Posts by Backdrifter

    I just heard a track I absolutely love on the Amy Lamé show on BBC6Music, Faceshopping by SOPHIE. I then looked it up, discovering that SOPHIE was a producer/musician who'd worked with a range of artists as well as doing two albums, and died in a fall a few weeks ago at the tragically young age of 34. 😟

    Once or twice I left myself in a weakened state after indulging in my home made one

    This made me chuckle. "How was your meal?" "Excellent - but it's left me in a weakened state".


    Agreed re choice of spud and a robust beer - I've sometimes found a really big red wine can work well with a spicy meal too.


    It is indeed key to strike that balance between heat and flavour in order to avoid the sense it's just tasteless lava. I'm a big fan of the scotch bonnet, very hot but packs major fruity flavour.


    I read a food book with a chapter about the chilli craze that really took off in the UK in the 90s. Chilli farms and specialist sauces abounded, often with names invoking apocalyptic or satanic imagery such as "Dave's Thermonuclear Insanity Relish", "Phil's Armageddon Sauce" or "Eric's Essence of Hades" etc. It claimed that some of them were such intensely refined distillation of pure capsaicin that one single drop carefully dispensed from a pipette would spice up an entire vat of curry.


    The tagine was excellent, if I may say so. The butcher didn't have any of the usual lamb for stewing so I got some boneless gigot and it worked really well, very tender after about 40 mins of slow cooking in the oven. It had good fat marbling plus I let a section of marrowbone melt into the sauce.

    I do also like sourdough toasted

    For me, only if it's well-made sourdough that's been properly knocked back during prep. Otherwise it has big holes and toasts to the texture of glass. Biting into it I almost feel it's going to tear my mouth to shreds.

    Ok, here's a scenario.


    You have access to bread and means of toasting it. You have a fairly normal kitchen store cupboard of stuff. What bread do you use and what do you do next?


    For me: good-quality plain white crusty bread. Toasted both sides under a grill, well-browned, not blackened or left pale, then immediately slathered with thick lashings of rich slightly salted butter which is allowed to melt in, but not to compromise the integrity of the bread. Tart, zingy seville orange marmalade spooned on to it and spread (the spoon is important - the used butter knife must NOT, repeat NOT, come into contact with the contents of the marmalade jar in a civilised society).


    Eaten with well-brewed hot strong tea to accompany it.

    I have no question over his huge influence on music, just his vocal has never got me enthralled although needless to say some tracks are classics.

    Some journalists start salivating at his mention, so maybe i just missed something along the way

    I love that this happens. It's how it should be. The big iconic creatives absolutely shouldn't be universally revered, there have to be those who are critical of them, or unconvinced/unimpressed, or simply never engaged or saw what the fuss was.


    It sounds like you might be similar with DB to how I am with, say, Bob Dylan and Kate Bush. I totally see the seismic impact they each had in their own ways, and how uniquely talented they are. I genuinely admire and respect them. I just don't much like their work.

    thewatcher Regarding what we touched on here. Your home-made vindaloo sounds hotter than the heart of the sun! I'm very fond of spicy food, my parents came to the UK from India where they were used to spicy food and we all grew up on it but unlike some people I know whose tolerance for chillies seems to have decreased, mine has grown, especially recently and I've been craving them more than before. Even so, I don't think I'd be on board with your vindaloo which would surely irreparably wreck the Scoville Scale.


    When I lived in SW London I used to eat at a Goan restaurant in Putney. They did a very authentic pork vindaloo which, yes, was very hot with red chillies but enough to blend well with the rich mix of spices and the tang of vinegar which is vital to the dish. Still the very best one I've had anywhere.


    Tonight I'm making a lamb tagine with cinnamon and prunes.

    Haha, I said 'briefly' at the start of my post

    No matter. Where food's concerned I'm very happy with long explanations. So as not to burden this thread with (albeit delicious and enjoyable) food talk I'm going to continue this thought over in the Food & Drink forum.


    Like you I also haven't ever seen Breaking Bad but I only ever hear good things about it.


    If i whisper it, and none of my muso friends around....then never owned a Bowie album there said it and now suffer the damnation of every music journalist!

    Hahaha! Well I'm a Bowie nut but I find it healthy there are those who never bought anything of his or maybe never really engaged with his work. You can relax, I'm not one of those types who suddenly sprouts a back polo-neck and adopts a serious face and voice and starts to explain to you where you're going wrong and which works of his to start with in order to really properly understand what he did.

    Just to say, for the sake of variety if nothing else, I don't mind ICD at all. Admittedly, if I ever actually get to one of these gigs and they don't do it I'm not going to be crestfallen or consider the experience ruined, but there are quite a few other songs I'd be relieved they didn't do.

    I've recently heard a few acts that fit the 'new to me' category even though they may have been around a few years. Here's two, both duos - Deap Vally seen here doing their song Royal Jelly - it's nothing groundbreaking but I like it and this video has the added benefit of featuring Georgia May Jagger which is rarely a bad thing. I'd initially heard their track Look Away on the radio which led me to them.


    Also off the radio (most of my new-to-me stuff tends to come from BBC 6Music radio) are Field Music; here's Count It Up and Orion From The Street. The latter is crying out for a middle-eight or some other variation but I do like what's going on otherwise.


    This thread's been dormant so do drop in with suggestions and new discoveries.

    You're not missing anything. I thought I was going to implode from boredom during one of those movies. In fact, had I been offered the option of imploding, I would have gratefully taken it.

    Yes the reason I've never managed more than a few minutes of them is as above, ie I felt myself slipping into a coma through sheer tedium. And why do they so often have to speak so slowly and portentously? "This.... will..... be..... the..... " - by which point I've lost any interest I might've had in what 'this will be' (and didn't have much to start with anyway).


    I love the idea of your 'weekly vindaloo'. I'm sure you've mentioned it another thread, maybe the Food & Drink one. Is it the same dish each week from the same source or do you vary it? Do you ever make it yourself?

    I remember reading (possibly in the Genesis biography) that one idea for the follow-up to SEBTP was to adapt the story The Little Prince by Antoine du Saint-Exupery. If I remember rightly it was Rutherford that was pushing for this. In the end of course Peter's own Lamb story won out. Do let me know if I've misremembered this!

    That's certainly always been my understanding.


    As for Banks basing it on TLP personally I have no idea. They both feature a desert and sand, for sure. I once read that he'd based it on Pilgrim's Progress, others have said it's a fanciful rendering of the "grass is always greener" saying.


    On a tangent to this: Wikipedia, regarding the writing of ATOTT, blithely says Banks was amassing material for a possible solo project and this song was one of them. I don't think I've seen that mentioned anywhere else and I have no recollection of TB himself ever having said that in interviews. Has anyone else?

    This'll be familiar to anyone who knows the BBC radio/TV show Never Seen Star Wars. It's a chance to release into the world your statements of well-known stuff - films, TV shows, plays - you've never seen, books you never read, things you've never done. By which I mean, I suppose, 'big' things - never been in or on the sea, never been to a different country, never eaten Chinese food, whatever. Rather than the usual bucket-list stuff e.g. free-fall jumping, swimming with dolphins, blah blah blah etc. Also nothing too niche - I can say I've never seen Henry Kissinger wrapping tagliatelle around a bollard (though I did once see Cyrus Vance hanging linguine from a telegraph pole), nor have I ever laid in a bath-tub of marmalade while singing Ode To Joy backwards. Some of you may have seen or done either of those, or variations of them, but save them for now.

    I mean stuff more like, eg real ones of mine, I've never been to the USA, never read any of the works of Charles Dickens, never learned to ride a bike or drive a car.

    Not that I'm claiming to be some kind of completist expert on Genesis archive and lost-song details, but no I've never heard of the referenced songs. And just to confuse matters there is of course a PG song called Across The River.


    Also, I don't understand the line in the above quote,


    Steve: "It goes places. There are two schools of thought. I know in Phil's book he criticises that and says that about songs like 'Across The River' but it's missing the point..."


    What's the 'that' he says PC is "criticising"? And how is PC missing whatever the 'point' is?


    It's not like the RM book (which I've never read) is new and given the obsessive nature of some Genesis fandom I'm surprised a speculative buzz about these hasn't already super-spread.

    Moving this from the other thread since it probably fits better here...


    I may have said this before but I'll say it again: I know that the suite is officially supposed to be on Side 1, but I've always been used to the U.S. vinyl version that had it on Side 2. To my ears, the album just doesn't work right with the suite on Side 1; it's like switching the sides of, say, FOXTROT.

    Indeed, here is the aforementioned other thread, for those who might like the buzz and excitement of switching between two Smallcreep threads. Well, lockdown can do that to a person....