It looks like spring has sprung

Pic: The pond this morning.

A big thanks to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending us a mix to celebrate this first day of spring called “A sunshine mix in spring”. It’s a brilliant garden/nature related mix and one to have on when you’re sowing those first vegetable/flower seeds indoors on the potting table (in our case the kitchen sink!)

Here’s the tracklisting:
Intro – Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Alabaster DePlume – That Was My Garden (Edit)
Tunng – Snails
Oscar Jerome – Smell The Daisies feat. anaiis (Radio Edit)
THSA – In Bloom
Late Nite City – Higher Ground
United Freedom Collective – Moonshine
lovetempo – But I Do (Daisybelle Remix)
Gabril Gosse – Breeze ft. Emile Parisein
Shane Sato – Gardenia
Yahushi Ide – A Place In The Sun
Ebi Soda – Bamboo
Evren Furtuna – Little Flower
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)
Chaos In The CBD – Midnight In Peckham ft. Isaaz Aesilli
Ursula Rucker (& Charles Webster) – Begin Anew (Acapella) Edit)

So raise a toast to Jean-Michel Jarre if you’re that way inclined or just to the forthcoming season when one day soon you will wake up and not see a frost. Cheers Gerry!

From the shipping forecast to the skinhead

Big shout to Gerry Hectic for letting us know about the Shipping Forecast all-day special  on Radio 4 yesterday celebrating 100 years of said forecast. All the programmes are now up online on BBC Sounds and all very well worth a listen but here’s one we caught last night about the forecast’s theme tune “Sailing By” here.

A classic tune wrote by a man called Ronald Binge at a room at the end of his garage that was thick with cigarette/cigar/pipe smoke. More on Sailing By here.

And by the powers of the internet we learned there’s a reggae connection too. From Ronald Binge’s wikipedia page here: “Best known today is probably Elizabethan Serenade. A reggae version of the tune, Elizabethan Reggae, was performed by Boris Gardiner in 1970.” Look at his writing credit under the song title.

What a difference four days make

It doesn’t take long, just a few days of dryness to ruin what you have in your garden. Our good friend Gerry Hectic came back the other week from Gilles Peterson‘s We Out Here festival and his tomato/strawberry experiment in one of those strawberry pots was looking the worse for wear. It is totally sad to see the before (above) and after (below).

Please tell us there’s a happy ending Gerry!

And to change up the vibes on this sad event here’s a wonderful number from Cyril Diaz Et Son Orchestre with Feeling Happy. May this tune lift spirits and sad dry plants everywhere.

 

North London garden news

A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of what’s going on at the moment in the plant pots and flower beds in her north London garden. The ornithogalum above and below has started to produce more flowers and looks great.

The pictures of the cosmos (below) in her last post here influenced us to run out and get a plant for ourselves. It’s now in a pot  and with its great flowers they’re a new favourite of ours here at Weeds.

The phlox and the sedum (below) are looking healthy too, unlike some of the plants in our garden. We’ve been doing a fair bit of watering here but there’s only so many times you can go up and down the garden with a watering can.

We stopped the hose a good few years ago after Gerry Hectic recommended a great episode of Gardeners’ World which was about conserving water which shamed us from using said hosepipe. What was funny we were going to get the hose out yesterday and when we unravelled the thing we noticed that the outside tap was stuck in the “Stop” position. Someone somewhere was making sure we didn’t use that hose!

The golden rod looks gigantic and the flowers are starting to open and the tomatoes are looking healthy too.

Cheers for the pictures Debby as they are appreciated here.

Words in papers, words in books

Big thanks to Gerry Hectic our man from the south coast for sending us his “Wise words or not” mix. It’s a great one as ever with lots of tunes that we’ve never heard before (Yvonne Baker being one of them, what a great track) and a mix to investigate. Here’s the tracks:
Moritz von Oswald Trio – Chapter One
Mike Leander And His Orchestra – The Letter
The Harvey Averne Dozen – The Word
Yvonne Baker – Didn’t Say A Word
The G.G. All Stars – (Same Folks) Dub Wise
Felipe Gordon – No Words (Byron the Aquarius Dub Mix)

Gerry’s mix was inspired by WORD on Imaginary Stations on Sunday which is now up online on the Imaginary Stations Mixcloud below. The show featured books, (Radio Phonic) laboratories, dictionary rock, abbreviations and ampersands and lots more from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

The first track on the show from The Real Tuesday Weld called Last Words is how you use shortwave samples in a tune!

At 21.13 mins in there’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “A Word to the Wise” and the tracks are:
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)
The Medallions – The Letter
Giorgio (Moroder) – Stop
Capital Letters – Smoking My Ganja
Jourbert Singers – Stand on the word
The Conet Project – Phonetic Alphabet NATO (excerpt)

Cheers again to Gerry for sending us his mix and here’s more WORD related tunes.

International vibes yet again

This Sunday 19th May 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations bring you Skybird Radio International which will be beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold.

SRI is a worldwide affair as you can imagine with tunes from around this globe of ours from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore. There’s also a mix from One Deck Pete which will include tracks by Marlena Shaw, Manjeet Kondal, Tubotito & Rags, Adrian Sherwood and Esher Suarez.

Gerry Hectic (also a contributor to our Countryfile style calendar 2025) has produced an answer version to the One Deck Pete mix and here it is in its glory and what a mix it is. Thank you Gerry, it’s appreciated.

Gerry Hectic presents “A May themed answer” mix
One Deck Pete & Popular – Enrico (Hay-eer-yah’s Continual Harmonica Cut) BCR
Loretta Heywood – Satta Massagana (The 6/* Blues Mix) – Tangential Music
Marlena Shaw – Love Has Gone Away (Disco Version) – Blue Note 12”
Sababa 5 – Bezani – Batov Records
Natasha Kitty Katt ft. His Bitter Truth – Galactic Love – F*CLR Music

Music to send you to sleep

Tune in via Shortwave Gold this Sunday 10th March 2024 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz to the sound of sleep with WZZZ. This is a horizontal themed show and they’ll be lots of great tunes to drop off to and to dream to, all around the sleep theme from the Imaginary Stations crew of DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and One Deck Pete.

At 1.50 minutes in they’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete called “You may say I’m a dreamer” with tunes by Jah Wobble, L. Pierre, The Barbados Steel Orchestra,
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and Owen Gray. Tune in for an hour of tunes on a sleepy tip next Sunday if you fancy a morning/afternoon snooze or an early night depending on the time.

And our good friend Gerry Hectic has compiled an answer mix (above) called “You’re not the only one” and an excellent mix it is too so listen and dream. Cheers Gerry it’s great stuff! Here’s the tracks:
Janek van Laak – Sloppy Dreams (Sonar Kollektiv)
King Jammy – Dreams (Dub Version)
MG Gost feat. Jack Jones – Dream Chaser
SEED Ensemble feat Cherise Adams-Burnett – The Dream Keeper
Spiritczualic Enchancement Centre – Dreaming of Miles Davis (Transporting Salt [Enhanced Version])
Miles Davis & Michel Legrand – The Dream

Songs to sow seeds to

A big thanks to Gerry Hectic for supplying us with our first ever guest mix. It’s only three tracks but it really is a lovely mix and goes out to all of the early seed sowers out there. Here’s the tracks:

Gerry Hectic presents
“A packet of three (Seed Varieties) for Weeds up to me Knees”
Fug – From Little Seeds We Grow (4hero Folk Soul – Vocal/Instrumental)
Paris Smith Quintet – Thought Seeds
Seeds Of The Earth – Planting Seeds

So get those seed catalogues out, bang this on the stereo and chill out to this great mix. Thanks a lot Gerry! We welcome all mixes in a gardening style by the way.