photo by R. Chursinoff
Nic Johns ate horse meat. Raw horse meat.
I toured with Nic a few years back in the Ben Lee band. That’s when he ate raw horse meat.
According to wikipedia.org,”horse meat is sweet, tender, low in fat and high in protien. However, just like beef and pork, in some societies there is a taboo regarding the consumption of horse meat“.
Apparently not in Japan.
photo by RC
It was late, we had just taken the Bullet Train from our Tokyo show of the Fuji Rocks Festival to the Osaka stop of the festival.
Nic and I sat behind Chrissie Hynde on the train. I suppose he was nervous and actually wanted to speak to the legendary singer from the Pretenders, seeing as how he failed to muster up the nerve the first time he saw her at catering. In Nic’s defence, at catering Ms. Hynde was talking to ancient guitar god Jeff Beck while beside them Nuno Bettencourt (remember Extreme and More Than Words?) was reprimanding his tour manager for trying to rush him along. And Mike Ness (Social Distortion) was sitting nearby watching with disdain the Nuno hissy fit- looking like at any moment he and his tattoos was going to bitch slap the wanker down a few notches.
Watching all these “Heritage” bands clinging to their glory days all around us, who has time to talk to any of them? Who has time even to eat?
So because Nick caved twice on the talking-to-older-famous-musician, he drank Japanese Whiskey on the train instead, talked to me in hushed tones ( so he wouldn’t disturb Miss Hynde), and then ate raw horse meat in Osaka. Granted we were hungry from the long day, which started with a wake-up call at 3:30 am for sound-check, then wrapped up 18 hours later with a long walk through the maze of Osakan streets in order to find the recommended sushi joint. Plus Nic was still chastising himself for not talking to Chrissie Hynde. But did he have to eat horse?
When used for human consumption, horses are led to an open area, given some food, stunned using a captive bolt gun and then killed by exsanguination (I dont know what this is). I suppose this is a better death than if you were a slaughterhouse cow or a rendering-plant chicken or a suicide bomber.
Horse meat is referred to as Sakura or “Cherry Blossom” in Japan, because of its pink colour. Well now, if I would have had a pre-game visualization of horse meat as sweet, pink, cherry blossom maybe I would have given it a whirl. But as I’ve come to understand, from my thorough research, those of us who’ve eaten sausages or fondue from Iceland or cold-cuts from the Netherlands, have in fact, eaten horse anyway.
But how many of you can say you’ve eaten human? Nic Johns cant, although he says he would if it were on the menu at a sushi restaurant.
wow your photo kinda makes me wanna puke. Raw meet? Raw horse meet?
Well i’m not vegan and i’m always up to try all sort of foreign food but i’ll pass on this…