Cheers again to Debby H for sending another couple of scans of some hard to find cassettes from a few moons ago. We love all that DIY home release business here!
And what’s wrong with cassettes…
2
Aberdare Rockers revived!
A big thanks to Debby H for sticking the audio of the excellent Aberdare Rockers cassette tape online on Mixcloud. We haven’t heard it for many moons and it is sounding excellent! Cheers to Debby H, Rhyhm Doctor, Karl S and Pete R for their valuable help sussing these tunes out. Any amends or misnamed please let us know.
Massive thanks to Debby H again for finding this classic cassette and for transfering it and sticking it up on Mixcloud. This mix will be on play again at Weeds HQ for the rest of the week! The MP3 can be downloaded here.
Augustus Pablo – Mount of Olives Dub
Mickey Dread – Robbers Roost
Wailing Souls – Mr Firecoal Man
Jacob Miller – False Rasta
Rod Taylor – His Imperial Majesty
Mikey Dread – African Anthem
Aminatou & The Roots Underground – Runaway Dread
Lord Sassafrass & Deborah Keys – Green Bay Inquest
Wailing Souls – Joy within your heart
Wailing Souls – Very Well
Dr Alimantado – Poison Flour
Dr Alimantado – Gimme my gun
Ijahman Levi – I’m a Levi dub/
IllusionInkling Music – Reggae Fusion Odyssey Roots Rhythm
The Incrowd – Mango Walk
Lord Creator – Such is life dub
The Wailers – Guided Missle
The Shadows – Brother Noah
Culture/Mighty Two – Two Sevens Clash (dub)
Prince Far I and the Arabs – Long Life
Errol Dunkley – A little way different
Junior Byles – Can you feel it (Sufferation Everyday)
The Observers & Niney –Tribulation Dub
Leroy Smart/I Roy – Jah is the Light/Wicked Eat Dirt
And the best Monday morning radio show goes to…
A big shout to our good friend The Rhythm Doctor for playing two Madtone tracks on his radio show this week (NC-ND and Message from Madtone). As we keep saying, if you want to hear a great Monday morning radio show which plays all sorts from Jazz, Funk, Dub and Downbeat you should tune into The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on a Monday morning from 9-11am (UK Time) on IDA Radio, Tallinn.
Both tracks featured are available on the Madtone Bandcamp here.
And here’s a version of a Message from Madtone from another good friend Jasmine Tutum.
A view from the front door (January edition)
A big cheers goes out to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a few pictures from his front door this week. And what a view! As Rich told us: “Here’s the view out front this lunchtime. A bit of context here, the distance from one end of the photo to the other is 6 miles. Imagine how many buildings London has in that space!” He ain’t wrong there. We worked out that Forest Hill to Elephant and Castle is 5 miles or so, so that is some width!
Pic below “This is looking south from the doorstep towards Keswick , 2 miles away and in the foreground.” Now there’s a great view from the front door. Cheers for sending the pics in Rich!
A couple for a Saturday night
A tune for a winter’s Saturday night found while researching a shortwave mix. It’s called “Farewell” and is from Stereognosis® from a few year ago. It’s wonderful stuff!
And while we’re on the subject of Stereognosis® check the whole LP on Bandcamp as it’s well worth getting. Here’s another good one off it.
Now this is what you call a tape!
A big thanks to Debby H for getting in touch here about a tape called Abedare Rockers, an excellent reggae compilation from the mid 1970’s. There’s not much info about it and it doesn’t appear online either in digital form sadly but we did have a copy of it years ago which we picked up by mail order or somewhere on a London excursion and it was a bit of a much played classic.
From looking online the tape was available at the 1976 Deeply Vale Festival and as Michael Williams (who worked at Better Badges and Dub Vendor amongst other places and was one of the founders of the Dread Broadcasting Corporation, more info on that here) said on Facebook a few years ago: “‘Aberdare Rockers’ was a compilation made in my flat mid 1970s, can’t remember who compiled it, could have been ‘Nightdoctor’ founder Charles Wood, my brother or Joly MacFie. Joly and I did Better Badges and were reggae fanatics and so duplicated this compilation, to as one did in those days turn people on. It was thought of as a regular underground release but no just a compilation made in the heady days of the 70s amidst ganja fueled evenings pre punk.”
Well Debby has found said tape and sent us a pic of it and copy 64 is above. Brilliant stuff! We look forward to hearing a copy of this one day as it was a wonderful tape. Also she sent us some great pics of covers of other cassettes she has just unearthed and we love that DIY ethic of all of those. Brilliant stuff Debby and thanks for getting in touch!
By the way this below is an interesting interview with Michael Williams about DBC featuring some good tunes too.
Radio Bingo!
If you’ve got a shortwave radio (or fancy a go on a Software Defined Radio aka SDR radio lilke this one here) there’s an Imaginary Stations show called The Numbers Station going out to Europe via Shortwave Gold this Sunday 7th January 2024 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then on 3975 kHz at 2100 UTC.
As you expect there’s an hour of great tunes that feature numbers and also at 18 minutes in is a mix from One Deck Pete aptly called “The Numbers Game” that has tunes from Kieran Mahon, Sonmi 451, Paper Sailboat, AK and Madtone. Tune in!
Also numbers related is an interesting youtube we’ve posted up before but worth posting again called Which Mysterious Numbers Stations Were Used In Music? from the great Ringway Manchester. Excellent stuff and cheers for mentioning Madtone!
Sorry we ain’t into the Bad Seeds, only the good ones
Happy New Year to all our music/gardening friends and we hope 2024 is a good one.
It’s now time to think of what you’re going to grow this year and what changes you may be making in the garden, if any. First thing we did was check our seed tin seeing what we may have had left over. There were some Ldll lettuce, a couple of packets off ebay and some stuff we’ve had knocking around for ages which suprised us a little as we thought we used everything up.
As ever we’re on the look out for any seed swaps, or community/allotment sales that have good cheap seed and plant events we may be able to get some interesting variety of seeds. At the present moment we can’t find too many local ones in south London. Garden Organic has a regularly updated list here that is worth checking and also Pumpkin Beth‘s website here which list seeds swaps and plant fairs. If there’s any you know of in the London area or thereabouts, do let us know and we’re blog the dates up.
So we will now raise a mug of tea and hope everyone has a great 2024 and may your garden thrive! And here’s some garden related tunes to give inspiration and good plant growing vibes.
Oi mate, that’s my Egg Nog okay?
A Happy Boxing day to all! Here’s the audio of The imaginary Stations Winter Holiday Special which was broadcast via Shortwave Gold on Christmas Eve on those shortwaves. There’s a load of festive tunes throughout the hour plus “A holday Mix” from One Deck Pete at 40.38 minutes in. Here’s the tracklistings:
Forgotten employee – The Backroom Tapes
Snow Palms – Evening Rain Gardens (Excerpt)
Kohei Yoshi – Cold Ice Dub
Frost – Munch RIP (instrumental)
Bodyswitch – Gee Whiz it’s Christmas
Jacob Miller/Ray I – Deck The Halls
Kibble – Warm Fireplace (Excerpt)
Not the Twelfth Night
We went out for a Christmas Eve pint and saw the first dumped Christmas tree of the year at Blythe Hill Fields (where the recycle team usually pick the trees up in January) at 3pm today. Crazy stuff and it isn’t even Christmas Day yet. Those trees aren’t cheap!
Whilst we’re on the Christmas/Yule/Solstice tip, we would like to wish all our gardening and music friends and readers a Happy Holiday and may you all have a great 2024!
Weeds up to me knees 