311

 

The band 311 doesn't seem to have a definitive origin story, but from their official site http://www.311music.com, we get these stories.

"One of P-Nut's friends (Jim Watson) was arrested, cuffed (naked) and taken home to his parents. He was issued a citation for a code 311 (indecent exposure). We thought this was funny, so we took it as our band name. After the humor of the name wore off - we still kept it because we liked that it was just abstract and that it did not define us in anyway. The name did not describe our sound or our politics, it just let the music speak for itself."

"Since most interviewers always ask us 'What does 311 mean?', we have come up with lots of different answers over the years. Some include: Nick - "five friends making music", Tim - "a number dictated to me by a higher intelligence", P-Nut - "knowing a little numerology and studying a little magic, which I do; in some factions, three is man and 11 is magic. So 311 is like male magic."



UPDATED March 2011
An email from a reader (I wish people would just post comments) suggested this explanation:

Though it has never been officially confirmed, I have a story to the contrary. Three of the members of 311 went to my high school (Westside High School, Omaha, Nebraska). The members that went to my school are Nick Hexum, Tim Mahoney, and Chad Sexton. Our high school gets out at 3:10, meaning that 3:11 was freedom. I do not know if this was made up after they became famous or what, but I thought you would appreciate the information. For a while our high school actually banned all 311 memorabilia, including t-shirts.

One of those banned t-shirts

Uplifter (CD/DVD)
Greatest Hits '93-'03
311
Grassroots
Music
Transistor
From Chaos
Soundsystem
Evolver
Don't Tread on Me
311 - Live in New Orleans 311 Day

Okay

According to Wikipedia, Okay (or OK or O.K.) is "a colloquial English word denoting approval, assent, or acknowledgment.

"Okay" has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages.

As an adjective, "okay" means "acceptable" as in "it's okay for you to leave now" or meaning "mediocre" as in "the food at that diner was okay."

It can be an interjection - "Okay, let's get out of here!"  It can show agreement - "Okay, that's a good choice."  As a noun and verb it means "assent" - "The boss okayed the purchase."

Maybe it's America's greatest word. Our answer to Shakespeare.

So says Allan Metcalf, an English professor and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, who wrote OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word.



It is an interesting case, and it's very versatile.

Just 2 letters, separated by periods or not separated by periods. Not an abbreviation for "okay" which came later.

Metclaf writes that:

"It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, bigger even than an infant's first word 'ma,' ...just two simple letters ... of humble origin ... born as a lame joke...."

What is the origin?  Here are three origins of "OK" that Metcalf gives:

• from a Chicago bakery named O. Kendall and Sons wjo stamped Army biscuits with the company initials - or from a Boston baker named Otto Kimmel who did the same thing with his vanilla cookies.
• from the Choctaw word "okeh" - a verb that means "it is true."

"OK" first seems to have appeared in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839 (as an editor's joke) as an abbreviation for a misspelled version of the phrase "all correct." Huh?

Personally, I like the notation found in the hand-written diary of William Richardson in 1815 who was recording a trip from Boston to New Orleans. One entry uses "ok" in place of "all well."

"Arrived at Princeton, a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ok & at Trenton, where we dined at 1 P.M."          via Wikipedia


And yet, it proliferated during a kind of abbreviations fad period in America, and because it worked in the context of the 19th century version of Twitter - telegraph messages.

Some of these stories just seem so far-fetched.

Did supporters of President Martin Van Buren, who was known as "Old Kinderhook" use it?  How about that lousy speller Andrew Jackson approving documents by initialing it "O.K." which he thought stood for "Oll Korrect."

And what about "A-OK"?

Is "okie-dokie" a variation?

And the little OK is even cut in half to "K" in text messages!

New Words for 2010

At year end, the media always runs stories about the "word of the year."  Most of these honors are bestowed by companies that sell dictionaries as a way to call attention to that disappearing print reference book.

Words come from everywhere. TV shows are productive -- look at "Battlestar Galactica's" "frak," Stephen Colbert's "truthiness," and "30 Rock's" "blurgh."

Wacky news events like the Steven Slater JetBlue story get people talking about "hitting the slide" or "pulling a Slater."

Politicians accidently coin terms like "misunderestimate" and "refudiate." Sarah Palin drew plenty of attention for using "refudiate" which is her accidental mashup of refute and repudiate. It was named Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. A very poor choice.

The World Cup brought us "vuvuzelas" and media attention put "robo-signers", "gleeks" and "mama grizzlies" in front of our faces.

Many of these had their 15 minutes of fame and will fade from usage during 2011. So the real mission of these lists is to identify the words that will stick.

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year is one of the more accepted groups making up a list and selection.

In 2009, it was "tweet" and in 2008 it was "bailout".

Some of the possibilities are below - How many do you know? How many do you use?

• cablegate
• hacktivism
• man up
• shellacking
• Slurpee (I thought this might be connected to the thrown ones on Glee, but it's from Obama described the economy as a car that the Democrats were trying to get out of a ditch. Republicans, he said, were "just standing there... sipping on a Slurpee." The President's "beer summit" buzzed in July 2009.
• 99er - long-term unemployed were called 99ers for their extended 99 weeks of benefits.
• double-dip - a recession characterized by a decline, a brief recovery, and then a further decline. I believe this term just re-emerged in 2010.
• fat-finger errors - finger hits the wrong key because of a tiny mobile/tablet keyboard   also "thumbo"
• foreclosure mill
• robo-signing
• belieber - a fanatical devotee of the pop singer Justin Bieber. A word guaranteed to disappear - just as with other pop culture terms like
• gleek - fans of the TV show "Glee" admitting to be Glee + geek. Did they know that gleek had already meant squirting saliva through your teeth?
• apocalypse fatigue - tired of news about global warming, thermageddon. Maya 2012 and other doom and gloom.
• data exhaust - that digital trail you leave behind you online (like these posts!) Also something that marketers are very interested in tracking to give you ads based on their "behavioral targeting."
• airport security gave us backscatter, enhanced pat-down, freedom pat, freedom grope, freedom fondle, and freedom frisk. Oh yeah, also the re-emergence of "junk" when John Tyner recorded his TSA encounter on his mobile phone and posted it online.  "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."

So, what did the ADS pick as the word for 2010?  It was app. The clipped version of application (as in software application) for the small, easy to download applications that are the heart of smart phones and tablets. The word will stick - as long as we use those devices.

Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull are a British rock group formed in 1967 that is known for its lyrics, and the vocals and flute playing of Ian Anderson who has led the band since its founding.

The early incarnation of the band was blues-rock, but throughout they have experimented with elements of classical music, folk music, jazz and art rock into their music.

They are one of world's best-selling music artists. They have sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and are still playing into their fifth decade.

Ian Anderson's first band, started in 1962 in Blackpool, was known as The Blades, and featured Anderson on vocals and harmonica, Jeffrey Hammond on bass, John Evans (later shortened to Evan)on drums, and a guitarist, Michael Stephans. Drummer Barrie Barlow became a member in 1963 after Evans had switched from drums to piano. By 1964 the band had developed into a seven-piece Blue-eyed soul band called The John Evan Band (later The John Evan Smash).

In 1967, the band moved to the London area in search of fame, but the plan fizzled and most of the band quit and headed home. Anderson and bassist Glenn Cornick (who had replaced Hammond) connected with blues guitarist Mick Abrahams and his friend, drummer Clive Bunker to give it another try.

Other names the band used included "Navy Blue", "Ian Henderson's Bag o' Nails", and "Candy Coloured Rain." Since they had no permanent name at the time, booking agents sometimes made up a name for them. One of these agents (perhaps a history buff) put them down as "Jethro Tull" after the 18th-century agriculturist. Jethro Tull (1674 – 1741) was an English agricultural pioneer who helped bring about the British Agricultural Revolution. He perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later a horse-drawn hoe.

The connection of him to their music? None.  But it was the name they were using the first time a club manager liked their show enough to invite them to return, so they took it to be a good omen and stuck with it.

Anderson, frustrated with his guitar playing, made the unusual switch for a rock band of including a flute. They released an unsuccessful single in 1968 called "Sunshine Day." It was mislabeled "Jethro Toe" and copies have become collector's items.

Their first album is This Was from 1968. It includes original tunes by Anderson and Abrahams, "Cat's Squirrel" with Abrahams' blues-rock, and a Rahsaan Roland Kirk-penned jazz piece called "Serenade to a Cuckoo" which features Anderson's still-developing flute stylings.

Abrahams left because the band was moving away from a pure blues-rock style and he formed his own band, the much-underrated Blodwyn Pig.

Jethro Tull's best-known album is the 1971 Aqualung. The album has a lyrical theme about religion and society and though not a "rock opera" (as with The Who's Tommy and other albums of the period), it is considered to be a concept album.

The character of Aqualung is a Dickensian, disreputable homeless tramp, who wanders the streets "eyeing little girls with bad intent". He was inspired by photos of homeless men taken by Anderson's wife, Jennie. That seemy world includes "Cross-Eyed Mary" about a young prostitute. The album has both quieter acoustic tracks such as "Wond'ring Aloud," and rockers such as the title track, "Aqualung," and "Locomotive Breath."

The band has gone through many lineups with Anderson being the consistent factor. Their 2008 tour celebrated 40 years of the band,and included many older songs as well as guest appearances from former band members and others. The band has devoted followers and there are many fan sites online. Their official site is at JethroTull.com.

The Ultimate Set, 25th Anniversary Special Edition

SELECTED WORKS

The Best of Jethro Tull

This Was

Stand Up

Aqualung

Thick As a Brick

Minstrel in the Gallery

Best of Acoustic

A Passion Play

Minstrel in the Gallery

Jethro Tull: Live at Madison Square Garden 1978 (DVD/CD)