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.
After all the comments about how bad this summer has been, it looks as the weather has listened and now changing to some super warmth over the next few days and to celebrate here’s a lovely tune from Augustus Pablo/Enos McCloud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qEGis2nblM
Here’s a couple of tunes for a Friday evening. First an Augustus Pablo classic called Melody Dub which is a B side to the tune Unfinished Melody. It’s a stripped down bass and drum instrumental with a crisp high end, whisps of double-tracked melodica floating back and forth into the mix interspersed with short piano and keyboard parts. Definitely a less is more tune.
And another example of said style is the B side Roman Stewart’s I was lonely called One Heavy Duba for obvious reasons. As far as we can remember, the (slightly pressed off-centre and very scratched) copy we own was bought on a second-hand shop crawl of Nuneaton in the late 1970’s. Distance memories of boxes of scratched seven inchers nestled in dirty beer crates between rusting fridges and old washing machines with the smell of mould and damp coming from them, ahh the good old days that we’ll never see again etc…
The above picture was the weather we had at the start of the week and by all accounts will return tomorrow. That’s all we need but the heating’s on at the moment and the stereo has been turned up high. The first tune of the night is Straight to Mad Professor’s head from the set Mad Professor meets Channel One: Round 2 by Mad Professor and Channel One. It is one subtle dub!
We heard a Hugh Mundell dubplate on this week’s excellent Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn). While we were looking for it we found a great Augustus Pablo Dub of Feeling Alright.
And the best “out there” tune of the night is from a LP called Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol.1 on the excellent Sublime Frequencies label from out of Seattle. No idea who it’s from or what it’s called, all it says on the notes is that it’s in the Sumatran Dangdut style. It has a hook that sounds like an interval signal from a numbers station which we can’t place, that is sometimes played on a rasping bagpipe sounding keyboard. The LP has a wonderful cover too, what more do you want? Wonderful stuff which will worm its way into your brain as it’s so catchy.
Let’s temporarily forget the crap weather and dark times and listen to some decent tunes to soothe, inspire us and give us a break so to speak.
Another big big tune from Mungo’s Hi-Fi featuring Cian Finn. This release is very haunting and one that you bellow “Don’t finish!” when it comes to the fade-out. “In a Irish traditional style, in a Scottish traditional style”. We need the dub of this, badly!
And the weather at the present moment here is:
Yesterday afternoon just as the rain started to pour we popped in to Shannon’s for some multi-purpose compost for our new zinc planters in the back garden. While we were there we got chatting to a nice chap from The Woodland Trust and asked if they’d be up for compiling a chart for us. Until they get back to us here’s a quick woodland-related five on this wet and chilly Good Friday. We honestly can’t see ourselves putting those spuds in the ground this weekend, so it’s back to looking on the internet for odd and interesting seeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=119&v=lJD5btoCsmo
The Frightnrs – Till Then (Version) – Daptone Records
A lovely dub from The Frightnrs as mixed by the great Ticklah aka Victor Axelrod (who we featured a couple of times here) which we heard the other week by the Rt Hon David Rodigan. A nice stripped down “less is a lot more” minimal affair with a bit of breakthrough creeping through in an old-time style. A tune to play loud when finding out that the salt that was put down to kill the weeds in your back garden was in fact of the low sodium type. Well you win some, you lose some and all that.
And while we’re on the subject of hot dubs of The Frightnrs by Ticklah look no further than “Lookin version” Tune! One to play very loud indeed never mind the sodium content of what salt you use.
Which put us in mind here of another excellent dub, this time from way back in time in 1977 by the late great Augustus Pablo…
https://soundcloud.com/jahblemmuzik/kingston-dub-club-jah-shaka-x-rockers-soundstation-3122017
The Sun is showing it’s face in London town today and to celebrate here’s a great five and a half hour recording of the great Jah Shaka at The Dub Club, Kingston. Earlier on in the mix “Problems” by Horace Andy is spun, reminding us of a great Augustus Pablo version of the rhythm. More on the dub club, Kingston here.
Spring is finally here (but there’s still a massive risk of frost in the next few weeks so take it easy at that garden centre!)
We had to do a bit of speed gardening today (at the pace a council worker would go at if their foreman had said “as soon as you’re finished you can go home”) as we’d left it a bit late in the afternoon when we started. There were good intentions to begin earlier but you know how it is on a Sunday.
In the space of an hour, a couple of beds were dug over, some plants moved, lost root veg rescued and the Lemon Verbena hopefully protected for the winter. There’s still a good few beds to crack on with but at least we’ve started. The more you get out of the way now the less work it is in the spring. It’s just making that start!
Weeds up to me knees 