Where were you in 1982?

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Over the last few days the Cardoon up near the house has been expanding on its neat purple tufts. We don’t grow them to eat but for their great punk rock-like hair arrangement. Talking of the loveable spikey tops, the other morning on Bandcamp we read a great piece on Crass and Anarcho Punk (here) and there was a nice quote from Penny Rimbaud “Crass said that there is no authority but yourself… You know, live your life, find your own garden, and then share it.” We love that quote!

Crass played Birmingham once and the story goes they brought their own PA, support band, fanzine stall etc making it a great DIY event. The only let down of the night was that the beer at the gig was awful. That led to a rumour that the band took the DIY ethic to the nth degree and brought a load of their own home-brew to the venue. We doubt that very much as how much beer would they would have to transport from Dial House in Essex up to Birmingham to keep a few hundred punks happy? If only Crass did produce their own lager. Imagine how good the graphics would be on the bottles/cans too?Another plant we don’t use in the kitchen is Marjoram. We originally bought a plant from Shannon’s as we thought it was an alternative to Oregano and it’s spread like crazy. The bees and all the other winged insects that flock to it in the hot sun certainly love it and it’s well worth having in the garden to keep those insects happy and the masses of flowers look great too!

Report from the garden

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It ain’t The Good Life but we’re starting to get some more edibles out of the garden. The shallots are small but we’re getting a lot of them, that’s the first Zuchinni/Courgette (above) and the chillies are really doing well and there are a good few on the plants. As a good gardening friend of ours said a long time ago “Keep picking the fruit and cutting the flowers and more will come”.

As for our anarchic seed sowing style we have a Cardoon up near the house from when we broke open a seed head and just chucked the seeds around the garden. There are better looking Cardoons up the road but we ain’t complaining especially as they’re from free seed.

And as for the Barley Straw in the pond it does now look like it’s working and been working for a while. The fish seem happy and you can actually see them now!

 

 

COOL down the pace

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Last weekend’s transmission of Imaginary Stations (the show that features music you probably won’t hear elsewhere on shortwave) is now up on Mixcloud. This episode is the station COOL “Cool tunes for Summer moods” featuring some music that evokes sunshine even though London last weekend wasn’t experiencing much of that.

23 minutes into the broadcast in is a mix from One Deck Pete called a “Seven Inch Single Summer Special” featuring
Earl Brown – Get Together
Stereolab – Miss Modular
Freda Payne – Unhooked Generation
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng Version/Roots Radics Dedication To Flabba Holt 2 Martel Robinson – Follow you

So get out in the garden, perch yourself on a deckchair, stick some headphones on and blast the show for maximum pleasure. “Summertime and the living is easy” as Our ‘enry once sang.

Remix awareness for a Thursday night

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Last year we posted up an LP called Social Awareness from Stinky Jim out of Auckland, New Zealand here. Cheers goes out to Jim who this morning let us know about the new remix LP here. If you love reggae, chilled out tunes and the eclectic you’ll love this!

On first listen Cry for the Ute (Solar Tropics Remix) really stuck and we now can’t get it out of our heads. Very subtle but also very grand. We’ve just found out that Solar Tropics are “an Ambient Art project based on Nature, Space and Magic” from California. Sounds like something up our street and have got a bandcamp site we’ll explore (here).

Like the original LP there’s some brilliant productions here, including Strange Fish‘s version of On The Ag and the strange warped sounding ice cream van type chimes and mad beats of Christophe El Truento‘s remix of Cry for the Ute. Flames of Love the Jefferson Belt Remix is tripped out and bassed out on a stripped down, less is definately more tip. More horizontal dreamery on Le Creak (Triblin Sound Remix). Who needs stress with these tunes. Looks like we have another favourite as well in Runs On the Board with Jefferson Belt on the desk, now this stuff brings the blood pressure down with its chilledness. If you want it bringing up again you can always listen to Loose Carry (18th Man Dub by Seekers International).

So if you like reggae, downbeat and a little bit of upbeat-downbeat (if that’s a thing) and you want to listen to something that encapsulates all of that but at the same time want something that takes you on a different trip, you must get this 16 track set.

By the way Jim runs Stinky Grooves the long running radio show on 95bFM out in New Zealand which is well worth lstening to if you love tunes of the dubbed and bassed out variety. Have a butchers here. Cheers again Jim for letting us know about this top LP!

This was before the storm

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This morning we knew it was going to be stormy later today so went out early in the morning to put the couple of garden brolleys on their sides and then spotted that a couple of branches from the tree next door were precariously being held up by the fence. They had been blown down in the night and we didn’t even hear any wind and thought all of that windy weather was happening later today (which it did).

About an hour later it was all sorted and everything looked safe and back to normal and the bed below had a lot more light on it than before. Sadly we lost some trusses on one of the tomato plants perched below and god knows if it will survive. You can’t win them all!

And after all the excitement this morning here’s a tune to cheer us up from Minyo Cumbiero called Cumbia del Monte Fuji. There’s a nice dubbed out syn drum middle bit here too. What a tune!

Sundays on shortwave

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If you’re about the shortwaves this Sunday 16th July 2023 (with a radio or an online SDR here) there’s a couple of programmes that may interest you if you like the eclectic. The first is KNTS (Kearsarge North Transmission Service) from the Imaginary stations crew beamed to Europe via the services of Shortwave Gold in Germany at 2000 utc (9pm UK time) on 6160 khz.

Expect lots of shortwave, radio related sounds and even some tunes with CW (that’s morse to you and I) and at 15 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete. If you haven’t a shortwave radio tune in here.

Then later at 2200 hrs UTC on 9395 kHz the great Shortwave Music Library returns via WRMI. DJ Frederick digs through his across the board record collection taking a few requests, pulling out some tunes and giving them an airing over the shortwaves. Sit back and relax with a COOL drink and turn that shortwave radio back on. If the batteries have been taken out of the shortwave radio by the kids you can always tune in here.

Plants connect us all

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Big thanks to our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for keeping in touch through these tough times out there and sending us some excellent pictures from a Ukrainian countryside garden.

We’re not usually the biggest rose fans here and we don’t grow any ourselves but the ones here are brilliant especially the multicoloured one at the top and that’s a nice shade of purple below and we imagine they have a great scent too.

And look at these strawberries below, now you’re talking! They look a million times better than the ones that are now well done in our back garden. Cheers Wlad for sending us the pics and they’re really appreciated.

We didn’t sow that

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One plant we always have in the garden mainly through self seeding (thus being a volunteer plant) is the good herb borage. It’s great for the bees and its leaves can be thrown into the comfrey liquid bucket adding some extra goodness into the mix. More on its uses here.

Also if you remember we were a bit fed up of accidently leaving in potatoes when harvesting them and they regrow the year after leaving spuds where you don’t want spuds. One idea we were told about to get around this problem is growing them in a large pot, various containers and even plastic bags so all you have to do is tip the spuds and soil out in one easy action. Here’s one doing well (above) in a green shopping bag with lots of drainage holes in the bottom. Where there’s a will there’s a way as they say.

Empire state chilli

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The sun’s been away for a couple of days and it’s been feeling cold of late. Things are cracking on in the garden though, like the chilli plant (above) that is at the top of the weird hand-made hat stand we found in the street a few years ago here. Touchwood no slugs have scaled it just yet.

The zucchini/courgette plant (above) which is in the raised bed is now beginning to flower after we made some room for it after we pulled out the potato plant (with some spuds!) that was there before.

And indoors on the kitchen windowsill we have another chilli (one that we were given) and that’s fruiting too. We always used to think growing chillies were hard. So far it’s the chillies that are doing well next to the spuds. Regular watering and comfrey feed is our secret to success alongside not much else.

Much more (than) music

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Big shout to our good friend The Rhythm Doctor for playing this excellent tune below by URBS called Ever Golden on this week’s Waiting Room radio show on IDA Radio (Tallinn). Tune in every Monday from 9-11am for a cross genre of quality breakfast classics from downtempo, funk, reggae and in-between.

Here’s a couple more radio shows this time of the shortwave variety this Sunday 9th July 2023 from the Imaginary Stations Crew. The first is at 2000 utc (9pm UK time) on 6160 khz where X-Raydio will be broadcast to Europe via the services of Shortwave Gold in Germany (whose motto is “Shortwave Radio is dead – Long live Shortwave Radio”).

The show will explore some audio from unusual musical formats and will feature a piece on Bone Music by Stephen Coates from The Real Tuesday Weld (also of the excellent radio show The Bureau of Lost Culture on Soho Radio, London) and also a flexi disc mix by Shane Quentin (from The Garden of the Earthly Delights radio show on CRMK, Milton Keynes). If you haven’t a shortwave radio, tune in here on Sunday evening at 9pm UK time.

A couple of hours later at 2200 utc (11pm UK time) is this week’s Imaginary Stations show which is KDUB v Radio Clarion via the services of WRMI. There’ll be some dub, some trumpets and then some dub with trumpets. Tune in for some blazing horns! If you haven’t a shortwave radio, tune in at 11pm UK time here. Remember, radio is where it’s at!