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I Don't Want to Know You

 About a week ago a friend at work gifted me a bag of Neal Brothers Original corn chips, "so good together" and organic (thanks J.). There's a few bags waiting in the bullpen, but I let these jump to the front of the queue since they were a recommendation. Not much for fragrance. The corn chips look as shown on the bag, sort of thick chips in shellish shapes. They're a good few mm thick. I threw one into my mouth and was met with the crunch that I anticipated, an airy but crunchy corn chip. The yellow corn flavour is there and quite pleasant. They tasted salty, good salty (not overly salty, but salty enough that I thought I'd be looking at a high teens to low 20% per 50g when I looked to the back I was quite pleased to see that they're only 10% (25% fat) per 50g. Fluffy (not like cotton candy, but like, not as dense as say a Doritos [or most corn] chip), salty, corny. These chips do bang. Now lets see how they go with salsa.

Forbidden Beat Distro had been operating out of Hamilton for a few years. It's..err, it was an instagram store run by Jimmy Vapid. He carried so many great bootlegs, live albums, hard to find records in the punk/metal/ska spectrum at super reasonable prices and great shipping rates. So when FBD announced that they were closing during the holidays I was selfishly bummed, FBC provided me with great albums over the last year or so (but I understrand it would have had to be a grind to run). With that said, I got one last order in before they closed up. That order came in last week, I had checked out 4 of the 5 albums that I ordered..before ordering. That 5th album, Merton Parka's Face in the Crowd, I bought based on the description and trusting Jimmy's taste. Yes, it had an RSD sticker, but that doesn't really mean anything. As the sticker on the album denotes, Merton Parka's were mod revivalists. Now, I know very little about mod revival music, but my understanding is that it's rock that's somewhere in the punk/power pop spectrum and was around at the same time a 2 tone. What I didn't really expect out of this album was the sprinkle of upstrokes/ska and fantastic cover of Tears of a Clown. If this is what mod revival sounds like I think I may have some searching and listening to do. This album got a RSD re-release and for good reason, it's fantastic.

Neal Brothers corn chips dip fantastically. They're rigid and would hold up to thick dips (J. had mentioned that she dipped them into hummus). The shell shapes make the excellent for scooping, with the salsa I had to actually pay attention to how much salsa I was taking as the shell's could scoop too much when you're not careful. Leonard would say these chips are a buy and I would agree.

Stay hydrated,

Marc

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