Here’s a quick update to the last but one post featuring Jesse Yuen‘s parents garden in Perth, Western Australia. Cheers to Jesse for sending us an update of what he’s listening to on the Hi-Fi at the moment.
This mix from Aussie producer Cousin is a great eclectic mix up:
Also Paul St. Hilaire’s – Tikiman Vol.1 is on heavy rotation
And this local reissue of 90s dub/downtempo tunes is also getting frequent spins. This is some nice stuff by the way!
Cheers Jesse for sending us some nice recommendations that we’re going to explore further.
We just found this recent show out of the blue (no pun intended), it’s Ross Allen doing one of his foundation music specials on his Meltdown show on NTS. This time it features the great photographer, PIL logo/Metal Box designer, Urban Shakedown/Basement 5 founder and many other things Dennis Morris. It’s not just an interesting listen, it’s a must listen!
We were reminded that in one of Dennis Morris’s books there’s a great picture of the Sex Pistols on an old-school coach (nothing as grand as having a loo or those tables with fancy lamps on it that football teams used to travel on cup final days in the 1970’s) on the M6 travelling away from Coventry the morning after their gig at Mr George’s in December 1977. It was a completely different world then, it’s all double decker coaches now and they have loos and even sarnies and tea and coffee on offer now!
Whilst the radio show was playing and remembering that photograph a tale came to mind and apologies if we’ve mentioned it before. It was a story we heard in 1978 from a chap we went to college with whose older brother was a car mechanic. This bloke did talk a lot of rot and this story beats the lot. He told us just before Christmas 1977 his brother got a call at his garage in Coventry to go to the motorway to fix a coach which had broken down. When he got there he saw it was a band on tour and was told it was the Sex Pistols. What was really odd though after a while he saw that all of the band (and their staff) were all dressed in suits and flared trousers and all of the punk image was a big act just for publicity (so he told us). Probably one of the best punk stories we may have ever heard. How the band kept that fact hushed up for all these years we will never know. You heard it here first.
Going back to reality and the radio show, the first tune Black Skin Blue Eye Boys from The Equals featuring Eddy Grant (Dennis mentions a couple of great Eddy Grant stories by the way) that starts the proceedings took us back in time to an excellent reggae 12″ influenced by that great tune (below the original).
Yesterday evening just after sundown we wandered to the bottom of the garden just to take in a bit of the night-time air. With a little bit of light coming from the back of a neighbour’s house we could just make out two frogs “doing lengths” in the newly renovated pond. Lovely to see them back. Nice to hear their croaks too!
The netting which keeps the Lewisham Heron from getting its beak in has a few raised areas at the side that night visitors can get in and out of and in the top left hand corner is a moss covered stick come frog ladder. it was great to see we have visitors making a trip and it’s been a while since we noticed we had frogs and we wonder if it was the ever decreasing depth of the pond was putting them off before.
It was also nice to see that the Tree Lilies we got given from our good mate Marc B (cheers for passing them on Marc!) have started to sprout! Here’s one of them above. That’s what’s good about gardening the receiving and passing on of surplus plants and seeds.
We’re writing this while listening to an old Ross Allenshow on NTS and this is playing from the late great Bunny Wailer.
And a couple of posts ago we posted up the track by L.S.Diezel called Volume 1 that had a lovely Yabby You sample in it and Ross has just played the tune that was sampled in a remix style. Tune! Roll on the good weather so we can play tunes like this loud!
A piece of out there dub courtesy of the great Dennis Bovell at the controls called “Coolie”from Sarathy Korwar(Featuring Delhi Sultanate & Prabh Deep). Jazzy vibes, some dubbed out keys and a lovely rhythm section, what more do you want? The Bandcamp “The time has come to open thy heart/wallet” legend comes quicker than you think. The vocal version is tops too: “Cocaine run by the CIA, Opium smuggling run the same way”. Tune!
And talking of the great Blackbeard Bovell… (off the 1980 LP I Wah dub)
And an excellent show from Ross Allen on NTS where Dennis Bovell picks some tunes. It starts with the excellent Bovell produced Riot in Lagos from Ryuichi Sakamoto and it goes from there.
Thanks to @hincmarianafor letting us know about the great free event tomorrow at The Garden Museum. We’ve left it a bit late but it’s an event worth going to if you like a seed swap like we do.
Incredible Edible Seed Swap Sat 27 January 2017 1.00-3.00pm (no booking required). The Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road London SE1 7LB
And accompanying news of the seed swap here’s a couple of lovely tunes heard on this week’s Ross Allen Showon NTS which has been on rotation here at Weeds HQ. The first is by The Officials called Distant Drums on a very limited Soul Jazz/Studio 1 release.
The next is a previous unknown Four Tops track called Don’t bring back memories (we don’t think this was the actual mix Ross played but it is a tune!) Best of luck to all who are going to the seed swap tomorrow!
Girls Names – Chrome Rose – Tough Love Records
This one’s been on repeat in our head since hearing it the other week on Andrew Weatherall’s Music’s Not For Everyone radio show on NTS. It’s a tune and a half.
Go and have a listen and decide for yourself!
Girls Names – Chrome Rose – Tough Love Records
Weeds up to me knees 