Tales of the Salty Bag

About a month ago a buddy gave me a bag of Great Value Caribbean BBQ flavoured potato chips. "Inspired by Island Life". I've been pretty excited to try these and I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to do so. When I cracked the bag I was met with a very strong chili powder smell. The chips have medium ridges (Wavy Lays style) and a slight green hue with flecks of red and black. As soon as it hit my mouth I was stoked, these chips did not disappoint and gave me exactly what I wanted, jerk chicken baby! The heat is a very nice hot pepper based in the medium spice range (maybe like a 6 or so, it gets the forehead sweats going pretty quickly for me). There is soo much flavour to this heat though. There's a hint of sweetness, some citrus. Weeyow, these are a nice treat. The crunch is typical midweight.    I got into ska the way that most 80's babies did. Knee deep into the third wave. I eventually got around to 2 Tone but for years didn't go back any furth

It's been a thick cut fall/winter so far but I've somehow managed to not try or write about Covered Bridge's (first?) foray into the thick cut game with their East Coast Lifestyle Thick Cut Sea Salt (they've released [I think] a couple flavours since, but I believe this is the first). Made in Atlantic Canada with white potatoes. White potatoes, Covered Bridge, say what? They smell like oil, don't look extremely thick cut. Appear to be kettle cooked. First chip tastes like a standard kettle cooked plain chip. The salt flavour is relatively minimal...lets see what the back of the bag says..yup, 9% per 50g, these are light on salt. Good mid weight crunch, possibly slightly lighter than mid weight. I don't mess with plain/salt/sea salt chips on their own very often. I was hoping these would be proper thick cut, but I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell you that they would be labeled thick cut in a blind taste test. I'm missing the dark russet. Good chip

Slide (Gourmet Potato Chips) has 2 BBQ flavours. I previously provided my words about the Honey BBQ , but tonight I'll be stepping into the Spicy BBQ arena. Thick cut, medium crunch that turns to creamy potatoness. The seasoning is a nice spice that feels jalap based. There's a lot of well done bbq flavour, it's not quite burnt but it's on the well done side. I want to say there's significant garlic in the mix as well, it really shows up in the aftertaste (that or I'm crazy). The spice is nice and flavourful, but somewhat overpowers the BBQ of it all.   Upon skimming Dizzee Rascal's wiki tonight it came to my attention that he was convicted (March 2022) of assaulting (June 2021) his former partner. I wrote the paragraph below before reading that portion of the wiki, and I decided that it was okay to keep it because the intent is to point out that genres and flavours are sometimes hard to discern the differences between sub genres. Fix Up, Look Sharp wa

 Can one, or better yet should one, separate the art from the artist. What if the artist appeared to be okay when the art initially came out however as they aged became a taint. I'm not quite sure. If you own an album, or piece of art, that you purchased without knowledge of  the creator having significant faults should you still be able to hold onto that piece of art and let it represent what it did when it was originally purchased, or should new knowledge allow that art to be tainted. The discussion around the art definitely has to change. Lets say that there's a band and one of the people in the band is a chud, however the other members seem to be okay. Is the chuddiness enough to taint even the most significantly beautiful pieces of art. There's an almost infinite number of examples, and depending on your morals some are good and some are bad. There are some, like the Warped Tour pedo bands that it's like, yeah you should have been able to read between the lines. Th

 Anticipation can go one of two ways. You always hope for your expectations to be met, but quite often you're left with the taste of dirt in your mouth. When I first reached out to get some Slide (Gourmet Potato Chips) I pointed my bat towards the Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar as being the grand slam. Thick cut chips with the prime go to chip seasoning flavour, yes please.  Earlier this year Wasted Wax let on that there was a Quit It! LP in the works that would be out this year. From the onset of that announcement I was stoked. I thoroughly enjoyed River Jacks so I couldn't see why the next project wouldn't be anything shorty of a banger. I was met with a faint vinegar scent when I cracked open the Slide S&V. The crunch is mid to heavy weight which quickly gives way to the buttery texture that I've enjoyed with previous bags of Slide Chips. These beauties are THICK cut. The vinegar, as it smelled, is present but not overly aggressive. You really get the malt flavour

 Ruffles teamed up with KFC this summer to put out an Original Recipe Chicken flavour of potato chips. There's some tang to these lil potato circles. Standard Ruffles mini ridges. Bitta sweetness. Are there 11 herbs and spices? I dunno, probably, it tastes like KFC chicken batter. Tastes high in sodium, but it's only 13% per 50g. There's some pepper up in there. Medium crunch. Definitely on the all dressed family tree, just sans vinegar. The kids ate 3/4 of the bag before I got to them..which actually works out really well, 45g is a good quantity, otherwise the herb and spices would take over. It's been a minute since I've had KFC, the chicken cuts the aggressiveness of the herbs and spices a bit more than the potato chips...but on the flip side, these chips are less likely to give me terrible diarrhea, so I'd say it's a wash. If you find a bag they're worth picking up, I just wouldn't bother with a 6 pack. Hey ruffles, if you're going to colab,

 What happens when you mix Grumpster, Small Crush, The Moore Family Band and Dog Party? We'll find out when the Doki Doki LP comes out. Based on the first 3 singles I Was Killing It Man , Liar Liar and I Can't Fight This Crazy Anymore it's going to be varied across the punk and pop/rock spectrum. I Can't Fight This Crazy Anymore is the song that has me really excited for the album to come out, it's fronted by Small Crush's Logan Hammon and has that sweet Small Crush 90's influenced danceable alt-rock sound that is just infectious. Wooo yeah! So have another bag of Slide Gourmet Potato Chips in front of me tonight, the flavour du jour is Honey BBQ. I think these are going to be sweet with a mild kick. Not sure how the thick cut butteryness will blend in.  The smell like BBQ with some oil (canola). The flavour is slightly sweet, a bit of honey lemon twang. With this flavour I can taste a bit more of the potato skins. The BBQ is low in the mix, but pops out i

 I realized today that I didn't put a post up in September. I believe that's the longest that I've went without posting since this here blog started. Well, let me pick up with a new flavour of chips from the company that I left off with, Slide Gourmet Potato Chips, Dill Pickle (edition). This is by far the most natural tasting and unique dill pickle seasoning that I've ever had. The (thick cut) chips range from wicked crunchy to oddly crunchy (like a soft crunch, if that makes sense [the thickness of the chips make it odd, but enjoyable...and almost add a buttery/creamy flavour/texture to the party]). You can taste dill, garlic and when it hits (I believe) a malt vinegar. The garlic is strong with these babies. At 2.5oz (71g) bags, these leave you wanting more, but still satisfied (like, yeah, I could eat a 300g bag in one sitting [and would enjoy the whole thing], but I also don't want to die before I'm 40.) These chips are fantastic. The last time I blogged (w

Man, Ween makes some odd music. I was trying to remember what band sang Friends, and now I'm listening to La Cucaracha (which is the album Friends is on). Up until tonight I could only name one Ween song, you guessed it, Friends! Which is danceable and weird and triggers a fantastic dopamine rush (at least for me). I want to say it was the song that the friends section of Thanks, Brain! was edited to (might be another snowboard video, but I want to say it was at minimum in a Think Thank video [man, the Think Thank videos were {are? I haven't seen a new one in a while, but it looks like they're still sending it} dope. Thanks, Brain! was my introduction to their fun, inventive, just hype A.F. videos]). So yeah, a friend brought me back a bag of Slide Gourmet Potato Chips , Curry Garlic, from her recent trip to Wisconsin (thanks Top). The back of the bag has a quote "Hands down, the best chips I've ever had.". Well, Mr. Ryan Maurer, lets see if you've truly

 I was strolling through the co-op chip aisle when I stumbled across a bag of co-op Gold Pure vegan cheese Protein Twists. Plant based (I'm not quite sure how they could be vegan and not plant based [that's sort of a side note though]). I figured I'd grab a bag for my walk home, paid for them and started on my way. For the walk I figured it'd be a good time to throw on the new Pip Skid album ( A Really Nice Day ) to accompany me and my snack.  I opened the bag of protein twists and took a whiff. To be honest, they smell funky, somewhere between a fart and a dirty sock. While Pip's abrasive yet catchy What are you Working On knocked around in my head with it's whiny sardonic hook I apprehensively threw a protein twist into my mouth. *Chomp chomp chomp* good crunch. *Chomp* cheddarish flavour. Pretty good lead into Pip's bouncy (I'm not quite sure if it's country or blues tinged...maybe both?) You're not the Boss of Me (ft. Leonard Sumner). Leonard

 Gruff melodic punk, what more can you ask for. So about a month and a half (?) ago a friend texted me a picture of Cal & Garys Kettle Cooked Smokin' Sweet BBQ potato chips. "Best Served with Flames" that she found at a Calgary (get it, Cal & Garys) co-op. Co-op chips you say, smokin' sweet BBQ you say..."Made from 100% Canadian Grown Dark Russet Potatoes" you say. I had a pretty good idea what the back of the bag might say. Her and her family were out a couple weeks later and they were nice enough to bring me a couple bags to try. Flip it to the back, Great Grammy Albright would make homemade potato chips on her wood-fired pot belly stove with Grampy Aubrey's potatoes, yep. The Covered Bridge & co-op relationship is strong and we all benefit from it. Kettle cooked dark potato chips with skins abound which provide you with an earthy potato taste. The crunch is quite alright, mid to mid heavy. The BBQ seasoning is on the traditional more smoke

 Old Dutch Ridgies has put out some interesting flavours. This past April I stepped into one of their more standard(ish) flavours (if you're Canadian)..Ridgies Extra Ketchup. As with all Ridgies, Old Dutch brings you the Ruffles style mini ridges on their chips. The flavour is slightly sweet with some fairly tart tomato. The crunch, well, the crunch is medium. There's something all dressed to these chips but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'd say that the 'extra' in this bag is the vinegar portion of the ketchup seasoning, which if you've read any of my vinegar based flavour reviews you'll know that I'm down with that. I dig these. I went to my first show since Feb(?) 2020 a couple weeks ago. I had the joy of catching Clipwing , MakeWar , Brendan Kelly (solo), and A Wilhelm Scream at the Park Theatre in Winnipeg. Here's a few of my observations: - Clipwing is a great band, I've seen them open a lot of shows in Winnipeg and they do it we

 I enjoy tracing out band family trees in my head. It's crazy how you can trace Blink 182 back to Slapstick (who's the root of quite the family tree [extended family and all]). Recently I had my phone on random and a Banner Pilot song came on, it's probably been a year+ since I've listened to them....and they still bang. This took me back to the root of Banner Pilot, Rivethead. The tree that grew from Rivethead has provided me with a few in my top 20 all time albums. Even just taking a few of the first generation bands that they went on to form (Banner Pilot, Dear Landlord , House Boat, Gateway District) that is quite a hefty lineup. Then there's the bands that former members of Rivethead contributed to (Off With Their Heads, Slow Death), or Rivethead Cousins ( The Manix , The Soviettes). I'm not quite sure the point that I'm making in all of this, I just sort of wanted to bring light to Rivethead's Cheap Wine Of Youth EP and the undisputably great musi

There's something odd about Old Dutch Arriba tortilla chips having a Mexian Street Corn flavour...but here I sit with a bag in front of me. They smell like yellow corn tortilla chips. Now this is quite confusing, I'm getting real cool ranch notes with a hint of spice...just a wee lil hint. These are like if Cool Ranch was walking down the street and Nacho Cheese stumbled into them but just kept walking...then immediately you picked up cool ranch and consumed them (did I mention Nacho Cheese is a bit of a slob and doesn't really shower and if they were in a cartoon they'd have stink lines emanating from them). Every once in a while lime shows up to the party, lurks around in the background for a minute..then decides this ain't their scene. The crunch is average to marginally thicker than average (yeah, I understand that those aren't necessarily the same thing, but I'm pretty sure you get what I'm saying). There's enough background noise to make these

 About a month ago I was shopping with one of my roommates and he picked up a bag of Miss Vickie's Sweet Southern BBQ. They looked good to me, with the lil hot pepper on the front of the bag. I tried a few chips from his bag but didn't make any notes...except for the mental note to pick up a bag so that I could write some words about them. So, about a week ago I grabbed myself a bag. Sweet and mesquite with a little bit of bite. It's not a heat that'll bring on forehead sweats, but just enough bite to add a nice heat to the flavour, gets the salivary glands going. The chips are just above mid weight kettle cooked, the odd trace of skin but in general they're primarily present to add a crunch to the seasoning. These are a nice tweak to the mesquite BBQ family. A party mix of these, Miss V's Spicy Ketchup and Miss V's Spicy Dill pickle in a bowl would be right bangin'. I was going to try to find something southern to pair with these, but nothing really jum

 I ordered the Hockey Moms Warming Up the Van LP strictly because Wasted Wax was putting it out, I simply trust Bart to put out good stuff. I didn't check out Hockey Moms Bandcamp to see what they sounded like because it didn't matter. Based on the band name I was thinking it'd be on the humorous side of pop punk..sort of The Hextalls..ish So when the LP came in last week and I threw it on, well, I was quite surprised to be slapped in face with some punk rock with a real 80's hardcore influence. This albums bangs. The vocals are somewhat melodically shouted, with some doubling up/back up here and there. Without the lyrics in front of me I have a somewhat hard time making out the words, so I was a little disappointed that it didn't come with a lyric sheet to see what's up. I mostly assumed that based on the name of Hockey Moms they'd be somewhat thematic and jokey...when I went to their bandcamp, to link it in this post today, I saw that all their lyrics we

 Of the 3 brands that put out spicy dill pickle chips last year, Miss Vickies was the tops (IMO). So when I saw that they released a Sweet & Spicy Ketchup a few weeks ago I was intrigued to say the least. Can they better hard bite and take the tops of the throwbacks (maybe unknown throwbacks to the brands putting them out now?..but to me co-op gold will always be the spicy dill pickle progenitors with Archer Farms being the patient 0 of spicy ketchup). When I cracked this bag of MV Sweet & Spicy Ketchup I was met with a nice vinegary smelling ketchup. Good crunch, mid to mid high. There's a lot of tomato up in these maf's with some nice vinegar tang and a good hot pepper kick bringing up the rear. The heat is flavourful, but not aggressive or overwhelming and dances with the vinegar tang in your mouth (did not induce forehead sweats). Tomato sweetness, vinegar tartness and hot pepper heat, bangin'. I'd have to do a side by side with Hard Bite's Spicy Ketchup

 About a month ago Mike Park posted on IG that he found some copies of Bruce Lee Band's Division in the Heartland 12". I always have some back catalogue Asian Man Records stuff in mind to fill out an order for cases like this (because shipping is brutal these days). In goes the order..which also included Small Crush's Running + Home 7"..and some classic Slapstick descendant albums that I for some reason or another didn't have. Both Lawrence Arms and Alkaline Trio's debut LP's, Guided Tour of Chicago and Goddamnit, then I rounded it out with the Trio's Maybe I'll Catch Fire. I'm of a certain age that I may have procured these classic albums years ago when I was a teenager and didn't have much money, may have. Either way, I was pretty stoked when the vinyl brick came in the mail this past week. The entire Lawrence Arms catalogue has been on regular rotation for years, however Alkaline Trio was sort of in my peripheral, there were a few songs

 When Get Dead put out Dancing with the Curse a few years ago I'm relatively certain that I must have listened to it at least once, but then I moved onto something else. I don't know exactly why, but it fell to the back of my mind and not into my record collection. Well last fall when I pre-ordered The Copyrights new LP (and first on Fat) Alone in a Dome , I added a few other albums to make the shipping cost a little more palatable, of the albums that I ordered were Dead to Me's African Elephants . Cut to this past January when they were getting ready to ship my order Fat realized that they didn't have any more copies of African Elephants and asked if I wanted to substitute it with something. Because Dead to Me's sound is somewhat eclectic I figured that I'd substitute it with another punk band with a non-conventional sound, enter Dancing with the Curse into my life (I also really enjoy their previous album Honesty Lives Elsewhere [which is a very different so

I was recently introduced to Carly Dow 's music through a buddy out near Nelson. Well, I guess I was recently introduced to Carly Dow through a buddy out near Nelson, then I proceeded to check out her music because, well, that should be pretty evident if you've read this blog before, if not..I like chips and music. Buddy was nice enough to flow me his copies of both of Carly's albums, which I threw on the most recent LP, Comet , pretty much as soon as I got back to my house (and was in the presence of a record player). I'm not gonna bury the lead, Comet is tight. It's somewhere between folk, country and bluegrass. Carly's voice reminds me a lot of Stevie Nicks (I've never actively listened to Fleetwood Mac or Nick's solo music...but there's just some things you know), suffice to say, Carly's voice beautifully conveys the emotion of her lyrics. Even without listening to the actual words you can feel the songs. Comet is a relatively mellow album th

I'm tired, how 'bout you? There were some great things that happened in 2021. I haven't catalogued my record purchases for the year yet, which is somewhat odd, I usually get that done in the first few weeks of January, like I said, I'm tired. The cd's that I got throughout the year are somewhere between filed away on my cd shelves or in my car. 2021 was a year that flew by yet at the same time dragged on like a mother lover...so I may not quite remember what came out in 2021 or if it actually came out in 2020 and my memory's just shot. Below I'm going to provide an update on what sticks out in my mind as being tight in 2021...it's not a definitive list, and if I were to actually dig around through this blog and my collections it may change, but as a great book once said, you get what you get.  Beyond categorization - I interviewed Jon Lewis of The Dopamines, I'm still quite stoked on that and he was super kind (if it wasn't on a dated blog post

 This is just a rundown of my postings in 2021 including: the blog title, chip and music reference for anyone that doesn't want to read all them (I've done this each previous year for 2015 , 2016 , 2017 , 2018, 2019, and 2020 ) January 2021: Beachfront Property - Music (for title): Spanish Love Songs [Brave Faces Everyone album]. This was a rundown of good things from 2020. Also included is a brief review of co-op Gold Pure kettlecooked popcorn, Jalapeno White Cheddar flavour Outta My Head - Music: Reifer Madness - Break Out     Chip: Hardbite Wasabi Ranch   February 2021: Gruesome Tasks - Music: Cancer - Death Shall Rise     Chip: Paqui Fiery Chile Limon Here's Looking At You Kid - Music: Gaslight Anthem - (sort of The '59 Sound)     Chip: Covered Bridge All Dressed March 2021 : Tree House Lullaby - Music: Blaze Foley - The Dawg Years     Chip: Old Dutch Ridgies Salt and Pepper Wings 19/11/19 - Music: Wrong Life - New Sun/Dreamers Gait ep's