It's fucking worse when you're cooking for paying customers.

"Does anything in this dish have yeast in it? I'm allergic to yeast"
"It's made of bread, so it probably has yeast in it"
"Oh that's fine I can have a little bit of yeast"

YOU'RE NOT VERY FUCKING ALLERGIC THEN ARE YOU? WHAT IS THE PRECISE VOLUME OF YEAST THAT WILL KILL YOU?

Happens all the fucking time. Don't get me started on gluten.

Also, my ex girlfriend maintained she was allergic to plain omelettes, but not any other kind of egg preparation. She'd always say things like "oh that omelette looks delicious, I wish I could have some" YOU FUCKING COULD YOU STUPID CUNT.

The only explanation for that cuntery is that they're trying to hide the fact they're a picky eater, but it just makes them look even stupider. I had a customer inform me once she was allergic to sodium. I checked, she wasn't a giant slug in a wig.

I honestly believe picky eaters, the ones that survive to adulthood, they do it deliberately to make them seem interesting. They have no personality so they have to settle for telling everyone they "can eat raisins just not in cakes" or something equally hideous. It's always "I can eat x" as if it's an accomplishment. Well done for managing to choke down the same food everyone else fucking loves you self limiting cunt.

>>13529

Oh, OH! Also I work with someone who "can't eat yellow cheese. just don't like it". How the fuck can a grown adult not realise he's talking like a particularly dull toddler? These people take every opportunity to mention it too. You'll be talking dish, and you'll get to an ingredient and someone will interrupt and say "oh I don't like olives", even when you're not actually fucking cooking it for them. Then inevitably even people who can eat solid food without assistance will chime in with shit like "oh how can't you like olives, they're great!" as if that fucking helps anybody. You simply can't encourage them, the only valid response is "I don't care", or better yet, complete silence.

>>13530

And while I'm still here, literally nobody but yourself can even begin to care how fucking hot you like your food. There is only one response you'll get if you announce how spicy you like your curry, which is absolutley every other cretin in the room listing their heat preferences too. There's no worthwhile discussion, it's just exchanges of suicidally pointless information. I struggle even to call it information. There's more intellectual value to asking everyone what colour their underpants are. At least there's more than two fucking options.

>>13529

I once made my mate a chicken korma, which he fucking loves from take aways, he asked me what it was made out of, I told him what I was using but he took an exception to the cream, I said that I wouldn't add it because he didn't like it but I did, he fucking love it and said it was better than the take away.

For fucks sake it is like people are just scared by certain words.

>>13532

The bit that amazes me is that people seem happier to eat food cooked by a complete stranger on an industrial estate than their own friends and family. If they're that upset about a little cream how can they possibly deal with the very real risk of their takeaway curry arriving laced with Hindi spunk?

Ignorance is bliss. If the foods I think I don't like aren't mentioned to me by name, then they aren't there. This is exactly how you feed a child. Tell him his broccoli is gnome trees and he's perfectly fine. This is why it was wrong of us to ever try to sidestep natural selection. How many cavemen died because their mammoth meat was too hairy?

>>13534

Too few apparently.

>>13533

Maybe he's lactose intolerant and spent the whole next day galloping.

I won't eat capsicum peppers or onion, unless they're very, very finely slices. If they're on my plate I will pick at them and leave them. I think it's the texture, because I love spring onions, leeks and pepper sauce in a lasagna.

>>13537
I was going to post complaining about someone who I know who claims to dislike the texture of onions, which is clearly a pain as everything contains onion, but if there's more than one of you, perhaps it's a real thing.
Incidentally, one of the very few things I object to is green things in a tomato sauce. I'll eat them, and it's a fairly crass blanket rule, but it avoids such travesties as courgette in lasagne, which I've eaten but have no intention of replicating. I don't find such use of leeks to be an enticing suggestion either. I'm sure that there are many counterexamples, but I'll acknowledge the use of green pepper for now, as it's the one which jumps to mind.

This thread is excellent. I think it's a strange combination of a poor understanding of allergies, general inexperience with food, and attempting to contribute small talk to a topic you don't know much about. When you consider it, if you don't cook much, the only addition to the conversation you can make is about your own tastes. The specificity is to make it sound more interesting.

I'd hazard a guess to say that this sort of behaviour is much less common around people who cook well, or take any interest in food beyond purchasing and eating it.

The worst is when I cook for people without any class, I was preparing 6 Mushroom soufflés with a side of garlic bread which I had prepared earlier from scratch (It turned out like a deep pan pizza with garlic and herbs and sun dried tomatos).

For the main I began cutting out my ravioli shapes and filling them with a nice cream I had mixed with some local organic herbs and some smoked salmon.

Upon seeing I was only preparing about 25 pieces of ravioli, 2 of the chavs ordered a pizza stating this would not be enough for everyone (one of them turned up uninvited which distorted the numbers).

That one and his mate ate pizza, but me and the other two who ate my dinner only

3 out of 5 people ate roughly half my meal as it filled them up, the combination of fresh cooked raviolio, the bread, the cream and the souffle had them shut up from talking about fucking hollyoaks for atleast 10 minutes.

To this I was left with 11 pieces of ravioli, 3 souffles and about a third of the garlic bread.

WHY DON'T PEOPLE WAIT TILL AFTER THE MEAL BEFORE ORDEIRNG FUCKING PIZZA, CUNTS

>>13539
I don't really like people who feel they have] to make a contribution to every conversation to feel validated as a human being, but I realise I'm a minority in this regard and it's a whole other thread really.

>>13539

I completely agree, people who give me funny looks or patronize me once I have declared I will not be accepting any drinks from the host on the account of my allergy (sensitivity to poison?) of refined sugars and alcohol.

This is made much worse when my friends don't realise the cheap shite they buy all contains refined sugars and carbs you could build a space shuttle out of.

>>13540
Why is someone of your obvious middle claaaaaaaaahsness associating with the riff raff?

>>13543
Why does making an effort with what you eat signify your 'claaahhs'?

Twat.

>>13544

Not him, but:

Now now, let's not be so reactive. You've made your point, and we all say foolish things sometimes, which doesn't necessarily make us the scum of the earth.
I think though, that people do identify with their food. One of my best friends seems to want to break away from his working-class background and identity, and sees adopting a more 'middle-class' assortment of dishes as part of this; the occasional decision to replicate the food of his childhood is definitely seen as a way of indulging nostalgia, rather than of cooking 'real' food, which he's proud to serve to people.

The other side of the coin is that probably the wealthiest of my friends can't cook for toffee because mummy's always been there to do it for him.

>>13544
Pretty much this. Work a shit job, barely have money, but my cupboards are full of all the herbs and spices you could ever wish for and the fridge is often full of fresh veg and cheapo cuts of meat. I'm not exactly middle class because I know what anise and tarragon are.

My parents had this general problem of buying cloves of garlic and just leaving them in the fridge to dessicate, whenever I used to cook for them I often used them, to which they would walk into the kitchen and start yelling "WHAT'S THAT FUCKING STINK?!" Why would they buy them if they don't use them and actively hate the smell? Good thing I've moved out now, student days are pretty much back re: cooking good food for myself and not just overloading on chips.

>>13546
That's what I love about being a student, I can cook whatever the fuck I want. So proud of all my spices, proudest of actually using them to make good food though.

>>13547
Would you say your taste in food is vastly different to that of your parents then?
I also don't miss having to basically suck my dad off every day about how mmmmm, YUMMY SO SCRUMMY his pretty tasteless and bland his food was. This daily rigmarole was torture.

https://www.youtube.com/v/xdo79znnHl8

>>13548
No, not at all actually. They're just set in what they eat and don't mix it up very much. My dad cooks a curry every day, he has a selection of 10-12, some he cooks more often than others. It just gets a bit dull, lovely as it is. Now I've got the opportunity to mix things up a bit.

Made myself a calamari curry the other day.

>>13549
Very nice. I suppose he eats and cooks more than just that atrocious tupperware curry and chips. I think my dad must win the pickiest eater award. Moans about not having anything to eat when he'd just bang some chips on and make up half a pint of tupperware curry. Worse than a toddler.

>>13550
>I suppose he eats and cooks more than just that atrocious tupperware curry and chips.

Of course, daal, green thai fish curry, your usual madras, vindaloo, etc. He does tacos and chili con carne as well.

>I think my dad must win the pickiest eater award. Moans about not having anything to eat when he'd just bang some chips on and make up half a pint of tupperware curry. Worse than a toddler.
Never eaten chips at home that weren't homemade.

Best chips imaginable, slice your tatties relatively thick, stick them in a deep fat fryer at a low/med temperature for 10-12 minutes, then whack the heat up real high for 2 minutes. Nice and crispy, easy as pie, cheap as chips.

>>13541
Good god, it really is.

I'm going to Brighton at the weekend and I don't like bicycles and I have anxiety issues and last week I ate soooo much food megalolz SHUT THE FUCK UP

It's almost like if the air surrounding them wasn't filled with their own empty, narcissistic words they'd somehow start losing all corporeality and they're deathly afraid that if they don't express an opinion on some completely irrelevant piece of utter bollocks they'll cease to exist.

I don't actually think this gripe is that offtopic, it seems to all run in the same vein of "people who like talking about themselves but actually don't have anything worth saying", but sage anyway.

>>13552

I've been speculating over the past few months that a deeply ingrained fear of irrelevance pervades our culture, owing in some part to how people are collectively treated more like economic resources than human beings. When you're continually being made aware in your public life that you are very much expendable and/or replaceable, we turn to other things for validation. In the case of this particular bit of human history, that has translated to frantic online social 'networking' where we see our relevance translated into raw, easy-to-read numbers, e.g. retweeted x amount of times, connections with this many friends and so on. I see the fact that business has openly embraced the use of social media as decent confirmation of this. The writing on the wall currently reads "fit in or go destitute".

I could be outright projecting now, but I think that's what makes places like this so unique (and often quite barren); people here maybe aren't too bothered about participating in that game. At least, people on an anonymous imageboard probably aren't posting for kudos. Even the other place introduced an openly social board.

Sage for polluting this thread with my stuttering, incomplete brainfarts.

>>13540

What bloody twats, I've had something similar happen once where my mates decided that they didn't like the sauce I was cooking up with pasta and went down to the local take away and got a curry. A fucking curry to go with penne.

That said I got to freeze half of the sauce and enjoy it another day so it wasn't a complete loss.

I wanted to join in and bitch about my mate who "can't" eat things when what he means to say is that he's afraid to try anything that doesn't come from the frozen aisle of Tesco, but I've read every post and now I don't want to risk coming off like as big a cunt as you lot. I might make a /101/ thread about this thread. Christ, lads.

>>13556

Mate, being afraid to try new food is a disability, unless you're eating fugu then what's the worst that could happen? You get a taste that you don't like for a few seconds?

>>13557
>what's the worst that could happen?
You could die a horrible death. Poisonous mushrooms, coliform bacteria, anaphylaxis, etc.

>>13559

Well that's the last button mushroom I eat.

FOOD MENTALISTS

AVOID THEM

>>13562
Better image.

>>13563

Bettered

>>13564
The TV show is miles better than the films, though. Hopkins gave an extremely hammy performance: the only thing his Hannibal was chewing on was the scenery.

>>13564
The forgotten Hannibal.

Sorry.

>>13565
I agree. I think The Silence of the Lambs is a good film and for that matter so are the other Hannibal films (besides Rising) but the TV show is the work of the gods.


Be sure to visit http://janicepoonart.blogspot.co.uk/ if you've not already (contains some plot spoilers)

When I die and wander the distant mists, my soul ever searching, I'd like to float around a bit and say hello to Hannibal, then wander off to find Guderian for a 'rustic' brown bread 'off' cheese and farmer pickle sandwich. I do think this would be an interesting encounter.

>>13567
I don't think SOTL is a bad film per se, I just don't think it's as good as it's often held up to be, or that Hopkins does the role much justice. It's just not a part a thesp should be playing, there's too much opportunity to make it seem silly. Mikkelsen, on the other hand, brings kind a subtlety and unknowable depth to the role. He's probably the best actor on TV right now, in my own opinion.

Also, Will is just a far more interesting character than Clarice.

sage for talking about Hannibal in a /nom/ thread.

>>13569

>in a /nom/ thread

m8, he's about as nom as it gets

Oh shit, this is /101/. That'll teach me for making assumptions on /*/.

>>13570

n1

Was walking about York market with some mates once and we stood watching some bloke prepare and cook up a big batch of paella, so I asked my mate "would you fancy some of that?" you know, as you do when something tasty is about or an attractive woman passes, his reply was "no, cos I don't know what's in it!"
Some people are beyond words.

>>13573
He's got a point. Last and only time I had paella from a bloke in the market I had the runs for hours, and the bog fucking stunk of fish well into the next morning.

>>13573
I'd be more concerned about the preparation / storage of the food than anything. I'll eat anything - but market fare. It's one of those grey (brown hehe) areas that makes you play russian roulette with your digestive system.

I don't like eggs or mushrooms, I try to but every time I put one in my mouth I actually vomit a little in my mouth, and even if I don't I'm dry heaving the entire way through until I swallow it.

Luckily it only seems to be the taste that causes this. If I can cover it up in something, then I can eat it. I hate the taste of roast chicken but luckily nowadays there are many chicken dishes that just plain taste like other things, and I can eat them. I can eat omelettes but only if I put lots of stuff in them, I hate plain ones. I have never found a mushroom dish I was able to eat without wanting to cry.

The ones that boil my piss are those grown men who proudly claim "I don't eat vegetables. Never touch 'em."
What do you want, a fucking medal? Are we somehow supposed to be impressed by this?

Idiot adult babies. Pathetic.

>>13578
I don't eat a lot of veg. But I'm certainly not proud of it. Who's proud of it?

>>13578

Yeah fuck those guys. And people who feel the need to point out I just ordered a vegetarian dish like I just revealed I was working for the KGB all along.

>>13581
Trust me, the people who think you're a right puff for not ordering a giant rib eye steak at every meal or for challenging the assumed orthodoxy about how tasty it is are just as bad - but they are often the same person.
As a meat eater I'd often like to eat fish or something, and don't give a shit what anybody else eats, unless they apply the childish methods seen in this thread. I can at least respect someone who chooses to exclude a food group on ethical grounds provided they don't crusade with it, which is what the EET MEET U PUFTAH brigade pretty much do.

I don't particularly care what other people do or do not eat, but I have one hard rule for myself: if someone's kind enough to provide me with a meal, I'll eat whatever's put in front of me. (Obviously I'd break that rule if I thought the food was off/otherwise dangerous, but that's never been an issue.)

I think this probably stems from having a friend growing up who'd come over to my house, he'd just pick at (and end up leaving most of) the dinner my mum would make him. This continued well into his late teenage years, probably into his early 20s now that I think of it. It was excruciating, and incredibly rude. I still don't understand, really.

>>13602

Maybe your mum just can't cook?

YEAH I FUCKING SAID IT!!? What now, motherfucker!

>>13606
Well, you're right, she definitely can't cook; she has motor neuron disease. She could cook and was a decent chef back in the day, though, honest.

>>13528

I dont mind people with genuine food allergies or people who are dieting being a bit inquisitive about food, but when people are stupidly picky about food in restaurants, it makes we want to scream at them. Even some of my friends, who are otherwise genuinely lovely people, are just never happy with what they order. There's always something wrong with a meal when we eat out and then they quibble over the bill afterwards, sometimes being rude to the staff as well. I just don't understand it. I'll eat pretty much anything that can be put onto a plate and doesn't fight back.

On the subject of boring people talking bollocks to fill the silence, I will someday crack and tell someone "shut the fuck up, please. You're giving me a headache." Particularly middle-aged women who start shrieking loudly at each other after two glasses of white wine. Yes, I probably am a cunt and a killjoy. But I am also an alcoholic, and I would like to have a drink without having to shout at a couple of bottle-blonde wrinkled harpies and get thrown out. I want to have a drink in peace.

>>13651
Maybe stop drinking in wetherspoons then?

>>13652

This. And overpriced cocktail pubs. These places were created with those harpies in mind, and their longsuffering bar staff are paid to keep them away from us for a few blissful hours every weekend. Find yourself a working man's club where talking in anything above a disgruntled murmur is grounds for getting you thrown out, and relax.

Oh, and that thing about your friends being rude to serving staff - you can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat their waiter. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it really does seem to be an excellent barometer for revealing a person's inner cuntishness. I'd really argue against them being "otherwise genuinely lovely people" if they ever consider behaving that way to another human being to be acceptable.

>>13653

Do these 'working men's clubs' do real ale?

>>13656
It's a bit hit and miss. The last I was in had a few cask ales (neither of them of any note) but seemed to mostly serve fizzy piss. If it's real ale you're after then you might be better off hunting some old man pubs, or anything in the CAMRA guide. If you were in my neck of the woods (Birminghell) I could recommend some decent places and might even stand you a pint.

I like how this thread has turned from whining about fussy eaters to the myriad virtues of good beer, though this is probably marking me out as a "fussy drinker" instead. Bah.

>>13659
You drink beer for pleasure so it's acceptable to be choosy about what you like. Food on the other hand is necessary to live so being a fussy eater makes less sense.

Having said that, if someone were to give me a can of some watery piss like Foster's or Carlsberg I'd still thank them for offering me a drink and not be a cunt demanding they serve me a decent ale.

>>13666

That... makes no sense.

No, the difference is that you never make it or (knowingly) interact with someone who did. With food, it's rude to disparage something someone's spent time preparing - taking a minute to pour it out of a tap doesn't count.

>>13667
What part doesn't make sense? You don't need beer any more than you need cigars or cocaine. It has no utility, you drink beer to enjoy the taste and the mild alcohol buzz. Why would I ever choose to drink a beer I dislike? Food however is useful, even if you don't enjoy eating vegetables or rice or whatever you still do it because it's good for you.

Your second point isn't quite true, I know quite a few professional or amateur brewers. Also where do you draw the line, would you apply the same logic to a particularly complicated cocktail?

>>13668
>You don't need beer any more than you need cigars or cocaine
Personally, I only eat food in order to go on indulging in these things, among others.

>With food, it's rude to disparage something someone's spent time preparing - taking a minute to pour it out of a tap doesn't count.
>Why would I ever choose to drink a beer I dislike?
If anyone's prepared to buy me booze I'm not going to be too picky about what kind.

>>13679
Not all pubs serve black sheep or bottled Polish lagers, yet I would still get a pint of cask or whatever shit lager is on offer just because, I am also grateful for others getting a round in of whatever they're getting.
Same with food. Real ale twats are as bad as picky eaters.

>>13686
Lager doesn't come in casks in this country - a cask is for 'real' beer and cider. The vast majority of brew in bars in this country is served from a presurrised keg, which keeps its contents 'fizzy' because it has stopped fermenting. 'Real' brew ferments in a cask when opened and after c3 days after opening becomes undrinkable and 'dead'.

Real ale twat reporting, as you can probably guess.

>>13686
Oh well as I said I completely agree if someone is offering you beer. My point is that if you are buying it yourself it's fine to be picky.

>>13707
I really had to bite my tongue and not get too angry at this. Real ale twats will be real ale twats.

To be honest, I am a classical music twat. You think Heifetz was better than Oistrakh!? Fuck off!

>>13723

M8, Heifetz played so fast so he must be more gud.

Really though, his playing was so clean. His phrasing was the smoothest I've heard yet, showing immense bow control. His only downfall was that his recordings often seem to pick up on a shit ton of bow noise, but I have no idea if that was his personal preference, or the engineers of the time. It does detract from otherwise impeccable performances. To my ear, Oistrakh was less expressive and revealed fewer details about the piece. Both a million times greater than most could ever hope to be, though.

>>13723
Well I think most people might be interested to know the difference between cask and keg. Not exactly brain surgery, is it?

>>13723
huh? Not who you are replying to but how is he being twattish? Sure he ignored the

>pint of cask or whatever shit lager

Differentiating cask from shit lager but what else? Or are you so insulted by the entire notion of real ale that any mention has you frothing into your lambrini?

>>13726

I'm more beer geek than ale twat. Can't beat a bit of Mikeller. That Bengali Tiger in Spoons is nice. Elland Brewery is down the road so 1872 Porter tends to be a common brew round these parts. I do believe the pubs and breweries near me are some of the best in the country for price and variety.

>>13727
Yeah the Bengali Tiger is good. There are a lot of good beers out there that don't fit the strict and somewhat arbitrary definition of Real Ale, but that isn't to say it is a meaningless distinction.

Also am I correct in thinking that bottled ales that aren't bottle conditioned (i.e don't have the yeast sediment) don't technically count as real ale, even if they're from the same batch as firkins of real ale?

>>13728
> the strict and somewhat arbitrary definition of Real Ale

It's not that arbitrary.

Real Ale is real because it doesn't use artificial carbonation as a preservative (eg as with a lager cask or a carbonated bottle). Instead it uses bottle or cask fermentation.

A bottle of London Pride, a 'real ale' when served from a cask, is not 'real ale' when served from a bottle or can, however.

>>13728

Beergeeklad here. Real ale is when the yeast is still alive. Bottled beer is nothing like real ale but some dead bottled beers stil excel eg I prefer bottled Old Peculier to handpull. Don't drink ale from clear bottles as sunlight harms beer.

There are a few decent keg brews around but I always feel that real ale tastes fresher and sharper. I also prefer bottle conditioned to dead beer.

Currently drinking Titanic Iron Curtain on handpull as Stellalads sup idly by.

Good thing about real ale is because it isn't full of chemical shit (eg propelyne glycol in Corona etc) and colour crap, hangovers only tend to be caused by dehydration and body glucose level fuckup.

I'm off for a waz and another pint of Titanic.

>>13730
One thing I never get is how you can get decent ales for the same price if not less than a pint of shit tier lager from the pub but in most supermarkets it's the opposite way - i.e you can get a crate of shit lager for half the price of an equal volume of decent ales.

I'm a massive fan of real ales but I will admit a certain soft spot for cheap ass bottled or canned stella, being that was the first beer I ever drank significant amounts of. It still tastes of victory, the victory of getting 8 cans from the paki shop at 16. Plus it goes perfectly with cigarettes. Is it weird that I think Greene King are bigger cunts than Stella for at least pretending to be ale?

>>13731

Stella Artois is a perfectly competent beer. It's not brilliant, it's not awful, it's just a reliable, refreshing lager. There's a very sniffy attitude towards lagers in this country, especially mass-produced lagers, but the Belgians and Germans have no such hang-ups.

There's a contrarian tendency to dismiss anything popular as rubbish by default, but that just isn't rational. A pasteurised lager isn't going to be particularly interesting, but that doesn't make it bad. There's nothing wrong with liking a beer just because it hits the spot and goes well with a curry. People who only drink keg beer are missing out, but so are CAMRA men who won't touch the stuff.

I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who constructs an identity around consumption of a product, and anyone whose identity would be threatened by the notion that a popular lager is perfectly drinkable. The same goes for all sorts of other things, like pop music - the people who rail most vehemently about the "rubbish in the charts" tend to have the narrowest, most conservative and least informed tastes.

>>13732
>I like Stella therefore everyone else telling me it and similar beers are shit must be wrong

>>13732
Thats fine m8, keep drinking the Stella - it's alright.

But please don't push this "oh stop saying it's shit because it's popular" hogwash - which goes for everything, food, music, film, clothes, etc.

Just because it's popular doesn't suggest it should be good - the marketing and advertising behind it is good. The product necessarily isn't.

>The same goes for all sorts of other things, like pop music - the people who rail most vehemently about the "rubbish in the charts" tend to have the narrowest, most conservative and least informed taste

>least informed taste


Are you joking? It's quite the opposite - the average music pleb consumes what he is given - instead of opening up to new and challenging things.

>>13732
I've always thought that there's more joy to be had in life by sampling all the pies on offer and being glad of the abundance, rather than wasting energy on decrying all but one sole crust.

>>13734
I kinda agree with what you're saying. Fundamentally it seems a fallacy to proportionate popularity with quality either positively or negatively. There are roughly as many popular cult classics as unappreciated gems; as many well-marketed manufactured shites as there are experimental flops.

>>13730
>Good thing about real ale is because it isn't full of chemical shit (eg propelyne glycol in Corona etc) and colour crap, hangovers only tend to be caused by dehydration and body glucose level fuckup.
Beer in general is a fairly safe choice if you want to mitigate the chance or effects of a hangover. Quite a few people react badly to yeast though, so real ale can give them terrible hangovers. As far as I'm aware, there's no reason to believe that the lack of "chemical shit" in real ale has any more health benefits than the lack of additives in "natural tobacco" brands.

>>>13733
You're arguing about whether or not something tastes good. It'd take some pretty incredible evidence to demonstrate objectively that your preferred brand of fermented sugar water is better than somebody else's preferred brand of fermented sugar water. I like ales, some people don't. This does not bother me. People who don't like or care about ales don't tend to proselytize to me about the inherent superiority of lager. A lot of people who are really into ale, unfortunately, are incredibly obnoxious cunts about beer, and should honestly shut the fuck up.

>>13734
>Are you joking? It's quite the opposite - the average music pleb consumes what he is given - instead of opening up to new and challenging things.
He's right. Every teenlad who's just discovered the Beatles loves nothing more than a good old rant about how awful everything in the charts is. I care a great deal about music, and frankly I'm too busy enjoying how easy it is today to appreciate the niche, obscure, forgotten, and underappreciated as well as the mainstream to havemuch of an opinion on the irrelevant relic that is the charts.

So what is it in Newcastle Brown that gives me such a vicious hangover? Just one bottle whilst on the piss will give me absolute horrors the next day. I've never had the same effect with real ale. The only other alcoholic drink that does the same for me is white cider, and I'm content not knowing what it is in that shit that's so toxic.

>>13653

I hadn't considered a working man's club. I shall investigate.

>>13738

White cider. The horror!

>>13737
> Every teenlad who's just discovered the Beatles loves nothing more than a good old rant about how awful everything in the charts is.

The Beetles are hardly obscure - they're basically been permanently on the charts since the dawn of time. I get what you mean, but to me, it's all the same shit really, just different decades. I'm sort of a bad person to have popular musical discussions with, since I've become sort of a caveman when it comes to music in general. I've disconnected myself from the mainstream a long time ago.

>>13734

>Are you joking? It's quite the opposite - the average music pleb consumes what he is given - instead of opening up to new and challenging things.

You're missing my point. People who have a deep understanding of music theory and practical musicianship invariably have a great deal of respect for chart pop, because writing that kind of song and producing that kind of record is really hard. A pop record is rarely particularly complex, but they are perfectly refined. They're little haiku-like pearls, a shot of musical espresso, all the elements of musical expression boiled down into their most intense and immediate form.

Only listening to chart pop means you have a very limited taste in music, but never listening to chart pop means you're just a petty snob who wouldn't know a decent song if it bit you on the arse. The charts have always been propped up by bona-fide geniuses - Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, Bacharach & David, Barry & Greenwich, Phil Specter, Mickie Most, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Stock Aitken Waterman, Trevor Horn, Xenomania, Ester Dean...

My contention is that if you can't explain why the following record is a work of sublime brilliance, you fundamentally don't understand any part of music, you're just following some or other fashion.

https://www.youtube.com/v/4JipHEz53sU

>>13741

I have to say, I've never really understood people that claim to hate chart pop with a passion. It's always come across as catchy, sometimes interesting and easy to listen to.

This is from someone who's been immersed in music all my life, perform it semi-professionally on an almost daily basis and may well go into a full-time career in it after uni.

>>13741

I don't know what you nerds are talking about but I would go wacky like a wack-a-do on Nicky Minaj.

>>13741
>People who have a deep understanding of music theory and practical musicianship invariably have a great deal of respect for chart pop
That's true, but also a very different thing to actually liking it and listening to it at home out of choice.

>never listening to chart pop means you're just a petty snob who wouldn't know a decent song if it bit you on the arse.
Respectfully disagree. "Pop" covers a lot of ground, but in general I don't have any cause to spend time exploring the genre; whenever I do hear Radio 1 it seems to be dominated by autotuned vocals, obnoxious lyrics, and shallow, repetitive melodies. I've spent enough time in front of DAWs to understand that it's all highly technically competent (though I'd like to get in a jab about the dynamic range being crunched to fuck on most of it) and I don't have any illusions that my own tastes are somehow "superior", but modern pop really does nothing for me. I'm not worried that I'm missing out on anything by spending my time exploring the rest of music instead.

>>13741
I don't have anything to contribute, but good post. Changed my view a little bit.

>>13747

I can sort of see where you're coming from, but I also really struggle to understand how someone wouldn't like any of it, or how a music lover would find no excitement or inspiration in pop music. I listen to maybe two or three hundred new songs a week, but the records that make me cry are invariably the throwaway pop.

I'm from a jazz and folk background and learned much of my craft singing border ballads with a finger in my ear, but the highlight of my week is Target's Homegrown show on 1Xtra. There's a purity and emotional clarity to so much pop music, best represented by John Peel's adoration of "Teenage Kicks". It always strikes me as terribly sad that he died too soon to witness the DAW revolution. It's barely spring, but I'm already hyped about the upcoming summer season and the inevitable Balearic anthems. A fortnight in Magaluf or Ibiza is my idea of hell, but I'll be eagerly awaiting the europop treasures that people bring back from those holidays.

Even ignoring the post-mortem chart entry of Frankie Knuckles' "Your Love", there are at least half a dozen records in this week's Top 40 that I really like. I feel strongly that we're privileged to be living in a golden age of pop music. (Also, kudos to Route 94 for their utterly beautiful new video).

https://www.youtube.com/v/BS46C2z5lVE
https://www.youtube.com/v/m-M1AtrxztU
https://www.youtube.com/v/HGy9i8vvCxk
https://www.youtube.com/v/FHCYHldJi_g
https://www.youtube.com/v/450p7goxZqg
https://www.youtube.com/v/8B93tgRxMuE

>>13752
It's strange to see a VR headset used as a conceit for a video. Don't think I've seen that since the 90s!

>I can sort of see where you're coming from, but I also really struggle to understand how someone wouldn't like any of it, or how a music lover would find no excitement or inspiration in pop music.
Different strokes. I gave all of those links a shot and they mostly left me cold, there's just very little substance there to my ears. The John Legend track gets closest, that's basically what I'd sniffily class as "good" pop. Still, while the piano is lovely, I wish he'd shut up.

If you honestly listen to 200-300 new tracks a week then you spend far more of your time exploring new music than most, and certainly far more than me. I don't have the patience to sift through the inevitable dross, I'd much rather put on a record I either already know I like or know I've got a good shot at liking - and frankly that excludes the singles charts, as the odds there are just horribly low. Pop music is also pretty uniformly safe - if I want to be challenged or "hear something new" I'll go scour some random music blogs for Mediafire links, or spend some time youtube hopping (back in the day I used to love exploring FTPs and Apache indexes, you'd find all manner of weird shit).

>>13741
Pop music is designed to be popular amongst people who have no understanding or deep interest in music. It is aimed at the lowest common denominator, the double-digit IQ masses who are most likely to throw their money at this shit. Absolute rubbish the lot of it.

>>13778
Careful you don't cut youtself there, lad.

>>13740
They're not obscure, but they're hardly a massive chart presence in 2014. You could substitute the Beatles for some shite like the Pixies and the point would still stand.

>>13741
>if you can't explain why the following record is a work of sublime brilliance
I can't, but I'd very much appreciate it if you would.

>>13790

The Pixies are brilliant.

>>13792
I do still hold a bit of a soft spot for the Pixies, but they are very much entry level alternative music. A lot of their most vocal fans are the above mentioned teenlads venturing outside the mainstream for the first time. Their featuring in Fight Club probably doesn't help this.

I still have a thing for Kim Deal, even though she's in her fifties.

>>13802

Get your facts right, lad. I'm a Pixies fan that doesn't fit into your misguided demographic. There was no other influential band 1988 - 1991 apart from Pixies. Period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd34UjP6Q3Y

>>13808

I'd put my thing in Kim Deal but I probably would have to stand aside to a couple of roller derby girls.

I'm saying nothing.

>>13809
>Get your facts right, lad. I'm a Pixies fan that doesn't fit into your misguided demographic
As I said, I quite like them myself. I didn't say all of their fans fit into a certain demographic.

>There was no other influential band 1988 - 1991 apart from Pixies. Period.
That's blatantly incorrect though.

>A lot of their most vocal fans are the above mentioned teenlads venturing outside the mainstream for the first time

CUNT OFF!
CUNT OFF!
CUNT OFF!
CUNT OFF!

>>13791

I can't really explain without a fairly hefty lump of musical theory, so I'll offer a (grossly oversimplified) tour of the relevant bits for the benefit of a lay audience. I'm a tad tipsy, so apologies in advance if I balls this up.

In western harmony, a scale has eight notes or "degrees" (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do). Each degree of the scale has a particular character, creating a sense of tension or resolution. The chords of a song are built on each degree of the scale, most basically by taking that degree and the third and fifth subsequent degree. The interplay of chords and melody is what gives a song its shape and emotional impact, with the chords creating the overall structure. Each degree (and so the chords built on each degree) has a specific character which we all hear intuitively but musicians describe more formally.

The first and eighth degrees (the root and octave, both "do") are the "home" notes of a scale, to which the ear naturally settles. All other degrees convey a sense of tension, with the ear naturally seeking resolution to the root or octave. In a hymn, the "a-men" at the end inevitably moves down to the root.

The fifth degree ("so") is the most settled of all the other intervals, with roughly equal tension between the root and octave. Other intervals are more or less tense, depending on their proximity to the root, fifth and octave. The fourth ("fa") is drawn most strongly to the fifth and only weakly to the root, the second and seventh ("re" and "ti") are drawn strongly towards the root and octave respectively and so on.

Most pop songs are built on chord progressions that revolve around the first, fourth and fifth chords, with occasional wanderings to create a sense of tension or sadness. The natural climax of most upbeat pop songs is the resolution back to the first, usually mirrored in both chords and melody, which creates a pleasing sense of closure like the "amen" at the end of a hymn.

Super Bass does something devilishly clever in the chorus. You can see the structure of the chorus laid out interactively at the link below, which should make this explanation a lot clearer.

http://www.hooktheory.com/analysis/view/nicki-minaj/super-bass

During the first part of the chorus, the melody wanders around the root over a background of the fourth and fifth chords, building towards the (seemingly inevitable) resolution to the root, but then it pulls the rug from underneath us.

At "boom-ba-doom-doom bass", the melody resolves back to the root, but the chord progression moves to a sixth chord, a chord with a naturally sad sound that resolves downwards to the fifth. The following phrase "he's got that super bass" is on the sixth and fifth respectively. That whole melodic phrase is then repeated, but over the fourth chord.

The real genius is the way that words and music combine to create emotion. I'm honestly welling up a little writing this, because I think it's such a stunning example of my life's passion. The lyric asks "Boy you've got my heartbeat running away, beating like a drum and it's coming your way, can't you hear that boom-ba-doom-doom?" and resolves down to the root, but the chords reply "no" or at least "maybe" by moving in the opposite direction to the sad-sounding sixth. The last note of the vocal line ("ba-ass") falls down to the sixth like a sigh, giving a partial sense of resolution in the first repetition of the phrase but a sense of tension to the second. Where we expect to find resolution, we instead find tension. The song leads us up to a soaring climax, but instead leaves us with something altogether more ambivalent and incomplete.

Viewed naively, "Super Bass" is just some trashy song about a hunky guy in a club. Through the ears of this musician at least, it is a sublimely pure expression of yearning, of that moment when your heart leaps out of your chest with desire. It's the sound of a hand reaching out for another but finding only air, it's the sound of every unrequited crush, every teenage infatuation. It's a simple song, but every note works perfectly towards that emotional aim. It's what good songwriters work all their lives to achieve and what great songwriters do instinctively.

The song is littered with examples of simple but perfectly chosen songwriting and production tricks. The sense of yearning is presaged in the verse with the subtle electric piano chords and the falling synth line in the intro. Follow the kick drum and you'll hear that rather than just thudding away keeping time, it follows the emotional contours of the song, building the sense of excitement and tension into the chorus. I could wank on endlessly about the synth programming or the use of vocal harmonies or the gorgeous little bridge (the bit that leads into the final chorus).

Like all great pop songs, Super Bass is infinitely more than the sum of its parts, because all of those parts are perfectly honed, every note does a job of work. It's very easy to make something clever and complicated, but very difficult to make something simple and beautiful. Give me a manuscript book and a pencil and I could jot off a symphony as easily as a shopping list, but I could never write a chart hit, not in a million years. I don't hear clearly enough, I don't feel acutely enough, I don't have that instinctive connection with what makes us all human. I can analyse it all day, but I can no more do it than an ornithologist can flap his arms and fly.

>>13831

While your explanation is spot on and lovely, with songs like this I often lean towards the cynical side. Though I no longer work in the industry I have many friends who do, and I have heard more than a few stories about 'songwriters' sat in the studio googling chord progressions as they simply have no idea on their own where to go in a piece.

I think you are far more talented for seeing such intent in the song than the writer is for putting it there, especially if they stumbled upon it by accident.

Here is the chief writer of Super Bass's thoughts on their 'process' - "I go into the booth and I scream and I sing and I yell, and sometimes it's words but most time [sic] it's not...and I just see when I get this little chill and then I'm, like, 'Yeah, that's the hook.'"

That could just be modesty, but I don't know.

>>13831
I basically agree with edgelad here >>13778, and I simply can't agree with there being any worth in the popular shite on the airwaves.

You can subtly analyse each pop-song and begin weeping at their brilliance - but it seems you'd do the same when you see a single cloud in the sky. It's just not there for me, and a lot of people - and as a matter of fact, infuriates us when we are force fed the same dross wherever wee turn these days.

I am a big fan of 80's pop, which I think is the pinnacle of pop music really - I'll turn into a crooning poofter if any of that comes on (thanks GTA: VC).

However there is so much better stuff out there. I'll happily sit with my post-rock, doom, drone, garage rock, middle-eastern music and shun the rest. I'd offer some songs but I think you might spontaneously combust trying to decipher their brilliance.

>>13837
>You can subtly analyse each pop-song and begin weeping at their brilliance - but it seems you'd do the same when you see a single cloud in the sky.

I think to some modes of thinking, this would be an appropriate response.

>I'd offer some songs but I think you might spontaneously combust trying to decipher their brilliance.

He'd enjoy it, go on.

_{(Actually I really enjoy all types of Eastern influenced stuff, do you think you could start a /beat/ thread with some of your favourites? I could quite happily listen to the vedas all day but finding examples of music in a language/culture that isn't my own can be hard. Ta.)}

>>13853

I will - check back in 2-3hrs.

>>13837

>I'd offer some songs but I think you might spontaneously combust trying to decipher their brilliance.

I'd happily do functional analysis on any western music you like, but I fear you may be rather disappointed. Most guitar music just doesn't do anything particularly sophisticated, even (especially) the stuff with ideas above its station.

Technique fundamentally doesn't matter very much, it's a question of what you do with it. Good writing isn't simply a case of using the longest and most obtuse words you know and good composition isn't a matter of crafting some elaborate chromatic edifice.

For the sake of argument, let us compare two polar extremes - the definitive technical showpiece of the Jazz tradition with one of the plainest and most beautiful ballads in the English folk tradition:

https://www.youtube.com/v/2kotK9FNEYU

https://www.youtube.com/v/X3MTAkj6phc

I wouldn't necessarily argue which is better, but they both achieve tremendous artistic effect with a level of compositional complexity that differs by many orders of magnitude.

I could dress Cruel Mother in all of the harmonic and melodic finery that my education has endowed, but ultimately anything I do to it would only make it worse, sapping a 350 year old ballad of its weight and resonance. Conversely, I could cut away at Giant Steps all day, carving out two dozen decent compositions from the wilfully verbose raw materials provided by Coltrane.

>>13859

Can I ask how you are - out of curiosity, you don't need to answer.

>>13860

I'm very well, but I think you accidentally a word.

>>13864

If you're asking how old I am, then I'll just say "Old enough to look out of place in a nightclub, young enough to look out of place at a concert hall or a folk club.".

>>13864
Excellent.

>>13865
Alright - so mid 30's I take it. I'm 25, I'd like to think I have a decent knowledge of music - but it's interesting to know that someone has a diametrically different view on it. It's refreshing.

>>13734

I would argue that the consumption of media is the sole exception to this rule, as, in contrast to any physical good and most consumer services, it costs no more to reproduce a 'good' recording than a 'bad' one.

>>13837

>However there is so much better stuff out there. I'll happily sit with my post-rock, doom, drone, garage rock, middle-eastern music and shun the rest. I'd offer some songs but I think you might spontaneously combust trying to decipher their brilliance.

Jesus, guitar music fans truly are the worst.

>>13895
You sound like a insufferable cunt.

>>13902
No, he doesn't.

>>13902
I have a friend who insists on forcing the same Whitesnake album on into my car's cd player whenever I wanted to listen to Radio 3 or 4. Makes my piss boil listening to the same 2 songs and have him talk about how he was "born in the wrong era", also fiddling with the dials to stop certain songs half way through because "the others are a bit too long" even though the drive might be an hour to the coast.
Lovely chap, but his taste in music begins and ends with 2 or 3 songs from about 2 or 3 bands he plays on repeat.

>>13903
Yes he does. Saying 'guitar music fans are the worst' is a statement of such unimaginably ignorant and sweeping proportions. You're lumping in everything from death metal to folk in the same category? Seriously? That's just as stupid as saying 'electronic music fans are the worst' and lumping in everything from the latest chart topping teeny bopping shit to experimental techno-trance.

>>13908
Ah people with narrow tastes and people who fiddle and skip music tracks annoy me too. Just put the damn CD on, sit back and enjoy. And maybe try a few different ones every now and again.

>>13941

Folk is categorically not guitar music - guitarists represent only a very small minority of the new generation of folk musicians. It is certainly not a genre defined by the guitar, in the way that rock or metal might be. Martin Carthy's guitar is no more iconic than Dave Swarbrick's fiddle or John Kirkpatrick's multitude of squeezeboxes; The folk tradition and its back catalogue of recordings would survive largely intact if guitarists were eradicated from history.

I've made this argument before, but I think it bears repeating - choosing to form a "band" in the rock sense of the word is a conspicuously reactionary decision, a conscious choice to reject other musical possibilities in favour of a relatively narrow musical tradition.

Imagine you're a young person who wants to make music. Maybe you've been writing little songs in the shower, maybe you dream of stardom, maybe you just want to make some noise for the sheer hell of it. What are your choices?

If you want the cheapest, simplest, most versatile tool, then the decision is obvious - you don't buy a knackered strat and learn three chords as the punk generation did, you download a cracked copy of Reason and start making music on your laptop. The machine you've already got sat in front of you is an orchestra in a box, capable of turning raw ideas into just about any sort of music you can fathom. A singer-songwriter taking up the guitar knowingly rejects all of that immense musical possibility.

If you're looking to create new and interesting music with a fellow musicians, then forming a band centred around a guitar-bass-drums lineup is obviously misguided, as is rooting yourself in the rock tradition. Failing a laptop-based collaboration in the manner of Magnetic Man et al, a far more reasonable decision might be to get yourself trained in the jazz tradition and start some madcap collaboration with a rotating cast, in the manner of F-IRE Collective. Jazz audiences may not be big, but they're commendably open-minded and will embrace an oddball like Leafcutter John, whose main instruments are mandolin and Xbox controller.

If you have an affinity for tradition, then folk is an obvious home - you can play any instrument you like or none at all, and immediately gain access to a richly supportive culture with excellent opportunities for learning, collaboration and performance.

To pick up a guitar and start a rock or metal band at any point in the last decade or so is a conscious rejection of those other options in favour of, well, what exactly? In spite of their claims to the contrary, rock and metal audiences are exceedingly narrow-minded and would baulk at things that are utterly unremarkable in jazz or folk, like collaborating with a brass band or a sitar player, or producing a concept performance with ballet dancers or visual artists. Rock and metal simply offer a much more limited creative palette from which to draw. Rock doesn't offer nearly the opportunities for material enrichment and sexual gratification nor the simplicity and immediacy of creation of dance music and related electronic genres.

With art and avarice gone as motives, all I can see that remains is a trite, archaic notion of rock and roll stardom, a drearily white and regressively masculine notion of what it means to be a performer. A stale and second-hand subculture, bereft of the hybrid vigour that comes from creative cross-pollination and a deep engagement with culture at large. Guitar music appears to be a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a bad Beatles tribute act, and little I have heard in the last decade has served to disabused me of that notion.

Of course it is possible to name exceptions, but that's the point - they're exceptions. For every Tosin Abasi, there are a hundred interchangeable white men, playing the same riffs on the same instruments and citing the same influences. Guitar music is a backwater and has been for a generation.

>>13942
Congrats, I've never seen anyone talk so much bollocks on this website before. Well done.

>>13944

And I shall congratulate you in turn for your insightful and informative rebuttal.

>>13942
Christ what has caused you to have such a massive chip on your shoulder? None of your arguments make any sense and your entire spiel is badly constructed and lacking in direction.

Most people play music because they, you know, want to play music. As much as I respect talented artists that produce great MDMA gurn tracks, ultimately standing in front of people and pressing the play button on a laptop doesn't count as playing music, at least not to the vast majority of people. People want the physicality of playing a real instrument.

There is nothing wrong with learning piano, violin, or double bass, but the classic guitar/bass/drums combo represents the cheapest and easiest to pick option.

Fundamentally, playing guitar (or any other instrument) is a far more satisfying and social experience than sitting on your own making dubstep remix number 7 on your laptop at 1AM. Plus being able to strum a few chords to a popular song to a few mates sitting around at a music festival or other such gathering is a far more organic and wholesome experience than sharing beats electronically.

I'm sorry but you just sound like a complete cunt. Rock ain't dead, and that's a fact.

>>13942
>Folk is categorically not guitar music

Oh so the folk guitar isn't important at all to folk music right?

>>13942

Did a guitarist steal your bird m8?

I've never read such autistic tripe over a single topic - ever.

I'd take a knackered strat strumming 3 chord punk songs over any pretentious garbage you listed. In fact - it's far more succinct, wholesome and enjoyable that smelling your own farts when it comes to crying over some electronically made piffle.

I'm actually laughing right now, because I can imagine this anal-retentive prat, sitting in a corner and listening to this shite, musing how intellectually superior he is over all those "plebian" guitar players:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL3HPvEVXwU

Really? I admire my IDM lads, but is this the best you could come up with?

>>13944>>13947>>13949

Thus far, IDMlad sounds more level-headed than those who are coming out in rock musics defense.

>>13950
Ha - "level-headed" did you read that nonsense?

>>13949

I've a fair deal of sympathy with lots of the criticism being heaped on >>13942, but in an argument between him and someone who dismisses folk, jazz and music made on laptops as "pretentious garbage" and (by inference) 'unwholesome', I'd be inclined to suggest that you're both talking out of your bottoms.

>>13949

You're dismissing my entire argument (and by extension myriad diverse genres of music) on the basis that one particular aspect of one particular musician's work isn't to your taste? A musician I cited specifically as an example of an extremely avant-garde performer? I think you're making my case for me.

Let's be reasonable and look at a broad cross-section of the work coming from the worlds of folk, jazz and electronic music.

Leading lights of the contemporary folk scene, the Unthanks:
https://www.youtube.com/v/wmhACB1ZPQM

Led by Martin Carthy (elder statesman of English folk) and Johnny Khalsi (vanguard of the British Punjabi scene), the astonishing Imagined Village:
https://www.youtube.com/v/3QC2av7-_Ik


From the Jazz world, kings of the second line, the Rebirth Brass Band:
https://www.youtube.com/v/3E1VBCcA76E

The haunting and ethereal Portico Quartet:
https://www.youtube.com/v/jQH0GPL33uc

I scarcely know where to start with laptop-based music, the field is so stupendously diverse as to lack even clear diametric opposites, encompassing the entirety of modern pop and dance music and a huge array of niche genres.

Picking two laptopists at complete random, I give you Stromae, the rightful heir to the legacy of Jacques Brel, and Disclosure, the production team getting more fanny than anyone in Britain:

https://www.youtube.com/v/CAMWdvo71ls

https://www.youtube.com/v/93ASUImTedo

Given the dizzying range of creative possibilities now within grasp of any aspiring musician, what would possess anyone to choose so limited a genre as rock or metal? Why choose so bland a sonic palette as guitar-drums-bass? What could someone so lacking in imagination and curiosity possibly have to say artistically? If people want to do that sort of thing in the privacy of their own rehearsal rooms then fine, but why would I want to listen to their work given the practically limitless range of alternatives?

This thread became a cunt off rather fast.

>>13970
Well, this will happen when people take the bait.

>>13961

>why would I want to listen to their work given the practically limitless range of alternatives?

Easy answer really, You wouldn't. The bit you don't seem to have figured out yet is that music is entirely subjective, much like the food taste that this thread started about ages ago. I mean, that prat half a thread up trying to tell us Nicki Minaj is "sublime genius"? I'm sorry mate, yeah I agree that pop songwriters have a very talented knack for coming out with catchy lines, but that song is fucking dross. Wow great it breaks typical cadence, but everything else about it, including the central focus- the vocal performance- is wank. Now you can take your counter-hipster double-cross elitist wank out of here. But that, of course, is just my opinion, see?

Now, I'm automatically inclined to disagree with the lad above who seems to think the guitar/bass/drum combo is dead, seeing as I am in a metal band and we play metal and all that, I have my long hair and wardrobe full of black t-shirts, jeans and wristbands. But I'm not averse to throwing on a bit of Daft Punk when I want to nod my head and tap my foot either, and I'm particularly fond of Radio 3 whenever I have to go for a long drive. Sometimes I like to just sit with the window open and listen to the birds sing, the wind in the leaves and the distant noise of motorway traffic like a natural percussion.

I don't like green/salad-y vegatables though. Honestly, I just don't like them much. Generally, the problem is that too often, vegetables are not well integrated into the dish. I love tomato sauces of all kinds, like with pasta, lasagne, on pizzas and so on. But give me a slice of actual tomato, and I think they are vile. Stuff where vegetables are an ingredient, but not the focus, are usually fine, like those sandwhiches you get that have a garnish of lettuce, onions and whatnot, buta good chunk of meat and mayo/ketchup to make up for it- but too often vegetables appear solitarily in meals like some kind of rogue, attempting to thwart my pleasurable taste experience. The humble salad is a dish I will never be able to understand.

Does this make me some kind of hateful man-child? Or can we humbly accept that some people prefer tangier flavours and more wholesome textures?

TL;DR- We aren't all closed minded twats. But this thread is full of judgemental pricks. Really, it is quite shocking.

>>13961
>Leading lights of the contemporary folk scene

I think you mean Mumford & Sons.

>>14681

>>14681
Watersons you conniving, treacherous....SOD OFF TO GRIMBO!

>>13942

This. And I say that a s a former metal guitarist. Now I make dance music.

Oh, and for you delectation: https://www.youtube.com/v/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YtEZD24arw[/yt]

>>14680
>give me a slice of actual tomato, and I think they are vile
>Does this make me some kind of hateful man-child?
No. But you sound like a fussy eater, and that is slightly pathetic no matter how reasonably you try to phrase it.

>that song is fucking dross
>this thread is full of judgemental pricks
Like yourself.

(I also think the song is dross, because I'm a judgemental prick too. You can't take the high ground whilst being equally guilty yourself though, mate - that's not how it works.)

Your video link didn't work for me. Testing...
https://www.youtube.com/v/3YtEZD24arw

>>14698

Not sure what I did wrong there. Cheers though lad.

>>14703
http://britfa.gs/help/features.html
Did you put the whole URL in the yt tags?

>>14715

I believe, like a muppet, I did. I don;t actually think I have ever posted a youtube video on here, so I guess I should get half marks for even knowing about the [yt] tag.

>>14680

>I love tomato sauces of all kinds, like with pasta, lasagne, on pizzas and so on. But give me a slice of actual tomato, and I think they are vile.

So you only like things if they are loaded up with sugar? I guess your juvenile tastes extend further than just music...

>>14758

Some people's tastebuds don't mature until well into their 20s. My best mate had never eaten a real strawberry until he was 24, to which he exclaimed "Oh, it really does taste like strawberry!" OF COURSE IT FUCKING DOES!

>>14763
You say that, but it's commonly observed that fruit-flavoured food and drink don't actually taste similar to the real thing.

>>14763
>My best mate had never eaten a real strawberry until he was 24

Jesus, it's grim up north.

>>14758
I'm not too far off from that. The majority of tomatoes are horrible watery shit that are bred to get to a certain size as quick as possible. Once they're at the right size they're not left to ripen on the vine, they're taken off and stored in fridges that are pumped full of CO2. This means the tomatoes are basically in a state of suspended animation. They can spend months before taken out and ripened under lamps before being sent off to supermarkets.

Quality tomatoes are beautiful tasty things, but to get them you really need to grow your own or get them from a small organic farm.

>>14823
Absolute twaddle, you can find a decent pack in most Tescos.

>>14763
What kind of utter street pleb do you need to be that you don't taste a real strawberry?

There are Romanian peasants that have a better diet than your mate.

>>14825
What he's saying is that the best you get in Tesco pale in comparison to a tomato that's been home grown, and he's right. I have a friend who always swore he hated raw tomato, he changed his mind after trying a freshly picked cherry tomato.

>>14836
What about the tomatoes you can buy still attached to the vine?

>>14837
Vine tomatoes are just the same for the most part.

>>14839
Tomatolads, the best supermarket tomatoes i've encountered so far are Waitrose green marmande tomatoes. Ok so they are stupendously overpriced and the flavour is still a shadow of what it would be if they were left to ripen naturally and not transported half way round the world but at least they taste of something. They are fantastic grilled on toast.

Tesco don't even sell tomatoes any more, they sell orange perfect spheres that don't taste of anything, and the rest of the big food retailers are just as bad. The big supermarkets have actually prompted me to grow my own veg this year. The way they operate is shit for farmers and shit for customers, they sell generic tasteless crap at prices that force growers into doing everything in pursuit of profit rather than quality or nutrition.

>>14836
Home-grown thats grown with a lot of care and dedication, right soil composition, heat/light, etc. For a marginally better flavour.

Tesco's Finest had a few boxes the other week, those really blew my mind.

>>14841
>For a marginally better flavour.
Honestly, have you tried? The difference isn't "marginal", in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I eat and cook with supermarket tomatoes all the time. I don't have the space or even the motivation to grow my own at the moment, they are a hassle. But they are a lot nicer.

>>14841
the varieties used commercially are to get to a certain size as quick as possible. Flavour is a secondary concern, you could grow the same variety outside and let it ripen naturally and it won't be as nice. Take a variety like Sun baby which are yellow cherry tomatoes and you could grow them in a cupboard using hydroponics and it would be massively better in taste.

>>14844
I don't doubt that, but taste vs. effort. Unless you already are well into it, there is no point going down to buy compost.

>>14841

Growing tomatoes is a piece of piss, lad.

>>14851
I did a lot of gardening with my mum when I was a wee lad, and home-grown veggies are top class - but it's the convenience sake of it.

The tomatoes would riped at more or less a defined time rather than being constantly "there" and there is a lot of variability in yield/size/flavour.

I can't wait to have my own place so I can have an awesome garden.

My dad honestly just said "why would you want to put bay leaves or sage into a chicken casserole (chicken, peas, potatoes, stock and carrots - nothing else)? it's got enough flavour in it already!" to me. Without seasoning for the cooking and when stewed, it's a seriously dull and tasteless meal.

>>15613
What's in the stock? Is it fresh or from a cube?

>>15614
Fresh.
I just don't like the zero-tolerance approach to using certain little things sparingly that really improve the finished meal a thousandfold. Also, he cooks the exact same things on a strict rota and it strikes me as being a waste of time if he even doesn't really do well at getting a relatively simple stew right.

>>14870
Growing your own doesn't have anywhere near the convenience of just buying the veg, I completely agree. Depending on how far you take it, it's also not necessarily cheaper (though unless you go nuts on investing in an over-engineered greenhouse or buy "grow kits" you'll struggle to spend more). If you find gardening to be a pleasurable activity, though, then as long as you have a decent sized garden you can grow better than good enough with minimal effort of potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, leeks, courgettes, swedes, kohlrabi, kale and any number of other things (all manner of herbs, especially rosemary which is unstoppable once you have a couple of good bushes going). This is going all /eco/, I guess, but there's a world out there... But as you mention, storage is an issue. Root veg keeps, other things don't and don't freeze well either.

But then, I'm spoiled since I moved to North East London. I can no longer grow my own, but especially for tomatoes the local veg shops are great, and they are comparatively cheap for staple veg (potatoes, onions, carrots, "crooked" cucumber) as well. Swings and roundabouts, really.

>>15613

My parents eat complete shite- It amazes them that I even cook the majority of my miles rather than just shoving something in the microwave or ordering a chinese. They tell me I should be a chef when all I've done is make a simple bolognese or marinated some chicken breasts overnight.

I think it must be a generational thing. LI imagine that the state of food in this country during the 60s and 70s was far from fantastic- Any older chaps care to tell us what it was like? I remember seeing a TV documentary where it was talking about how pretty much everyone in those days ate frozen and microwave meals because it was the latest, space-age in-thing, and nobody had started to figure out how awfully unhealthy they all were yet.

>>15632
It probably helps that we're among the first generation to grow up plugged-in enough to know to just google for a decent recipe. That sentence smacks of unwarranted elitism but I think it's fair to say if you're using gs you're more inclined to make use of the internet than y/our parents.

>>15632

British food used to be absolutely shit. Before the 1970s, we had hardly any foreign food, so everything was unbearably bland. Most people learned to cook like the dad in >>15613 - plain meat and veg, boiled to death. A lot of that generation never really caught up, I think in large part because they never shook off the idea that any sort of foreign food is strange and exotic. They grew up in an age where cooking skills were inherited and largely static, rather than something you can just have a go at.

Ready meals came quite late to the party, relatively speaking. Any sort of prepared food was an expensive treat for most people until at least the mid 1980s, and was seen as quite aspirational. It wasn't until well into the 1990s that they took on the image of being a bit grim and lazy. Ready meals might be iffy now, but they used to be properly dreadful, partly because the food technology wasn't sufficiently advanced, partly because a lot of recipes were made excessively bland and sweet to cater to the palates of people who weren't used to it, partly because we just didn't know any better as consumers.

Likewise, restaurant and takeaway food was enormously expensive relative to income, with a typical restaurant meal costing nearly a week's wages in the early 1970s. Our wider horizons in terms of food happened in sync with the broader improvements in living standards, particularly the package holiday - people would come back from "the continent" with a newfound excitement about food.

For context, here's Delia Smith in 1978, explaining in painstaking detail how to cook, serve and eat Spag Bol:

https://www.youtube.com/v/D95rMYL1T2A

>>15643
This is what I've heard too, apparently my grandad used to view pizza as a strange exotic foreign food.

Speaking of 'exotic food', I managed to try camel, kangaroo, springbok and wild boar recently, all washed down with expensive whiskey and champagne like the posho twat I'm really not.

>>15644
I have a family member who's 90, and she views olive oil with extreme suspicion, and won't eat any food that wasn't widely available in Britain during the 50s.

A lot of those exotic meats end up being pretty uninteresting in my experience. I don't know why I expect them to taste so magical, but they just taste like variations on pork/beef/chicken/deer. Though I did go into the Chinese supermarket the other day to get some sour plum juice and sugared winter gourd, and the Chinese fellow working there acted like I'd just walked on the ceiling because he said it's rare for British people to enjoy that sort of Asian food. I guess he wants to be my friend.

>>15643
And when you think about it, we really shouldn't have had such a shit food culture. We had both India and Hong Kong. Both of those have an absolutely brilliant and varied food culture and the fact we didn't take any of it (just like we took everything else) is just so weird.

>>15643
Partly because...

>>15644>>15646
If my parents ever go out for a meal with my uncle, who's in his seventies, then they're either limited to carvery or somewhere serving steak and chips. My dad, his younger brother by at least ten years, isn't like this but his cookery is by and large boiling unseasoned veg (although to be fair he makes great mash). Actually, I tell a lie, he seasons with salt and chilli powder.

I'm fussy with onions; I don't like the texture, so if I'm cooking with them I'll whizz them up into the sauce so I don't have any awful crunchy bits.

>>15644

Kangaroo and wild boar I've had and really enjoyed. Haven't had the other 2 but can add Beaver to the list. Tastes very much like beef. Would like to try crocodile one day.

Used to have a friend who claimed to be allergic to mushrooms. So we'd put mushrooms in his food to see what would happen. He really enjoyed it.

>>15646

Hongkonglad here, actually the Chinese are genuinely like this - they are incredibly proud of their cuisine (the Mandarin for "how are you" is "have you eaten today?"), and also well aware that most foreign devils will have no idea about it. If you know it and love it it goes down fucking well out here, let me tell you that.

>>15650

Kangaroo steak and emu pie are fucking cracking, I will definitely say that...

>>15651
I heard a radio doc on importing western TV shows to China (where they can get audience figures of 60 million or more...) One format that never works is 'Masterchef' or cookery shows in general - because everyone in China's mother/grandmother/aunt is already the best cook in the country.

>>15632
Oldlad reporting in.

Food in the 1970s, aside from the lack of choice we have now, was poorer quality. Example - You used to get bits of bone in bacon rashers, & even butcher's shop bacon exuded that milky gloop & shrank to half its size when you fried it.

We didn't eat much processed or ready-meals - they were bit of a treat - for which I'm glad now, as I've always cooked most of my meals from fresh. We always had curries though, as my great granny was Anglo-Indian.

>>15653

> my great granny was Anglo-Indian.

FUCK OFF BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM YOU FILTHY FUCKING PAKI BASTARD.

>>15653
>even butcher's shop bacon exuded that milky gloop
Bacon dripping? Fucking delicious mate.

>>15653

Thanks for that, grandpa.

>>15655

Nigel Farage is your grandad?

>>15649
>I'm fussy with onions; I don't like the texture, so if I'm cooking with them I'll whizz them up into the sauce so I don't have any awful crunchy bits.
I used to do this and acquired a food processor mainly for this purpose, but over time it got to be more hassle than it's worth, what with the extra washing up and whatnot. If your onions are getting crispy then you're probably cooking them too hard and caramelising them (which would also make the dish sweeter, incidentally), but if it's just the regular onion crunchiness you dislike then try adding a handful of water halfway through cooking them and cooking them longer and at a lower heat.

(Sage for unsolicited and possibly unwanted cooking advice.)

I'm currently making >>8648 to try to prove to him that vaguely Italian cuisine doesn't just come out of pots. It's not really fair as I'm a shit cook, but I don't respect Italy anyway, so who cares if I let them down?

>>15659
I used to be fussy with onions. Then I realised it's all in how you cook them. For some reason my mum would always fry the beef first then put the onions in so they don't really cook properly and just end up limp and boiled. Whereas if you put the onions on first then add beef (or whatever) later they taste a lot better. Plus the smell of frying onion is just lovely.

>>15660
>>/nom/8648

>>15662

Yeah! What of it!? Thanks, now I know.

>>15660>>15664

Oh my God, it's terrible. I think I'm simultaneously dying and becoming increasingly sickened by my own shit cooking.

I just need to calm down, Deanerys ate a whole horses heart and she's fine. Bloody hypochondria.

>>15665
A poor workman blames his tools. There's only so much a walkthrough written for utter retards can do; no amount of words is going to teach the retard how to chop an onion if he can't even manage that. Practical skills don't come out of books.

>>15666

But I didn't blame my tools. Or are you talking about other, non-apparent retards?

My dad said it tastes fine, and usually he's wrong about everything, but this time he's definitely correct.

I think the main issue was that I bought the wrong kind of tomatoes and added too much water towards the end. I'unno, I'm sure it'll get better once it's stood.

>>15667
>I bought the wrong kind of tomatoes
What type of tomatoes did you buy?

>>15668

Seemingly-not-very-sliced plum ones.

>>15669
Those aren't the wrong kind, they're fine for making sauces with.

>>15670
You do need to help break them up a bit if you want a smoother sauce, usually just by squeezing them in your hand when you add them to the pot or chopping through them with the spoon. Plum tomatoes in cans come whole as standard - if you want chopped ones, buy chopped.

Did you just leave them as-is?

>>15679

They make me feel squeamish, too squishy.

>>15679
What's the point of plum tomatoes anyway? As in, they're put next to the chopped tomatoes on the shelf in equal quantities, yet given most dishes will just require a sauce having them chopped is more appropriate for that purpose.

In Hong Kong nobody cooks, we all eat out every night. It's expensive but we can afford it. My girlfriend usually picks the restaurant but I get to pick the desert if you catch my drift.

>>15698
I also imagine not wanting to slave away in the kitchen has something to do with it being 30 degrees there, am I right?

>>15699

Have you not heard of air conditioning?

>>15700
What a bellend.

>>15698
Don't you get fat from eating that desert? And what do they even have, frosted pig scrotum?

I knew you exactly what you meant you filthy fucker you

>>15700
In the Third World?

>>15702

I'm not fat. It's 30 degrees here. Is it 30 degrees there? No? Then shut the fuck up. I'm getting drunk on expensive alcohol in 30 degree heat and later I'll be pounding my 10/10 Asian girlfriend up the arse. Have you ever even been to Hong Kong?

Oy, I don't even know anymore.

>>15698
I'm going to start a /101/ thread because of you. Fuck off.

Hong Kong this, Honk Kong that. Fuck right off, lad. Stupid fucking cunt.

>>15704

Hush little baby, go to sleep.

>>15706

Err...did you not see the "I am Spartacus" post? As the actual HKlad, sorry, but it does need to be said, this was fuck all to me. As are most of the posts over the last God knows how long...I've been at work all day, m7. As usual...fuck knows what has happened in my absence. Noncery, I think...

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>15710

>as HKlad...
Every. Fucking. Thread.

>>15711

>to me

Should have read "to do with me". Apologies.

>>15713

Mirth.

>>15710

You are clearly insecure and I hope your ban is for a long time. No one cares. You come across as a prat. Enjoy HK without narcissistically filling this place up with your terrible posts.