shock rock, cock rock

[Wilson Gray]

On Dec 9, 2004, at 11:47 PM, Mullins, Bill wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      FW: shock rock, cock rock
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I originally meant to send this to the whole list, but only sent it to
> Benjamin.  Let's try again . . .
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mullins, Bill
> To: 'Benjamin Zimmer '
> Sent: 12/9/2004 3:22 PM
> Subject: RE: shock rock, cock rock
>
> The Creem archive could be very productive.
>
> "freek", Mar 1969 (first issue):
> "They achieve this end by the employment of several well muscled, but
> friendly (to freeks) bouncers."
> [Note: this article also refers to "greasers" several times.  I get the
> impression that it refers not to Mexicans, which definition the OED
> contains, but to Blacks, which isn't in the OED.]

WTF?! "Niggers" wasn't good enough for them?

-Wilson Gray

>
> "literally" improperly used as "figuratively", Mar 1969.
> "The temperature soon becomes unbearable, and, as the Five mount the
> stage, the place is literally an inferno."
>
> The Nov 1969 issue reprints an article about the "death" of Paul
> McCartney, with a figurative use of "sand castle" (OED's first
> figurative cite is 1975).
> "Keep that in mind as we wander through the elaborate sand castle
> constructed by the death theorists."
>
> The June 1970 issue has an article about "dada rock".
>
> A Lester Bangs article from Dec 1970 is just full of stuff:
>
> I don't find this noun form of "hip" in the OED (but it's probably
> there); from Creem 12/70:
> "Well, a lot of changes have gone down since Hip first hit the
> heartland. "
>
> "doodle" as syn. for penis, 12/70
> " Until then, though, it shore ain't no fun, so swagger with your
> buddies, brag, leer at passing legs, whack your doodle at home at night
> gaping at polyethylene bunnies hugging teddy bears, go back the next
> day
> and dope out with the gang, grass, speed, reds, Romilar, who cares,
> some
> frat bull's gonna buy us beer, and after that you go home and stare at
> the wall all cold and stupid inside and think, what the fuck, what the
> fuck."
>
> a figurative sense for "payload", 12/70:
> " I've been building up through lots of questions and postulations and
> fantasies, so not one dullard reading this and owning a stack of dated,
> boring "rock" albums but no Stooge music can fail to comprehend, at
> which time I will be able to get on to the business of describing the
> new Stooges album. So here comes the payload."
>
> "eye" as syn for television screen or monitor, 12/70:
> " A friend and I were getting stoned and watching the TV eye's
> broadcast
> of the Cincinnati Pop Festival the other night, when a great (i.e.,
> useless) idea struck us."
>
> "pube" for pubescent, 12/70:
> "Jim Morrison, of late-how inspiring to see the onetime atropine-eyed
> Byronic S&M Lizard King come clean stumbling around the stage with a
> Colt 45 in hand and finally wave his dong at the teeny minions who came
> there to see him hold both it and his gut in and give them some more
> vivid production which communicated nothing real but suggested
> everything a fertile pube brain could dredge up!"
> [Note: I don't find "pube" as syn for pubic hairs in in the OED.  In
> "Wayne's World", either the movie or the SNL version, Wayne said of
> Garth:  "He's finally got pubes!"]
>
> interdating of def (OED goes from 1907 to 1979), 12/70:
> "Morrison def, does not get a pie in the face! "
>
> This adjectival use of "jerkoff" doesn't match the OED ("Erotic;
> encouraging masturbation. "), 12/70:
> "Because beside the mawkish posturings and nickelodeon emotings of _'s
> of the duds foisted on today's public, the earthy brilliance, power and
> clarity of the Stooge music, though its basic components may resemble
> those ready-made musical materials lying around in the public domain
> like Tinkertoys for experimentation by every jerkoff group from
> Stockholm to San Diego-it will nevertheless shine in the dark
> carnivorous glow of its own genius."
>
> postdate of "avatar" ("  4. loosely, Manifestation; display; phase.
> 1850, 1880"), 12/70:
> "Both groups on both coasts claimed to be utilizing the possibilities
> of
> feedback and distortion, and both claimed to be the avatars of the
> psychedelic multimedia trend."
>