Sprouts are not the great satan!

This is dedicated to Mr Rich Hill, DJ and sprout luddite. Read his stuff here - Spadge on a Badger  

There are some foods that we love and some that we hate, or at least *think* we hate, perhaps due to how we’ve had them served to us before and perhaps also because they also get bad press.

The food I had in mind when I started to type seems to get such a raw deal but has it killed anyone? Not that I’m aware of; unlike peanuts I don’t think you can have a sprout allergy. In fact, the only accusation you might level at the sprout with any justification is that it might make you guff/fart/windy-pop (delete as applicable) if you eat a lot of them.

I’ve always loved sprouts and so has my son, Aaron (aged 6 ½). It’s the first thing he eats on his plate every Sunday lunch.

The knack with sprouts is to cook them properly I reckon. Here are a few pointers before we get to the recipe J

• If you insist on boiling them then the rules are thus:
• 8 minutes is probably enough. Over-boiling them makes them soft, wet and tasteless, like any vegetable.
• When you’re peeling the outer leaves off and trimming the stalk, don’t cut a cross into the stalk end, it makes them absorb more water and you don’t want soggy sprouts do you?
• Try steaming them. It takespretty much the same time as boiling and they retain their flavour better.
• Sprouts like garlic. Try frying them together with a little olive oil and then add salt and pepper.

The Recipe

I can’t remember where I first came across this. It may have been in a book by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall book or maybe Pru Leith. Hugh’s books are ace as are Pru’s, particularly her Vegetarian Bible. Definitely buy

My wonderful girlfriend, Caragh, says this turns something which is inherently healthy into a potential heart attack. She’s a dietician so I ought to listen to her.

You will need:

• A baking dish.
• Enough sprouts for everyone - a bag of them or 3 navvy’s handfuls. Whichever measure you’re more comfortable with
• Enough cream to cover said sprouts. A medium size pot seems to do the job and single cream is fine.
• Breadcrumbs but not those horrible ones in the supermarket. Blitz or grate some bread!
• A bit of butter
• Salt & pepper to season

Do this:

1. Par-boil the sprouts for about 5 minutes then rinse them under cold water.
2. While they’re boiling rub the baking dish with a little butter and a garlic clove.
3. Chop the sprouts in half and then press them in a colander to get rid of excess water
4. Season them with S&P and put them in the dish.
5. Pour over the cream til the sprouts are covered.
6. Top with breadcrumbs and blob a few bits of butter on top.
7. Bake in the oven at 180 (gas mark 4 I think) for about 25 minutes or until the breadcrumbs look nice and brown and the cream has bubbled up through.
8. Eat it. With a roast dinner or even on its own with bread and butter.

Try this:

• Make it more healthy by replacing half the cream with milk but it will be more runny.
• Make it even tastier by frying a bit of bacon or some lardons and mixing it with the sprouts before adding the cream.
• Before adding the breadcrumbs, grate some parmesan over the creamy sprouts

This is just fantastic, trust me. Perfect with roast duck I reckon. Or beef.

We're Going Through Changes

This blog is another one I did last year for http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthdevon.co.uk/ and it was titled “Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes” (I think I was listening to Bowie the day I wrote it). Today I listened to Black Sabbath*, hence the new title J

The music business has changed, totally and utterly changed. The internet is at the heart of it, but has it changed for the better? It’s certainly better for the listener but whether it’s good for bands/artists is a moot point. I’m not decided yet but what I can say with some certainty is that it’s not going to change back to how it was so we’ll just have to make the best of it!

It’s certainly easier to get your songs heard these days; you can post tracks on your website or social media sites such as Myspace (apparently still there, tumbleweed and all), Facebook and Youtube and you can  sell them through iTunes and Amazon or stream them on Spotify. As a listener if you hear about a new band from a friend, on the radio, in a newspaper or magazine or see them on TV then as long as you have a connection to the internet you can be listening to or buying their tunes in minutes!

The world is a totally connected and smaller place now; radio stations stream their shows online and Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and your website give you a worldwide reach and a much bigger potential audience. Devon and Brisbane are 1000s of miles apart physically but online they might as well be next to each other!

So, this all sounds great, what’s the problem? Well, despite it being easy to get music “out there”, I think we need to work a lot harder these days as it’s easy for *everyone* to make their music available. You could have the best tune in the world but how would anyone know?

  

The rate of change is challenging too. A few years ago Myspace was all the rage; a single place to interact with fans, friends, bands, etc., and I used it loads in conjunction with the band’s (both in Too Hot and The Simmertones) website and email mailing list. Myspace is now a lonely, lonely place; I don’t even get spam from it any more!

Facebook is big but it’s not as efficient for bands; your “friends” and “likers” need to be looking for something from you or be online when you post it or it will get missed in the “timeline”, unless of course it’s reposted by everyone.

A Youtube channel where we you can host your videos (or songs with a simple photo attached) is very useful. I set up a channel for The Simmertones a few years ago and it was very successful for the band, particularly with a “video” I put together to accompany the reworking of the Doctor Who theme off the first album. We also made a few proper videos too. If you’d told me a few years back we would have done a music video I would have laughed at you as that was just for signed, bigger bands but….times change!

So, Twitter, hmmm. I was using it for The Simmertones and I can see how it might work for bands but it's very much a "right here, right now" medium, unless of course you get retweeted and/or followed by millions!

This leads us to my last point and what is perhaps the biggest problem for bands these days; all bands, whatever level they’re at. I first wrote “record buying public” rather than “listener” when I was writing this but does that apply anymore? The internet and other technologies have made it so easy for people to get your music for free. Some do it maliciously, knowing that they’re avoiding buying your songs - the songs that you’ve spent money recording, producing, mastering and pressing. Others do it more innocently, thinking that they’re helping you spread the word or that giving a copy to a friend or hosting it on a filesharing ‘site is okay; “It doesn’t hurt, they’re selling loads, what does one copy matter?”

Actually yes, it does matter; it’s our intellectual and artistic property! We want people to hear it, sure, but on our terms. We want to be able to decide when we can afford to give something away for nothing. When we're in the position where we can write it off and recoup costs on a stadium tour or by selling a pile of t-shirts......

Okay, rant over but I hope you get my drift. If we all share music without a thought for the bands and singers then maybe we won’t have those band and singers around. Support them by listening to them legally whenever possible. Share the things the bands want you to share and please, please, please pay for that tune!

* Yep, the proper version of Chnages off Black Sabbath 4, not Ozzy Kelly's sickly remake

What is Ska?

This is a re-write of a blog I had published last year on the Peoples Republic Of South Devon website. I was writing Simmertones related stuff at the time but I still love a bit of ska dn reggae...

I'm often asked, "You played in a ska band....er.... what's ska then?".

You can give a potted history of the music, from the its roots in the soundsystems of Jamaica in the 60s and maybe talk about how it evolved into rocksteady and then reggae but people want a popular reference point. What I mean is, everyone knows reggae don't they? Easy - Bob Marley!

Well, I  used to think it was easy with ska too; I would say, "Remember The Specials or Madness? They did ska. They didn't invent it but they played their version of it; the original ska was Desmond Dekker, him off the Vitalite margarine advert ......" etc, etc.

That Vitalite Advert

But now it doesn't work, I met people at gigs who didn't remember Madness or that margarine advert. It's easy to forget that Madness and The Specials on Top of the Pops was 30 odd years ago and that some people asking about the band and the music weren't around for Nirvana in the early 90s, let alone the 70s and 80s 2-Tone heyday.

Does it matter? No, not really because good music is good music and we listen to the stuff we do because it's still (too our ears at least) good music, regardless of when it was recorded. The Simmertones crowd was varied, being made up of guys that got into the music in the 60s, when it was imported by a few specialist record shops; Birmingham Blue Beat was one of the labels it got. We also attracted fans who were swept along on the 2-Tone wave in the late 70s and early 80s and a lot of the band were of that age group . It was the reason that we played this music even though we didn't play it in a 2-Tone style, preferring instead to go back to the early 60s. 

In the late 80s and 90s ska mixed with other styles of music, picking up a punkier, rockier edge. Fishbone and then Reel Big Fish and the Bosstones got a whole new generation into the music and now......Paulo Ntini had a hit with a ska style tune, Lily Allen mixed in reggae elements, countless ads on the TV have a ska soundtrack - it's still around and people still want to listen!

Fishbone - an awesome band that your ears deserve to hear

So that's ska. Don't worry about what it is exactly, just tap your feat and if you like it, buy a copy rather than stealing it ;)

hmm, now what

so, I've set up a blog and now I find myself wondering what I should do with it! What should be the first entry? Should I witter on about a movie? a comic book? some music? I feel that it should be something momentous, epic even to mark the occasion. Hmmm

Okay, I'll just post this so the ice is broken. It'll be easier after that I'm sure.