smelling Comfrey plant feed. Big up the Borage!

Dahlia in dub

Posted on July 30, 2016 by onedeckpete

Madtone_ A Dahlia state of mine cover Gardening has taken a bit of a back seat for the last week or so due to some DIY jobs at Weeds HQ and we’ve also been working on a 16 minute rework of Madtone‘s “Radio is my friend” for the dub poetess Jazz’min Tutum (Thanks to Dr Strangedub of the great Echo Chamber on KFAI for the initial link-up!) Results of the project will appear soon.

https://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/madtone-a-dahlia-state-of-mind-exclusive-weeds-up-me-knees-dub

Things that are appearing at the moment though are the great flowers of the Dahlia, a tuber that we at Weeds love. In celebration of the glorious flower, here is an exclusive tune (downloadable for nowt) for Weeds from Madtone called “A Dahlia state of mind” a special dub of “Radio is my friend” (originally recorded for a session on The garden of earthly delights radio show.) One for all tuber fans everywhere!

Dahlia_2

36 degrees in the (South East) shade

Posted on July 24, 2016 by onedeckpete

Big shout to the great Mungo’s Hi-Fi for this one, “Disastrous dub” (available on a lovely 7″ with a nice sleeve by the way, from Scotch Bonnet here.) It’s the b side of their tune with Shanti D & Ranking Levy called Total Disaster which is a killer too.

Let’s hope there’ll be no disasters in the garden today, apart from knocking over that cup of tea while enjoying another gardening tea break. Tune!

Cos’ the city is too hot

Posted on July 16, 2016 by onedeckpete

kaleb Here’s one great mix from DJ Khalab as played on Tom Ravenscroft the other week. To quote his bandcamp his music is “an ongoing round trip journey between tribes and psyche, desert and spaceships, jungle and skyscrapers.” This mix is one mad (coach) journey to say the least!

The mix is available here for another few weeks, listen soon before it disappears! Here’s what’s on it:

1. Dj Khalab & Dj Hendrix – 6THPRLL
2. Owiny Sigoma Band (DJ Khalab Remix) – Too Hot
3. Konono No.1– Kinsumba
4. Space Diaspora – OY (Clap Clap Remix)
5. Tam Tam Tam Reimagined – Maos A Obra
6. Machinedrum – Lewasi

cos the city is too hot One to whack out of the backroom windows loud on any evening this week coming as it’s “gonna be a heatwave” or so BBC weather says. So keep them plants a watered!

Monday evensong

Posted on July 11, 2016 by onedeckpete

Heard this belter last night on the Rt Hon David Rodigan show. It’s from Cut La Vis ft Peppery called Festival on NICE UP! records (available as free download above.) We love this tune and it’s been on replay all day at Weeds HQ!

It uses a sample from Jackie Edwards’ This is another festival, the U-Roy toast, Heavy duty festival is one of our all-time top tunes after finding it in a charity shop in Coventry for 10p in the late 70’s on a very scratched Grounation 7″.

massive sunflowers

The Cut La Vis tune was on loud while we fed the garden this evening with (un)sweet smelling comfrey liquid whilst picking off snails who are threatening to have the flower buds off our ebay bought 15ft Giant Mongolian Sunflowers (er, they’re at 7ft at the moment but we won’t quibble at that!)

Never mind the snails and smelly comfrey liquid, big up NICE UP! records for this summer cracker!

Weeds on the wire

Posted on July 10, 2016 by onedeckpete

Socialism train

Socialism Train – 19 in a socialist reggae style

Big thanks to Steve Barker from the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire for supplying this ace reggae chart for us. On The Wire has been playing the best in reggae, dub, electronica, ambient and all sorts of eclectic business weekly for over 30 years and is available Saturday midnight here and available on listen again here.

So here’s the tunes and there’s some crackers on here. If the tune is not featured, click on the links to view on youtube.

Cheers again to Steve for the chart, shouts to Fenny and Jim at On The Wire too. Keep up the good work!