Tales of the Salty Bag

 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...