That wonderful (scratched second hand) sound

Posted on by
Reply

Earl Brown – Get Together – Jericho
A lovely bit of Curtis Mayfield tinged Jamaican soul, tucked away on a B side to a reggae version of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”. Produced by Herman Chin Loy at Aquarius in the early 70’s, this was found while trawling a bunch of seven inch singles in a House/Techno record shop in Brighton about five years ago. When I asked the owner did he stock second hand records, he replied “We don’t usually do second hand but I do have a box of old scratched soul and reggae I was using to sample for a house tune last week and now finished with. Are you interested?” Am I interested? Not half!

http://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/earl-brown-get-together

Monty Don and a Philippe Starck toilet seat

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a bonkers week what with the kids going back to school and we also had a new toilet fitted. The last one used to randomly whistle and sing in the middle of the night, think of Aled Jones’ “we’re walking in the air” at 4am! The new one is a plush old thing obtained off our “Portuguese man with a van”. It was ripped out of a house in Chelsea as the posh owner didn’t like it after her bathroom was refurbished. Nearly new toilets eh, is that this years new thing? Turns out it’s a Philippe Starck and costs £300 new, we were getting it for £25 but as our man broke the seat in transit so we got it for nothing, bargain eh? Not really, the new seat will cost £50+ to replace! Designer loos eh, who needs the stress?

Popped into the garden centre yesterday to get something to stick in the area that the potatoes used to occupy (even the kids were starting to say “we don’t have to have spuds EVERY night do we?”). One thing with the internet, you might be able to get cheap plants but one thing you don’t get is good advice and a bit of banter. Our local garden centre is a family run affair and they’re used to my off the wall questioning. What’s good about them is that they are glad to pass on the information which I think is what it’s all about! Use your local garden centre, you’ll find out some great info, get great recommendations and keep the owners off the dole!

I got some over-wintering cabbages, a tray of twelve for £3, which ain’t bad even though my wife thinks the slugs will have them. When choosing something to plant, remember the crop rotation rule, the cabbages are in a different family to spuds, not ideal straight away after potatoes but they’ll do. I gave the area a good old hoe, took out any weeds and stones, made a slight depression and filled the row with a bucket’s worth of compost from the council supplied plastic bin started earlier this year. I spaced the plants out using a trowel’s length as a guide, firmed the plants in and gave them a water before the sun hit the area (I soaked the seedlings in the tray an hour before too). Voilà, two rows of slug food! It’s funny as the night before I watched Monty Don do exactly the same thing (not that I am influenced by the telly or anything, honest!)

Making plans for Nigel

Posted on by
Reply

Now’s a good time to make a quick plan of the garden as this’ll help when you come to growing stuff next year, that’s unless you’ve given up and getting the garden paved over after the rubbish weather we’ve had this year! It don’t have to be a Picasso (I mean look at below it took us a minute to do on the train home), just something to remind you what was where, as you might forget come next year (I usually do).

When growing you must think about crop rotation (moving specific groups of vegetables around the garden). If the same vegetables were grown in the same place each year, certain nutrients would be taken out of the soil and the plants would be open to infection and disease. Crop rotation helps guard against pests and diseases by promoting healthier plants.

On the notes with the “growing food in the city” course at walworth garden farm (hi Scarlett!), it says “the simplest rule of crop rotation is not to grow the same thing in the same place two years running. The larger the gap between a crop occupying the same piece of ground the better” which is a very good and simple explanation of crop rotation.

I’ll go deeper into the subject in a later post but very simply, you group together certain families of vegetables and rotate these groups over a period of 3 or 4 years. How simple is that?

Hits and misses

Posted on by
2

U Brown – Blackstarliner Version – Hit Sound
A nice simple dub of U Brown’s Blackstarliner (sic) bought nearly new in Coventry in the early eighties for a couple of quid. It’s pressed very much off-centre and there’s a lovely 1cm crack at the start but with a bit of manipulation it does play and it’s a nice tune when it does! A late seventies or early eighties version of “death in the arena” for all rhythm fans.

Who needs all that 320kps MP3 business when you have an off centre, cracked, held together with sellotape classic like this!

http://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/u-brown-version-hit-sound

Another scratched up second hand classic

Posted on by
Reply

Ewan and Jerry – Get on the right track (Blank) 1969 (?)

A nice slow-mo rock steady number from the late 1960’s. I honestly haven’t got a clue what second hand/charity shop this was bought from but this has been around the house for years and is in not the best of nick to say the least. The artist(s) were only recently discovered through the web as the label (and the vinyl!) is in a right old state. A great old tune smothered in scratches by Ewan and Jerry, not a household name here but a lovely old tune all the same. Any more info on this one do let us know.

http://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/ewan-and-jerry-get-on-the

Gardening strange

Posted on by
2

Big up to our very good friend from across the pond, Doctor Strangedub for his new reggaewise gardening mix first aired on this week’s “Echo Beach” show on WLUW-FM Chicago. It’s an excellent mix of dubwise in a horticultural stylee (he’s a keen gardener as well as a music lover) featuring Prince Far I, Leroy Sibbles, Jah Wobble. Lee Perry, DubXanne (ft. Ranking Roger) amongst other great stuff and includes Madtone’s “Compost your mind”. Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss’ excellent “Echo Chamber” show is on every Wednesday morning on KFAI and archived on the KFAI Website (http://kfai.org/echochamber). Big up all dub gardeners in the (green) house! A big cheers to Dr Strangedub for including the Madtone track.

Seaside special

Posted on by
Reply

Last weekend we were away in the land of glorious sunshine, Camber Sands. You’d honestly think you were somewhere exotic what with the glorious weather there. The picture above was taken down the road from where we were staying, and it’s an ingenious way to use a boat in the garden!

While I was at camber I took home a carrier bags worth of seaweed to use in the garden (I’m not sure about the legality of doing that) alongside tasteful bits of driftwood, shells, stones and the odd old beer can to stick around our pond. All I got off my kids was “why are you bringing all that rubbish home for, Dad?”, brilliant eh?

As soon as I got back to London I gave the seaweed a good hosing down to get the salt off and left it at the bottom of the garden. After a couple of days in the hot sun it frizzled down to such a tiny amount there weren’t enough left to use as a mulch. I could have always make a seaweed plant feed but as there’s already a bucket of foul smelling liquid stinking up the garden it’ll be bunged into the compost heap. Seaweed is a great compost activator and adds minerals and trace elements to the heap. Nowt wasted then!

Here’s a tune that got played a few times while chilling in the sun at Camber. It’s from a while ago but a tune all the same!

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Posted on by
Reply

The garden seems to be going mad of late. The courgettes and the spuds are doing well and we’re seeing a bit of action on the climbing french beans and tomatoes.

I know it’s a bit late, but here’s a couple of tips when it comes to those tomato plants. If you’ve got the cordon type ones (not the bush or tumbling varieties) make sure that the side-shoots are pinched out regularly so all the goodness can go into the plant and the production of the actual fruit. I’ve a couple of plants in the raised bed that I have forgotten to do that are now going wild and a bit uncontrollable. Also when my plants get to about four or five trusses (the sets of flowers that later turn into fruit) I nip the tops out, so again the energy will go back into the plant (but keep an eye on the side shoots a while after you do this as they will tend to go mad). I do give them a regular water but not too much and a feed every ten days. I’ve had to buy some plant feed in, as my home-made attempts are still not ready yet.

The wormery (image above not to be viewed on a full stomach!) is cracking on and there’s a build up of nice looking compost at the bottom and the liquid in the bucket below is starting filling up too. All for recycling kitchen scraps, plant waste etc!

Also I have started to leave a combination of comfrey, nettle and borage leaves to rot in a small amount of water in a bucket at the bottom of the garden. It’s funny as sometimes it’s a bit like groundhog day. I go down there every now and again to have a check, lift up the slab of concrete that is acting as a lid on the stuff and have a sniff as I’m sure it’s supposed to pong a bit. A microsecond later the vile stench hits me… bang! When will I ever learn. If only the image below had a scratch and sniff and then you’ll know what I mean!

Also I heard a good potato tip on a podcast called “Gardening with Tim & Joe” from a show on BBC Radio Leeds. It can be a bit like 1970’s Radio 2 at times (“what’s the recipe today Jim?” etc) but there’s some great tips to be learnt there. The other week they were talking about harvesting potatoes. It was said you should go in once with a fork to pull up what you think are all the spuds, then go in another three times and you’ll get all the spuds you’d have missed previously. Good stuff!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/gwtj

I belong to the blank generation

Posted on by
2

Bells Group – Kingston 13 (Blank) 1962
A lovely little number from the Bells group on a blank 7″ later to be released on the Prince Buster label in 1962. This excellent bit of Jamaican Shuffle/ RnB was found at the bottom of a box of extremely scratched singles in the back room of a Peckham nail bar for 50 pence. The same day I also picked up a copy of an early Wailers single on the Island label which in good nick would have been worth about thirty odd quid. The one I procured was so knackered, it looks like it’s been stood on a few times and even has a phone number scratched into the grooves. Not one to stick on the Bang & Olufsen!

http://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/bells-group-kingston-13-blank

200 metre tunage

Posted on by
Reply

Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka – No One

I heard this on a strongroom alive podcast this week and it’s been going around my head since. A nice atmospheric tune with a warped vocal which builds into a bit of a bonkers monster! One to play while watching Jamaica taking all top three positions in the 200 metres on replay on the telly (with the sound turned down) again and again. Big up to the Jamaican runners for loving the people of Birmingham!

There’s some great stuff on strongroom alive including a child of the jago and ross allen shows, well worth a listen! http://www.strongroomalive.com/listen/listen-again/