I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: METRIC-“Synthetica” (Field Recordings, June 20, 2012).

After playing the Sasquatch festival, Emily Haines and James Shaw of Metric went behind the stadium and played a beautiful acoustic rendition of the title song from their latest album.  This Field Recording [Metric In A Non-Synthetic Situation] is just so wide open as to be inconceivable–especially since they’d just played a festival.

Metric make beautiful music which is rocking and usually full of all manner of electronic noises.  To hear Haines’ voice stripped from any effects shows just what a great and interesting voice she has.   It’s always nice to hear the song underneath the song.  This is a great version of the song.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 25, 2012] “Putting the Red in Redcoats”

Have you ever thought about how the redcoats’ coats became red?  No, me either.  Well, amazingly, it came from the Cochineal, the same bug that is still used today to color foods.

Cochineal bugs are pretty bizarre.  The female lives her entire life on a prickly pear cactus.  When she hatches, she clamps onto the prickly pear and starts feeding.  She grows to the size of a head of a pin. but never leaves the spot.  The male flies around, but only lives for a week.  The female lays eggs and the babies continue the process.

Although she is immobile, she is also armed with carminic acid, which predators don’t like.  Carminic acid is a vibrant red colorant.  Aztecs first mined this amazing color, which naturally impressed Spanish conquistadores who wanted to take it for themselves.  And they made a lot of money selling it to Europe.  But the Spanish never told anyone that the color came from bugs–they kept the secret for themselves.

Of course pirates and privateers would often hijack ships (one score captured 27 tons of cochineal!).

Most Europeans believed that the cochineal was a berry, so when Europeans traveled to America to find the plant they didn’t know what they were looking for.  When they researched, some thought it was a seed, some thought it might be an insect, others called it a “wormberry.”  Eventually when it was determined that they were actually insects, some people still weren’t sure.  There were roughly 70,000 cochineal to a pound–how could humans catch so many and remove the heads wings and legs?  But even when the secret was out, the Spanish were very lucky because the cochineal is fragile and finicky and only grows in certain parts of Mexico.  No one could grow them in Europe.

Most of the colonists in Williamsburg imported their garments from England, but a few dyers set up ship in Williamsburg too.  It was also used to dye leather and to make paint.  Cochineal also dyed foods and drinks.  Cookbooks called for cochineal to make foods red: for red sugared almonds, “mix about a tea-cupful of water with sufficient cochineal to produce a good red” to make the almonds “a beautiful and lovely rosaceous or deep crimson colour.”  And even today at Colonial Williamsburg it is used in the food at the Palace and Randolph kitchens.

Artificial dyes from the late nineteenth century destroyed the market for cochineal because they were cheaper and more consistent in color .  But when Red Dye No 2 was banned, many producers went back to cochineal, which is safe and non toxic.  And even to this day it is added to jam, shrimp, candies, yogurt, icing and many other food.  Today it is sold without the bug parts, phew.

As for the redcoats–the British government supplied coats dyed with madder, but those who wanted a brighter coat could always have their own made with cochineal (at their own expense).