Cob Nobbler: the strange tale of the lexicon on grunge
A 1992 New York Times piece contained one of the oddest and unintentionally hilarious articles in its publishing history.
Reporting on the grunge scene that had thrust Seattle‘s music underground to national attention after the shock success of Nirvana’s Nevermind, journalist Rick Marin was eager to cover the ‘Seattle sound’ that the press and music industry had yet to understand (and never did), reached out to Sub-Pop co-owner Jonathan Poneman keen to find out what the fuss was all about.
Fatigued by the incessant press pestering that struck their office as the scene’s central record label, Poneman passed Marin to former employee and then Caroline Records sales rep Megan Jasper, who saw the perfect opportunity to mock the overhype that flocked to the Washington seaport.
Wishing to compile a grunge lexicon, Marin asked how exactly the grungers were talking. Making fun of the inauthentic, increasingly marketised labelling alien to those in Seattle, Jasper presented a slew of made-up, ludicrous terms Marin, out of naivety or deadline pressure, dutifully published that November the list of slang supposedly essential to the grunge lifestyle:
- bloated, big bag of bloatation – drunk
- bound-and-hagged – staying home on Friday or Saturday night
- cob nobbler – loser
- dish – desirable guy
- fuzz – heavy wool sweaters
- harsh realm – bummer
- kickers – heavy boots
- lamestain – uncool person
- plats – platform shoes
- rock on – a happy goodbye
- score – great
- swingin’ on the flippity-flop – hanging out
- tom-tom club – uncool outsiders
- wack slacks – old ripped jeans
“I kept escalating the craziness of the translations because anyone in their right mind would go, ‘Oh, come on, this is bullshit’… but it never happened because he was concentrating so hard on getting the information right,” Jasper revealed on 1996’s Hype. It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Marin, but one’s left gobsmacked that his journalistic antennae weren’t firing off in his head to wise up to the ruse.
The very term ‘grunge‘ was coined by Poneman when describing Green River’s Dry as a Bone EP as “gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps, ultra-loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation.”
The name stuck, much to the chagrin of artists in the Seattle music community. Nirvana was just continuity punk with some alternative college radio thrown in, Alice in Chains bluesy hard rock indebted to Black Sabbath, and Pearl Jam went straight for anthemic classic rock that grunge was allegedly railing against. Before you knew it, grunge became a fashion wear, deals on flannel shirts appeared, and the community’s commitment to anti-consumerism was inevitably hijacked by commercialism.
Grunge is an apt but silly term. Poneman captured nicely the raw and dirty sound that defined the genre, largely shaped by Jack Endino’s production touch on early records by Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, but the Seattle moment was just a bookend to punk’s lasting impact across the eighties, a decade’s worth of artists challenging the glossy pop and hair-metal inanity from the underground, be it Melvins or Butthole Surfers inspiring the young Kurt Cobain to put the little known Nirvana together at the time.
Seattle took to Jasper’s slag hoax with much mirth, T-shirts printed with ‘lamestain’, or Mudhoney speaking in ‘grunge talk’ to Melody Maker with a straight face. It’s a strange tale of journalistic earnestness and music irreverence that inadvertently documents grunge’s authenticity while also marking the scene’s loss of magic at the hands of ‘tom-tom clubs’.
