Lamestain: A Grunge Lexicon

Swingin’ on the flippity-flop for two decades and counting!

By Fred Mills

In honor of our Seattle and Sub Pop coverage over the past several days — go HERE, and HERE, and HERE — we had our crack team of private investigators unearth this choice artifact from the dawn of the grunge era.

Reports our own Gillian G. Gaar, “Sub Pop employee (and now vice president) Megan Jasper had infamously made [a grunge lexicon] up for a New York Times reporter back in 1992. ‘I never thought it would make it into print,’ she told me, and indeed, who could ever have believed that we ‘grungesters’ actually used expressions like ‘Swingin’ on the flippity-flop’ (for ‘hanging out’)? But a “Lexicon of Grunge” duly appeared in the Times’ November 16, 1992 issue, with rival label C/Z Records quickly printing up some t-shirts with various slang terms.”

Incidentally, if you also fell for the ruse and tried your best to be in with the “now” crowd, donning the requisite uniform — flannels, Docs (kickers!) and backwards ball caps — and cracking the above jargon with all your friends, don’t feel stupid. Hip-hoppers are still doing the same thing every day with their own silly uniforms and verbal gibberish!

Okay kids your assignment for today: Use each of the terms in a complete sentence today. Last night after the Alice in Chains show I was such a big bag of bloatation that I threw up three times. Class dismissed.