Skip to main content

Return of Django

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 further than that. My first real exposure to Jamaican Ska was through this is England (what was that, like 15 years ago?). From there I checked out some of the Trojan Records comps/box sets. Return of Django by The Upsetters has popped up frequently and I've thoroughly enjoyed it every time it has. Return of Django is a fantastically bouncy head nodder and body swayer. Finally this past summer it occurred to me that The Upsetters probably have other songs (dudoi) and I checked out Return of Django (the album). This is such a pleasant album. Bouncy trad ska instrumentals. If you're like me and have little exposure to Jamaican Ska, it's not a bad place to start to catch up on 70 years of music. 

Stay hydrated,

Marc

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The End of All Things

 I am not an expert on Nomeansno, but I can tell you this..their music can be quite difficult to get on physical media (LP, CD or otherwise [unless you want to spend somewhat spicy money]) in Canada. Luckily, Alternative Tentacles reissued Wrong. Now, cross border shipping is still muy caliente, but enough distros picked it up in Canada to allow me to put Wrong into my record collection this year. Nomeansno (since 1979) played (ended 2016) chaotic punk rock that I want to say fell into hardcore, but they were far more than a single genre. Wrong is unconventional for a punk band to say the least. The bass is lively as hell, with a tone that's absolutely perfect. The drums know when to get weird and when to kick it into overdrive. I don't know if it's jazz or funk, but there's something in the mix that if Nomeansno wasn't so aggressive it might feel pretentious..instead they're just odd and make me wish I had the opportunity to seem them live. Lyrics are talk sung...

A Seat At The Table

 Uglies chips are funny. Their marketing is (and this is paraphrasing) that they take the unusable/waste chips and produce their chips out of those leftovers. "Reducing waste and helping fight hunger". To me, their potato selection is pretty on par with other smaller scale/independent brands... so I'm not quite sure who's throwing out the potatoes that they make their chips with, IMO the potatoes/waste they use are the good ones. So yes, Uglies, 170g bag (nice size, not too small, not too large). Thin chip but crunchy. Oh, by the way this is about Uglies Salt and Vinegar flavored (yes, no u, these are imports that in Canada are usually found at Winners [at least when I've seen them]). So yes, decent amount of skin on these little kettle cooked chips... fairly white in colour chips. They have a nice white vinegar tartness. I picked up a somewhat granular salt texture when I was consuming. I feel Uglies are no more janky than your average bag of kettle cooked (good...

Stairway to heaven 2

Dear Diary, I was in Dollarama last week picking up some last minute..well it doesn't really matter why I was there. Anyway, as I was in the line for the checkout and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a blue bag that I'd seen a million times before. For some reason this time, it's unassuming blue on blue top with stock photo potato chip bottom intrigued me (that in addition to it being 280g for $2). I thought, to myself, 'hey, they carry Covered Bridge..maybe these Made in Canada "D Gourmet" potato chips are some other high end chip that just happens to be carried in dollar stores.'. I proceeded to take the $2 leap and threw them in my basket. Within an hour of getting home I had cracked the bag and was happily consuming. These D Gourmet Salt & Vinegar potato chips were for lack of better term, pretty run-of-the-mill. The chips are somewhat sterile, no well done chips and no skins, and fairly lightweight. The seasoning is faint but fairly well di...