Indoor plants in north London

Posted on December 15, 2024 by onedeckpete

Thanks to Debby H for keeping us updated about her house plants and sending us a couple of pictures. She wrotes “Since we brought in the canna lily, the leaves have grown hugely. It’s now as tall as our orange tree. And at night, the leaves all point up to the ceiling, almost like a religious ceremony! It’s never done that before. It usually goes into a big sulk, and the leaves start turning brown. Not this year!” That’s great to hear.

Also “The orchid flowers have continued to open, which is attractive when there’s not many other flowering plants around.” Great stuff Debby, good to hear from you!

Keep WARM this winter

Posted on December 13, 2024 by onedeckpete

Here’s a track we found by pure chance last night while putting together a shortwave mix. It’s from Mice Parade (who sadly we’ve never heard of before but will now research) with a track called Warm Hand in Farmland and it’s the Stereolab remix from a couple of years back. It’s one crazy track, part brass, part acoustic, part hip-hop and part mad and over 5 minutes long but it don’t seem it.

We may be imagining it, but is the piano sampled from the start of The Persuaders theme tune by John Barry used in the latter part of the tune? We’re sure of it.

And if our memory isn’t playing tricks on us The June Brides used The Persuaders theme as walk on music once when they supported the great McCarthy (which featured one Tim Gane oddly enough). Coincidence or a tenuous link to play McCarthy’s brilliant Frans Hals tune again? Who knows.

The more you know, the less you understand

Posted on December 12, 2024 by onedeckpete

Tune into KNOW from Imaginary Stations on Saturday December 14th 2024 at 1200 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and repeated on Sunday December 15th 2024 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz via Shortwave Gold.

They will be imparting some very deep knowledge on the show, answers to questions like “What is the meaning of life?”, “Can you speak Venusian?” and “Why are Jaffa Cakes known as a cakes rather than biscuits?” and bringing you songs that you may or may not know. At 16.15 in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “Have you got the Knowledge?” featuring Avmus, Deezz, Ernest Wilson, Capstone and Gregory Isaacs.

Big shout to The Rhythm Doctor for the KNOW related classic below and to Jesse Yuen the other week for reminding us how good it is. Below that, an Observer classic with a brilliant dub. Seeing is knowing and all that.

Now that Darragh has gone

Posted on December 12, 2024 by onedeckpete

It seems like a while away now but the weather over the weekend was awful, blustery and wet. We’re back to some sort of normality for this time of year, cold and wet! Cheers to Rich R for the picture from last week just as the storm was arriving in the Lake District. Great to hear it wasn’t too mad up there.

Reggae is outernational

Posted on December 8, 2024 by onedeckpete

Big shout to Thomas from Dub Explorations for letting us know about this excellent tune by Professor Skank from Greece entitled Jah Jah Is Coming (The rootsman version). This has taken a couple of days to worm its way into our brain here at Weeds and now we can’t get it out of our heads. A must have tune!

Gardening in the echo chamber

Posted on December 7, 2024 by onedeckpete

A big thanks to our good friend across the pond Dr Strangedub for playing part 2 of One Deck Pete’s An introduction to Dub Gardening on last Wednesday’s Echo Chamber at 84.00 minutes in here.

The show is a excellent listen for a Wednesday morning from 8-12am UK time if you love all things dub, downbeat and everything related all played by the good Doctor Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss play all sorts of reggae annd downbeat related tunes on their 4 hour show. Live link to KFAI from the twin cities here.

A wonderful tune was played on the show from Femi Kuti with a song called Politics Don Expose Them, wonderful stuff! Thanks again Dr Strangedub!

Live good in your neighbourhood

Posted on December 4, 2024 by onedeckpete

Big shout to The Rhythm Doctor for playing this wonderful tune by Johnny Cool on his excellent IDA Radio show Waiting Room earlier this week (at 49 minutes in with extra dubbed out bits by RD himself) called Long Time Ago and what a great tune it is!

Also reggae related, by accident this evening we found two hours of The Rootsman talking to the late great Augustus Pablo. Welll worth listening to, all on pirate radio WKLR Radio in Bradford from 1992. Reggae (like radio) never disappoints. Ever.

Autumnal Japan

Posted on December 4, 2024 by onedeckpete

Thanks to Rob C again for a few more pictures from his trip. As he writes, “Japan is obviously famous for its cherry blossoms in the spring, but the changing leaves are also a popular attraction in the autumn. It was a little early when I was there, but as the days passed, there were clearer and clearer signs of the leaves turning from green to gold to vibrant red”.

And to say we are in awe of the greatness of Tokyo Tower above, (officially Japan Radio Tower as it says on Wikipedia) is an understatement. It puts our local radio/TV landmark at Crystal Palace to shame. It would be nice to have a little crystal set rigged up to a MP3 recorder and see what can be picked up from the photo location!

Thanks a million Rob, well interesting photographs and we may even have a part three to this series!

We’ve had Scotland earlier so now Japan

Posted on December 2, 2024 by onedeckpete

Thanks to our good friend Rob C who’s just returned from a trip to Japan and sent us some great horticulturally themed pictures. The first (above) are fruit trees in Tokyo’s Imperial Gardens. Wow, they really are some large sized fruit!

While he was on his way to Meiji Jingu one of the Shinto shrines there, he caught this great display of minature gardens above. They’re excellent Rob, more photographs please!

We are not going to complain

Posted on December 2, 2024 by onedeckpete

We’ve just heard from our good friend Rich R in the Lake District about the weather tomorrow morning up there and it looks like it’s around minus 4. We will not complain about the supposed cold weather here in SE23!

Rich has just come back from a trip to Scotland around Oban and sent us some brilliant pictures from his highland adventure. The above makes of us think of what Mars would be like if it had water. Wonderful looking place.

And the above photographs too look like a special place even though we wouldn’t want to be doing any skinnydipping in the water there at this time of year. We’ve saved a great one until last, a majestic looking sheep from Kerrera. Wonderful stuff Rich and thanks again!

Weeds up to me knees

Madtone, gardening and life