Tales of the Salty Bag

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...