The solstice in the comfort of your own slippers

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“This year Winter Solstice will be marked at Stonehenge on the morning of the 22nd December, not the 21st December.” English Heritage.

We nearly started up the (DJ) horsebox earlier this morning to make the trek down to the ‘henge and join Ken Barlow and the hundreds of others for the solstice festivities. Thank God we found out that English Heritage has changed the date before setting off. Let’s hope the many who go down by train know about the date change or they’ll find they will need to buy an open saver return instead of a day return or they will be travelling illegaly.

If you want to miss out on the train, the layers of mud and hours of waiting, technology has come to the rescue as English Heritage have a live stream going tomorrow morning with some ambient accompaniment (above). So put on your best slippers, have some tea and toast ready and watch the sunrise from the comfort of your armchair without breaking any laws. A Happy Solstice to you all, whenever or wherever you’ll be celebrating the solstice.

It’s cold outside

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Who’d have thought we’d have snow in London yesterday. It came down in the late afternoon and it is most forgiving when it comes to a garden that needs a bit of work doing on it. Even the shortwave radio longwire antenna is feeling the cold.

It’s been a while since we’ve been out there and there are lots of jobs to do but the jobs can wait as there isn’t a fat lot of things we can do at the present moment. With the solstice around the corner it won’t be too long before it’s spring (or are we just fooling ourselves?)

Here’s to the sunshine..

Anyone can make radio happen…

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In a couple of hours time the Imaginary Stations crew have a DIY related broadcast via WRMI on 9395 kHz at 2300 hrs UTC.

There will be toolshed related tunes, advice on repairing stuff around the home “without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts” and tips and tricks from various handymen and women from around the globe. So plug in that homebrew radio, tune it in and enjoy!

Come out from behind the Psyche-cle shed

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The first part of the Shortwave Garage Sale (The psyched out special) in The Imaginary Stations series which was transmitted last week on WRMI is now up on Mixcloud in all its studio glory but sadly missing all the fades and the remix by the ionosphere.

At 02.05 minutes in is the mix from One Deck Pete called Live from the Psyche-cle shed. Here’s the tracklistings to accompany the tripped out mix:

Kourosh Yaghmaei – Hajme Khali
The Dandelion Set – A Clean Sweep
Tim Maia – Over Again
Soul Vendors – Psychedelic Rock
Şatellites – Disko Arabesque

And whilst you’re there check this out!

And thanks to our good friend Zdenko Franjić for sending us the below. What a track!

R.I.P. Keith Levene

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Yesterday we were very saddened to hear about the death of the great Keith Levene. It’s a massive loss, what more can we say? Here’s a couple of his magical musical moments that touched us over the years.

In the bootleg below from a very early Clash gig at The Roundhouse in 1976 that’s got to be him at 25.30 with that Spanish style guitar riff he used to brilliant use in PIL’s Memories years later (The version of this we used to own on cassette contained much more hiss than music).

He mentions that riff in an excellent interview here from years ago which is one well worth taking the time to read “There’s this normal Spanish guitar thing that goes dun-da-da-dun da-da-dun (quickly, imitating matador music)… It’s one of the first things I learned to play on guitar – very simple. I was very fond of that.”

There was a lot more output than just The Clash and Public Image. We remember going to a Meltdown at Royal Festival Hall years ago and seeing Keith performing with The Bug (with Warrior Queen providing vocals over the top) and you couldn’t miss that trade mark guitar sound. Rest in Peace Keith Levene.

Tunes to cheer you up – November 2022

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Big shout to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for passing on an excellent musical recommendation for us tonight, an artist called Stromae who we had no idea about. Initially it was the grand tune with an equally as grand video Fils de joie (below) which then led us to the tune (above) Santé. How come we’ve never heard of him before? Great tunes and wonderful vids, cheers Justin!

Not at all a bit previous

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We’re starting to think of next year’s gardening even if at the moment we wouldn’t want to actually go out in our garden as it chucking it down but it’s never too early to start thinking of next season.

We bought a lot of herb seeds last week to restock up on the pots just outside the kitchen (plus some poppies to chuck in the wild area) and hopefully get a few herb pots going on the windowsill. We’ve just noticed on one of the seed packets that the original common name for Borage was “burrage” or “llanwenlys” a Welsh word for “Herb of Gladness.” We’ve also just found out that the herb is used in the German green sauce known as Grüne Soße or Grüne Sosse. Good stuff!

Remember even if you’ve got a few seed packets in your seed box that may be out of date don’t worry they are worth trying (except Parsley that really needs fresh seed to start germinating). It’s all in the preparation!

The days when the lute ruled

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Tomorrow Sunday 6th November 2022 from 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz shortwave there will be another episode of WREN in a renaissance style. The hour long show will include tunes with “harmony that places a greater concern on the smooth flow of the music and its progression of chords.”

There’s another mix in a renaissance style from One Deck Pete at 17 minutes in featuring: Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, Deega, O.G. Jigg and Baroque Baroque. Tune in and enjoy another journey back to the time when the lute was all over the musical charts.

Meanwhile back in the garden…

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This week we bought six giant White Elephant Garlic from a nursery in Wales off ebay. We’ve been growing Garlic for a few years now and never seem to get the size that you do in the shops, so we thought if we bought some giant variety and even if we weren’t successful and got half sized giant ones we’d be happy. They are some size though, Yorkshire teabag for comparison

On the ebay site we bought them from mentioned you can eat the scapes (the tender stem and flower bud) too. “Chop into pieces and sauteé in butter or oil for about 5 – 6 minutes and serve like a green bean or add to salads and stir fries. Roast or BBQ the scapes whole and serve like garlicky asparagus with an ailoli dip or just some balsamic and olive oil.” You learn something new every day! Here’s some good tips about growing Garlic here.

Tuppence a bag

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In a couple of hours this evening Sunday 23rd October 2022 at 2200 UTC/2300 UK time the imaginary station WREN goes flying into the ionosphere on shortwave on 9395 kHz thanks to those big cage-like antennas at WRMI. 

Expect all sorts of great bird related tunes from all genres throughout the show and at 43.33 minutes in One Deck Pete spreads his wings with Are you feeling Chirpy? It’s a 15 minute mix featuring Jiony, Hawk, Mr Bird feat John Skweird, Lee Perry and Mighty Sparrow.

This show is especially for all the twitchers out there! Bird watching slang of the day is Pish pronounced Fish – A noise made with the lips for the purpose of attracting birds and having them come closer to you so they can be identified.

If you haven’t got a shortwave radio no problem, just tune in to 9395 kHz on AM mode at 2200UTC/2300 UK time using this SDR here. This is not a fly by night radio show. Tune in or listen again.

STOP PRESS The show is now up online here: