What did he say? A working glossary from the ‘in‘ crowd:

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Cover-Band: Musical group dedicated to the pursuit of performing the songs and music written by third-party artists, usually artists with popular commercial success. Generally considered the domain of the hobbyist or non-professional, cover-bands have only limited commercial and cultural success as a group. The cover-band does not tour and does not usually engage in their own artistic expression.

Foreign Wool: A female from a different place of origin, either visiting a locale or encountered while on a journey. ( aka Groupie)

Garage Rock: Inspired by the ‘British Invasion’ of English Pop bands in the early 1960’s, Garage Rock came about by young, amateurish American groups seeking to emulate the sound. Since the musicianship of these Garage groups was usually poor, most bands emphasized cruder, louder, more energized playing and vocal styles than their English mentors. Songs were still structured around pop hooks and traditional three chord-guitar progression, but a raw energy in performance was first seen here. After losing interest in the ‘70s, a revival of sorts was seen during the 1980’s, with many new bands trying to replicate the sound of ‘60s garage rock.

Grunge: A fusion of punk and heavy metal musical styles first produced in the late 1980s. Song structure and lyrical contents hinted at more introspective viewpoints and looser playing styles.

Hardcore (music): a sub-genre of punk music that originated primarily in Los Angeles and radiated out to most of North America by the early 1980s. With the ideals of traditional punk firmly in tow (societal and cultural self-reliance, distrust in authority figures, etc.), the blueprint for Hardcore was simple: play it louder, play it harder, and play it faster. The music was relentless, the songs were brief, the riffs were basic, the vocals were shouted or screamed, and the records looked (and sounded) like they were made in someone’s basement. Many actually were, and the do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) aesthetic that was later embraced by grunge and indie rock traces back to the early days of hardcore. The sound was generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. Early hardcore has a quick tempo with drums and vocals in time, whereas modern hardcore punk has drums and vocals which may not be on beat with the tempo. Like many underground sub-styles, the genre has fractioned off into many new categories in the 1990s and 2000s. Still its influence is still felt in some music scenes around North America today.

(www.allmusic.com)

Heavy Metal: Of all rock & roll’s myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality. There are numerous stylistic variations on heavy metal’s core sound, but they’re all tied together by a reliance on loud, distorted guitars (usually playing repeated riffs) and simple, pounding rhythms. Heavy metal has been controversial nearly throughout its existence — critics traditionally dismissed the music as riddled with over-the-top adolescent theatrics, and conservative groups have often protested what they perceive as evil lyrical content. Still, despite — or perhaps because of — those difficulties, heavy metal has become one of the most consistently popular forms of rock music ever created, able to adapt to the times yet keep its core appeal intact.

(source: www.allmusic.com)

Hipsters: slang term that first appeared in the 1940s, and was revived in the 1990s and 2000s often to describe types of young, recently-settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, independent film, magazines. In some contexts, hipsters are also referred to as scenesters.

(source: www.Wikipedia.org)

Jockocracy: A scholastic environment (usually college/university, sometimes high school) where sports/athletics are placed as the highest priority of “education”, above (often far above) all others. Sports/athletic participants (“jocks”) are viewed, by those in charge, as the greatest heroes of this environment. They are usually aware of this, and take unfair advantage of it – usually exerting unfair influence on non-jocks, and non-athletic instructors.

(source: urbandictionary.com)

Mall Rock: Heavily over-produced pop/rock designed and marketed to young teenagers. Modern day “Bubblegum Pop” intended to be consumed quickly and often by teens with disposable incomes.

Metalhead: A member of a particular sub-culture who prefer to live a specific lifestyle that revolves around the creation and consumption of heavy metal music. Attire and demeanor may vary from example to another, but the pursuit of listening to and enjoying Heavy Metal music that defines someone as a ‘Metalhead’.

Morlockville: A town or audience lacking basic enthusiasm or appreciation for performing bands. These towns and/or the audience representing it can exhibit a general complacency for activities occurring on stage which can lead to an equal feeling of disinterest from visiting performers. This usually occurs due to poor band performance or an ingrained jaded attitude from the town in question.

Post-Punk: Less angry and more experimental than original punk music structure, Post-Punk tenets began utilizing a wider array of musical influences in their work following the cultural popularity of basic punk rock in the early 1980s. The result became a more diverse and adventurous thread of underground music in North America and Europe while allowing itself to become more musically sophisticated than original punk styles. The same high-energy and confrontation was seen in post-punk groups and artists, but the restrictive art known as punk fell by the wayside as artists and their music took time to grow during the 1980s and ‘90s. Post-Punk can describe any number of alternative rock bands from the 1980s up until the 2000s that share some of the same experimentation and energetic music with each other.

As an art form, post-punk can come to depict a highly-energetic, avant-garde form of performance in music, theatre or art. The term itself is far-reaching, and can come to describe any artistic expression that is self-produced and independent, post-modern and generally not within the realm of popular/commercial fashion.

Punk: Punk returned rock & roll to the basics — three chords and a simple melody. It just did it louder and faster and more abrasively than any other rock & roll in the past.  Coming into its own during the mid-’70s, punk on both sides of the Atlantic saw  young bands forsaking the sonic excesses that distinguished mainstream hard rock and began stripping the music down to its essentials. In America, punk remained an underground sensation, eventually spawning the hardcore and indie-rock scenes of the ’80s, but in the UK, it was a full-scale phenomenon. Aesthetically, early punk fashion adapted everyday objects for aesthetic effect: ripped clothing was held together by safety pins or wrapped with tape; ordinary clothing was customized by embellishing it with marker or adorning it with paint. Attitude was typically confrotational to mainstream music and authorities and exclusively identified as a young/youth sub-culture group. Punk music/art/aesthetic quickly transformed into Post-Punk during the mid-1980s as experimentation and a relatively higher level of sophistication began to spread around punk social circles.

Show: A scheduled performance for a band or artistic. A show can take place in conventional performance space such as a stage situated inside a bar or nightclub, and also non-conventional space such as art galleries or backyards. Also known as a ‘gig’, these differ from ‘concerts’ in size and scope as concerts generally presume larger production costs and expenditure in larger venues. The show can be regarded as any performance conducted to any paying or non-paying audience.

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If there are any terms that are not mentions in the Glossary, please email the author at adam.munro@uleth.ca.

Thank You.