The Smithereens

 

early Smithereens photo

Founded in New Jersey in 1980, The Smithereens are still rocking. Founding members Jim Babjak (guitar) Dennis Diken (drums) and Mike Mesaros (bass) grew up together in Carteret and lead singer Pat DiNizio grew up in Scotch Plains. 

Since I am a Jersey boy, I saw them a number of times in places like the Court Tavern and Stone Pony in NJ. It was MTV and TV appearances on The Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien, and Saturday Night Live that drove their peak popularity in the late 1980s through the mid 1990s.

The songs they are most identified with are probably "Only a Memory", "A Girl Like You" and "Too Much Passion."

Their top-ranked album on the Billboard pop charts was the 1990 album 11 which featured the hit single "A Girl Like You." 

Yosemite Sam is a cartoon character in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of short films produced by Warner Bros. His name is taken from Yosemite National Park and he is an adversary of Bugs Bunny. He is not very "Jersey" but , like the band's sound, he is very aggressive, The band's name comes from one of Yosemite Sam catchphrases, "Varmint, I'm a-gonna blow you to smithereens!."

This original lineup continued until 2006, when Mesaros left the band and Severo Jornacion took over on bass guitar until Mesaros' return in 2016. After DiNizio died in 2017, the band continued performing live shows as a trio (Babjak, Mesaros and Diken) with various guest vocalists. Those guests have included Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms and Marshall Crenshaw.

Their website is www.officialsmithereens.com 

11 from 1990

Our First Million

Our Why Name It That counter of visits clicked over the one million mark at the end of June!  That is an achievement for this little blog.  That came after over a decade and over 500 posts, so sticking to it gets some credit.

My first post was about the origin of this blog. It began as a student project by my then-young son and was something I picked up and converted into a blog a few years later. The idea was to answer the question posed in Romeo and Juliet - "What's in a name?"

It turns out there's a lot in a name, and so I look at why something has the name it does. That led us to find origins for curious names of bands, product names, people names, place names, titles, sports teams and really the origins of any words and phrases that catch my interest.

Early posts were about the name origins of rock bands (a category that remains the most popular posts here). I was working off an alphabetical list of topics at first, so I posted about 38 Special, ABBA, AC/DC and others.

I also started posting about names in sports, including my favorite team, the New York Yankees, and some eponyms found in the world of figure skating.

I started on some place names beginning with Alaska and Alabama but then moving not only through the United States but out into the wider world.

Words and phrases are a big part of the site. The first curiosity was that # symbol known by several names including as the pound sign.

If you're one of our regular visitors, thanks for putting us past 1,000,000. If you're a first time visitor, I hope you'll explore the site via the search bar or by categories or by just scrolling through the latest posts and clicking links.

There is a contact widget on the site if you have questions or want to suggest a name for us to include or have problems with the site. In looking at the older posts, I have discovered how many of the archived posts have broken images and links. We're working on it...

Bite the Bullet

The expression "Bite the Bullet” used today means to go through the pain (physical or mental) and get on with it. 

In the 19th century, it could literally mean to bite a bullet. At the time, there was no such thing as pain relief or anesthesia when soldiers were injured on the battlefield and needed surgery, including amputations. They might be given an alcoholic drink but they were given a bullet to bite down on to prevent them from screaming out loud.

Of course, it didn't need to be a bullet - a piece of wood or leather strap would work too - but bullets were readily available. 

"Biting the bullet" is a metaphor used to describe a situation, often a debate, where one accepts an inevitable impending hardship or hard-to-refute point, and then endures the resulting pain with fortitude.

The phrase "bite on the bullet"That was first recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his 1891 novel The Light That Failed.

Evidence for biting an actual bullet rather than something perhaps safer and less likely to be swallowed is sparse. It is said that Harriet Tubman related having once assisted in a Civil War amputation in which the patient was given a bullet to bite down on.

Another origin story is that it evolved from the British expression "to bite the cartridge", which dates to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but the phrase "chew a bullet", with a similar meaning, dates to at least 1796.

Modern audiences need to recognize that in the era of the origin of this phrase bullets were typically made of lead, a very soft metal, and would have been independent of any charge or cartridge.