Tag: History

Grunge – History of Term

1: one that is grungy
2: rock music incorporating elements of punk rock and heavy metal
also : the untidy fashions typical of fans of grunge

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grunge

JONATHAN PONEMAN I read the expression grunge many, many times in music journalism before Everett True used it. Everett took the word from the Sub Pop mail-order catalog description of Green River’s Dry as a Bone that Bruce wrote: “ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation.”

MARK ARM The word grunge was tossed around a little bit here and there well before I ever used it. Steve Turner picked up this ’70s reissue of a Rock ’n’ Roll Trio album, and the liner notes talk about Paul Burlison’s “grungy guitar sound.” That was written in the ’70s about a ’50s guitar player.

Grunge was an adjective; it was never meant to be a noun. If I was using it, it was never meant to coin a movement, it was just to describe raw rock and roll. Then that term got applied to major-label bands putting out slick-sounding records. It’s an ill fit.

JACK ENDINO None of us is entirely sure about who used the word first. I saw it in a Lester Bangs record review in Rolling Stone in the ’70s. Mark Arm had used the word in the early ’80s.

Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
Mark Yarm

From the introduction:

First, let’s get that word out of the way. Grunge. Yes, this is a book about grunge. The term that bedeviled and, let’s face it, benefited (at least temporarily) many a Seattle rock musician in the early to mid-1990s. I cannot count how many times, when I described to an interviewee what exactly it was I was working on, I’d get back, “I hate that word …” And here they would go one of two ways: spit out “that word” grunge or insist, “I don’t even like to say it,” as if uttering that one syllable would somehow validate a now decades-old coinage. (For a thorough, yet inconclusive, probe into how grunge got its name, see chapter 17.) Others reacted to the term thusly: “rubs me raw,” “a marketing tool,” “it’s all just music,” “fuckin’ concocted bullshit.” And this: “When I see the word grunge, especially on books, I kind of go”—and at this point, the guy I was interviewing made a rather convincing vomiting sound.

Benefit of the Law for the Devil – Man for All Seasons Quote

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu

A Man for All Seasons is a 1966 British historical drama film directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Robert Bolt from his play of the same name. It depicts the final years of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England who refused both to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and to take an Oath of Supremacy declaring Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_(1966_film)

Hip-Hop – Origin of Term

By the mid-1970s, neighborhood D.J.s started holding parties in parks and community centers. In July 1977 — the month of a blackout that left New York City dark — the brothers met a D.J. named Joseph Saddler, who called himself Grandmaster Flash.

Flash worked with a bowlegged teenager named Keef Cowboy, who energized the crowds with simple rhymes and exhortations. When a friend enlisted in the military, Cowboy teased him on the microphone: “Hip, hop, hip, hop!”

The new culture would soon have a name.

The Fall of Kidd Creole: Inside a Rap Pioneer’s Tragic Descent
As a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he helped invent hip-hop. He spent the rest of his life trying to recapture that glory. Then, in seven minutes on a Manhattan street, it all came to an end.

Best Books I Read in 2025 that Weren’t Published in 2025

Selections mine. Comments via Amazon. In order of publication date.

The Night of the Gun
David Carr
Publication Date: August 5, 2008

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: “There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.” David Carr’s riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can’t write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader’s trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it’s hard to love David Carr–sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it–will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls–makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey. –Brad Thomas Parsons

Planet Funny
Ken Jennings
Publication Date: May 29, 2018

In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.

The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
Eugenia Cheng
Publication Date: September 11, 2018

In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can’t be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic — for example, emotion — is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.

The History of Bones
John Lurie
Publication Date: August 17, 2021

In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment.

Historians Point of View – David Blight Quote

I also like this little passage, to just put into your craw, about any History course, about any interpretation. And of course I’m going to have a point of view at times in this course; all historians do. Don’t even listen to a historian if he or she doesn’t have a point of view. None of us are blank slates. None of us can just tell it like it was–“stop interpreting, please.” But I always try to remember William James’ passage in one of his Pragmatism essays, an essay I think that should be required for U.S. citizenship. If I ruled the world you’d have to read this for U.S. citizenship. In it, James says, “The greatest enemy of any one of my truths is the rest of my truths.” It’s as though James is saying, “damn, every time I think I really know something–that’s the truth–along comes some other possible truth and it screws it up.” Why can’t history just be settled? Enough already. If it was, it wouldn’t be any fun; if it was it wouldn’t be interesting; if it was it wouldn’t be good for business either.

HIST 119
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877: Lecture 1 Transcript
Professor David Blight

Grease – Franki Valli

The opening credits theme to the 1978 movie adaptation of the 1971 musical of the same name, and one of the singles from the soundtrack album. Written by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, “Grease” is a disco song that sums up the central theme of the story, namely the idea of individuality in the face of those that want others to conform.

Being a disco song for a film/musical with a 1950s setting, some critics felt that this song doesn’t really fit with the rest of the soundtrack, either on the film itself or on the musical it’s based on.

https://genius.com/Frankie-valli-grease-lyrics#about

I saw my problems, and I’ll see the light
We got a lovin’ thing, we gotta feed it right
There ain’t no danger, we can go too far
We start believin’ now that we can be who we are
Grease is the word

They think our love is just a growin’ pain
Why don’t they understand? It’s just a cryin’ shame
Their lips are lyin’, only real is real
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel
Grease is the word

Grease is the word, is the word that you heard
It’s got a groove, it’s got a meaning
Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling

We take the pressure and we throw away
Conventionality belongs to yesterday
There is a chance that we can make it so far
We start believin’ now that we can be who we are
Grease is the word

This is a life of illusion, wrapped up in trouble
Laced with confusion, what’re we doin’ here?

The AI Bubble – Price to Earnings Ratio, History

Kai Ryssdal
A huge chunk of the S&P gains of late have come because of the hundreds of billions that are being invested in Artificial Intelligence. So, bearing in mind that the average p/e ratio on the S&P right now is 25, price to earnings ratio, what does that tell us?

Michelle Lowry
People have very optimistic expectations of how fast these AI companies are going to grow, into the future.

John Steinsson
There are kind of two episodes in the past where the price to earnings ration has shot up to really high levels. One was right before the great depression. One was in the late 1990’s, during the internet bubble.

What’s a price-earnings ratio anyway?
Kai explains the P/E ratio of the S&P 500, which is higher that it’s been since the early 2000s.
Marketplace – Nov 12, 2025

Note – transcription approximate, done by hand, not ai.

The End of an Era – Late 70’s Vibe Shift

The Sex Pistols finally invaded the territory of the ’70s rock titans and landed on the cover of Rolling Stone in the October 20, 1977, issue. The headline: “Rock Is Sick and Living in London.” It was the beginning of the end of the ’70s.

One fine spring day, a student in a big puffy jacket came into journalism class and announced his hero—Ronald Reagan. A new definition of cool was emerging, and it was a long way from the shaggy hippies I knew at the Door house. Now there was a new kind of teenager, a young Republican who savaged the perceived naïveté of liberalism but also really liked rock.

The Uncool: A Memoir
Cameron Crowe
NOTE: Highly recommended book.

From google AI:
A “vibe shift” refers to a significant change in prevailing cultural moods, aesthetics, and trends, coining the term for a major shift in collective feelings from one style or topic to another. It’s used to describe the evolution of popular culture, from the early 2000s’ “bling” era to the later “hipster/indie” trend, and even more recently to the idea of a shift back towards certain aesthetics like “indie sleaze” and nostalgia for the 2000s. The term was popularized by writer Sean Monahan, and can be used to describe everything from fashion and online culture to political and social attitudes.

When the Secret Police Go Out of Town for a Few Days

What the Peace Corps volunteer found rather comical was bearing witness to the element of farce that police states often engender, of how easily the arrogance of officialdom can tilt into stupidity. As in all Iranian towns and cities, a favorite guessing game of Sonqorians was speculating on the identity of the SAVAK agents in their midst, a parlor game Metrinko was increasingly brought into as he gained residents’ trust. In the late summer of 1971, such speculations were abruptly resolved when the regime announced that travel to the city of Shiraz was temporarily off-limits to all private Iranian citizens, a security precaution for the upcoming international gala being held in nearby Persepolis. Except that soon after that announcement, many of those Sonqorians suspected of being secret police climbed aboard buses and left town, bound for Shiraz. “So that proved to everyone they were SAVAK.” Metrinko laughed. “They were all going down to stand guard over the shah’s party.”

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Scott Anderson

The Scent of Decaying Fish and Playing King Henry VIII – Jude Law Anecdote

MOSLEY: It’s, yeah, your 2023 film where you played King Henry VIII. I read that you hired a perfumer.

LAW: I work with her quite often, actually.

MOSLEY: Really? Yes.

LAW: Yeah. First of all, she’s an absolute genius, Azzi. And she runs an amazing perfumery called The Perfumer’s Story. She makes incredible scents. And, you know, scents is a really quick way to accumulate sort of feelings and emotions. You know, if you walk into your grandma’s house, it smells a certain way, and you feel a certain way. If you go out and someone’s been cutting the grass – (sniffing) right? – it evokes all sorts of memories. Or the smell of gasoline, you know?

MOSLEY: Yeah.

LAW: I mean, things like that that are very pungent are very quick to make you feel and think, you know? And my job is an odd job. You know, whether you want to or not, you turn up. You put on someone else’s clothes, and you have to embody someone pretty damn quick. And sometimes it’s like, hey, it’s 7. The sun’s coming up. We’ve got to go do this.

MOSLEY: We got to get this done.

LAW: Get in it, right?

MOSLEY: But let’s talk about what she did for you, OK? She…

LAW: So she built this. She made a perfume for me. And I’d read this piece about Henry. He basically had these ulcers on his leg that were rotting, and it was a miracle he lived the 10 years he did with them. But you could smell him, apparently, three rooms away. He’d stank, like, fetid.

MOSLEY: Yes.

LAW: And what I realized, I’m playing him at the very end of his life when eventually he died of these things from a fever. And I just thought it would be very helpful to everyone else and to me if I stank. So she made me this incredible, noxious odor that I kind of sprayed on myself.

MOSLEY: It was made, a concoction of pig sweat.

LAW: Yeah.

MOSLEY: Fecal matter.

LAW: (Laughter) You’re going, does this say this?

MOSLEY: To mimic the smell of decaying fish.

LAW: Yeah.

MOSLEY: So it was really bad.

LAW: It was really, really, really, really rancid. Yeah. But it really helped. To me, it was very interesting playing someone who is incredibly powerful, all-dominant, expects everyone to bow to their every need and thought and want, and yet is sitting in a body that is immobile because of the weight he’s put on and because of the wounds he has, kind of in his own rotting flesh, and having to kind of face himself. And he can’t escape what he’s done to himself and who he’s become. You know, he’s a mass murderer.

MOSLEY: Yes.

LAW: And deluded to the extreme of believing that he’s second only to God. Well, he’s about to face God. And it’s like, OK, what’s going on? What’s going on in that man?

MOSLEY: You’re pretty unrecognizable in that role. And I’m just wondering, there had to be some pretty interesting conversations around the rank smell on that set. It helped you. It also helped your colleagues, your costars.

LAW: Well, I mean, it wasn’t like I, you know, wanted to shock them or warn them, you know, but we discussed it. And Alicia Vikander, who plays my wife, the queen, Queen Katherine Parr, was very game for it because she sort of loved this idea that she had to have this intimacy and this devotion amidst this sort of wall of stink, (laughter) you know? And the guys who play my Privy Council were old friends of mine from the theater. And again, it was this sort of – this conflict between observing their devotion and putting up with this appalling physical decay.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5545540/jude-law-takes-a-dark-turn-in-the-psychological-drama-black-rabbit

Routine-Activity Theory and Serial Killers

There is a third possible explanation for the serial-killer epidemic, and although Fraser doesn’t mention it, it happens to be the prevailing inclination among contemporary criminologists. “Routine-activity theory,” which was first elaborated by sociologists in the late nineteen-seventies, treats crime as a matter of ecology. The “golden era” of serial killers was made possible by the contingent rise of some technologies and practices—the automobile, the interstate highway system, the prevalence of hitchhiking—that happened to facilitate crimes of opportunity. In the last quarter century, the development of other technologies and practices—surveillance cameras, phone tracking, interjurisdictional coöperation, and DNA evidence, along with a much greater degree of interpersonal paranoia—have drastically limited those opportunities. Ted Bundy might have been profoundly lead-poisoned, but he also lived in a time and a place where it wasn’t hard to kill with impunity.

Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers?
Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Questionable Accuracy in Historical Movies

What is the least accurate historical movie you’ve seen?

Hermaeus_Mike
Braveheart or 300.
300 I give a few bonus points for using lines directly from Herodotus, but I am somewhat sceptical that the Persians had orcs.

Individual-Sky-5791
I’m a historian, I can confirm they had orcs.

You’re just confused because all orcs were wiped out in the battle, so they’ve become seen as myths

Guvnah-Wyze
300 is also told as the telling of the story. Of course the guy is embellishing.

mrlolloran
It’s actually one step further, it is what is going on in the minds of the listeners of the story. We’re seeing their theater-of-the-mind play out.

OldStonedJenny
Anastasia.
Love that movie but unfortunately Princess Anastasia never fought zombie Rasputin..

jamieliddellthepoet
2001: A Space Odyssey does not portray 2001 with any accuracy whatsoever.