SOUNDTRACK–LOS CAMPESINOS!-“By Your Hand” (2011).
I’ve enjoyed Los Campesinos!’s records in the past and I’m pretty excited about the prospect of a new release. This song doesn’t deviate too far from their previous releases although to my ear it sounds a bit more musical (more instruments, more vocals) and less abrasive. The basic elements are still there:great lyrics delivered in a more or less spoken way, followed on its heels by big shouty sections (and the whole band seems to be shouting along on this one).
This song also feels a little warmer, although the lyrics “by your hand is the only end I’ve foreseen” is either really dark or really naughty depending on how well it correlates to the verses. Regardless, the chorus is catchy and fun to sing and the lyrics are wonderfully twisted. Los Campesinos! have done it again.
And here’s the video.
[READ: September 16, 2011] “Jean-Baptiste Labat and the Buccaneer Barbecue in Seventeenth-Century Martinique”
I was interested in this article because it talked about the boucan and the buccaneer, and both of these things were mentioned in Book 9 of The 39 Clues. It was a weird sort of coincidence that the boucan which I had never heard of before should appear in two things that I read about week apart (and then this weekend the Pa Renaissance Faire was pyrate themed!). I was also interested because of the way this article was presented in the email to us: “if you have ever wondered on what foods a seventeenth-century missionary from the island of Martinique dined, check out this article from Gastronomica. (Hint: They include manatee, lizard, and parakeet)” made it a must-read.
While the article does, indeed make mention of these foodstuffs, it is by no means the extent of the article. Rather, Toczyski looks at what Labat, a French priest and a missionary, wrote in his extensive chronicle about his stay in the Caribbean. In particular, she focuses on the amazing breadth and depth of his gastronomical accounts (which includes details about all the meals they ate en route (the ship was amazingly well stocked–they even had a garden on board, which was under guard day and night (!); and then on the island he also talks in loving detail (with recipes) of all of the native dishes that he would eventually consume (including turtles, frogs and the palm worm (see picture at right (the picture and an awesome description of eating the palm worm is here at Boots in the Oven, at the bottom of the page).
Labat (not related to the Labatt family of brewers as far as I ca tell, although Labat was a fan of fermented drinks) goes from being a Frenchman who was (quite) willing to try different local foods prepared in a French way, to preparing local foods in local ways, to even enjoying and recording the traditional ways the locals did things. Like , for instance, when they damned a river and threw in “inebriating wood” (from the roots of the ashen hoarypea) which made the fish and eels swim drunkenly. Labat appears to have eaten the meal of these drunken fish with the people who caught them (ie. laborers) as opposed to the Lords that he might enjoy a sit down meal with.
Toczyski suggests that Labat may have been uncomfortable about the gourmand he had become, he seems to make excuses for talking so very much about food in his journals (which were eventually published in six volumes in 1722, with copious illustrations made by Labat called Nouveau Voyage aux isles Françoises de l’Amérique); however, she notes that Christian tradition is full of meals eaten with friends, strangers and outcasts, so it’s really not surprising. Although I don’t recall too many passages in the Bible where they consume an 18 inch lizard (not including the tail).
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