Not too long ago I published the most recent issue of Translate zine (which you can get HERE if you enjoy visually-enticing, handmade physical reading materials!).
Inside that publication is an interview I did with drummer Tom Brewins and bassist Dan Holloway of USA NAILS. It was one of the most fun interviews I've ever done because the whole thing was basically just comparing and contrasting American versus English culture. However, there's a good amount of stuff I had to leave out of the interview in the zine because of space constraints. So here's the unedited version of the interview, complete with the stuff left out of the print version. Read on and learn things you didn't know existed within both cultures.
I thought about asking some questions related to slang and you can verify whether or not these terms are in use, or if I’m completely off.
OK, so first off: ‘sacked’ Is this a popular term or not?
TOM: Yeah. A lot of people have been getting the ‘sack’. It’s highly popular. We definitely used ‘sacked’
DAN: I think I would use ‘sacked’ as a more joking term. I might say ‘laid off’ instead. Do you use that term?
Yeah, we say that. What about the term ‘anorak’? Is that common?
T: Yeah, I guess so. It’s not really a word I’d use a lot. I suppose if I bought an anorak I’d use that word.
Bought one? The way I’ve been led to understand it is that it applies to a person who is sort of geeky.
D: (laughs) Ah! That probably comes from back in the day when these geeks would wear these anorak coats, which have all these toggles and buttons. So I guess if you’re an anorak you’re a bit of a geek I suppose.
So wait, it’s a type of jacket?
T: Yeah!
OK, so what about the term ‘bagsy’. As in, “I call bagsy!”
T: Yeah, bagsy. Another good one is ‘cadge’, like asking something of someone- ‘can I cadge that off you?’ I think I stopped saying ‘bagsy’ when I was about 12.
So here we would say, ‘I call shotgun’, meaning I get the front seat in the car.
T: I don’t understand why people say ‘shotgun’?
I have no idea.
D: Do you think it comes from the term ‘shotgun wedding’ when the father is marching the groom to the chapel pointing a shotgun at him, or pointing the gun at him to get in the front seat to go to the chapel?
That’s a good theory, but I have not explored it!
T: We’ll be up all night now thinking about it!
Do people call umbrellas ‘brolly’?
T: Yeah, brolly is common. It’s less syllables so it’s easier to say.
How common, or used, is the term ‘codswallop’?
T: I’ve never used that.
Is it old-timey British, or just unpopular?
D: Yeah. It is, totally. It’s kind of a posh way of saying things I guess. It’s an old-type of word.
We don’t say ‘posh’ either.
T: Something that is good for Americans to know is the difference between ‘bullocks’ and ‘dogs bullocks’. Dogs bullocks are good, and bullocks is just shit. I suppose it must be pleasing to see a dog with huge bullocks and that’s a good thing I guess.
D: Also, if you’re shit then you’re bullocks, but if you’re The Shit you’re the dogs bullocks
Do people say, ‘give me a tinkle on the blower’? in regards to making a phone call.
D: (laughs) We’re getting into different regional dialect here! You might find some people saying that on the East End. You can say ‘I’ll give you a ding’, or ‘I’ll give you a bell’, which is more modern than ‘tinkle’
The whole thing doesn’t sound very good.
D: It sounds like taking a pee.
It does! And related to that, there’s the term ‘spend a penny’
T: Or ‘spend a pound’
Is it because over there you have to pay to use public restrooms?
T: It’s more like taking a shit versus taking a piss because a shit is bigger than a piss. I mean, I guess nowadays it should be ‘spend 20p’ because of inflation and all that.
How about the term ‘geezer’ and it means ‘someone dapper, or distinguished’.
D: Yes mate!
Over here it’s kind of an insult applied to old people.
D: I guess it can mean the same thing here, but I think we use it as sort of a term of endearment for friends.
I’d always thought it weird that the guy from Black Sabbath- Geezer Butler- would have his name associated with being an out-of-touch old guy. But it was probably his nickname for being a suave guy!
T: It may have started as that but became more of a positive term, like ‘he’s a bit of a geezer’, sort of a man about town, ya know?
D: OK, how do you spell ‘aluminium’?
(laughs) It’s aluminum!
D: My question is more like how did we come to this impasse where we have an extra ‘i’ in there?
OK, why do you all say ‘contro-versy’ instead of ‘con-tro-ver-sy’?
D: I guess it’s just a difference in pronunciation.
T: Do you all say ‘maths’ instead of just ‘math’?
Do you mean mathematics? We say math.
T: But do you make it plural? Like, we say ‘maths’. Like, ‘you’re doing your maths.’
No, we don’t say that. Why would anyone pluralize that? It’s all singular.
D: It’s multiple terms.
I guess there are different fields of math, so I guess I see how you could pluralize it. But we don’t here unless you’re using the entire word ‘mathematics’.
How about I name off some British foods and you can tell me if they’re relevant or not. How about a Scotch Egg?
T: Amazing. I’ve tried multiple times to make one, but I can’t get it right.
D: You have to boil an egg, then get raw pork meat, or Black Pudding. Do you know what Black Pudding is?
I looked it up. It sounds disgusting.
D: (laughs) So you wrap the egg up in the meat, yoke it and breadcrumb it. Then you deep fry it and put it in the oven. It’s really tasty. It’s like a snack thing you just carry around.
It sounds like something we would have here because Americans love deep fried garbage. It sounds like something you would get at a state fair where they deep fry everything.
D: We do the same here. We deep fry anything- pizza, Mars bars, kebabs.
T: I could move to the U.S. and go around selling Scotch eggs.
So some stuff I looked up I’d heard of before, but I’ve never heard of Eton Mess.
D: It’s like a combination of meringue, fruits like strawberries or raspberries, and cream and maybe liquor. It’s a summer-y dish, quite nice.
I’d heard it’s served at sporting events?
D: Maybe. I don’t really go to sporting events. I can’t really see football fans kicking back with some Eton Mess.
Yeah, it seemed like a very fancy, or formal, sort of dessert.
T: Probably Wimbledon, but it’s not really as popular as you may think.
D: Why do you put marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving? Are you thankful for it?
A lot of people do that, but I think it’s sort of gross. You already go the sweet potatoes. They’re already sweet. Why do you need marshmallows on top? I never understood that.
T: Maybe because the potatoes are healthy? Americans have to do something to their food.
Yeah, we always have to mess with it. We have to find a way to make it unhealthy.
T: What do you think is the staple American cuisine? I can’t really think of what it could be because so much of your food is adopted from somewhere else.
D: Is it succotash?
(laughs) Ah, it’s not succotash. That’s actually quite regional. I guess people would think hamburgers, but we got that from the Germans and pizza we got from Italy.
T: Right. Would you say it’s maybe barbecued meats?
That’s a good one. I guess you could say that. People do love barbecue out here.
D: What about Hot Pockets?
(laughs) Hot Pockets are just garbage food! You just throw it in the microwave for a minute and that’s it.
D: I wanted to add that it seems like Americans will put anything in a sandwich.
That’s true. Except we don’t do the thing you all do where you just put a bunch of French fries between bread and call it a sandwich. I wish we did that more here.
D: Chip Butty!
T: We also put what we call ‘crisps’, but you call ‘chips’ in sandwiches. Like, “I’ll have a ham and cheese sandwich with some crisps’. I think that’s amazing. I think it’s just a UK thing.
D: Is it true your gravy is white?
No, it comes in all sorts of colors. We mix it up.
D: Why is it white?
I don’t know. Maybe a high starch content? I’m not sure.
T: You do biscuits and gravy?
Oh yeah, it’s wonderful.
T: But we do more of a liquid-y gravy and yours is all thick.
So there’s a lot of stuff here that’s very regional, you only find it in certain parts of the country. So I feel like I could throw a few at you and you can guess where they're from, or if you've even heard of them. First off- Po Boy.
T: Yes! I’ve had one. In New Orleans. It comes from ‘poor boy’ because it’s cheap food people would go to eat after work right?
Correct!
How about Spam Musabi.
D: OK, I’ve had Spam and being half-Korean I can tell you that Spam is fucking huge in Korea. It’s a huge influence there. I don’t know what musabi is though.
It’s a kind of sushi. So it’s only in Hawaii. Spam is also really huge in Hawaii. It’s not very popular in the mainland US but it’s everywhere out there.
How about a Garbage Plate?
T: I don’t know that, but it sounds great.
Extremely regional, upstate/ Western New York. It’s macaroni salad with beans, usually hot dogs, sometimes chili, meat sauce, and mustard all thrown into a pile.
Also, from my region- salt potatoes.
T: Salt potatoes?
Yes. They’re small potatoes you boil in water and then pour a bag of salt in so the salt crusts up on the potatoes as they cook and then you pour butter all over them afterwards.
T: That sounds fucking amazing.
D: I didn’t think there was any other way you could do potatoes, but I guess there is.
How about Chicken and Waffles? Do you know that one?
D: Yes. I’ve had that in Atlanta on our first tour of the U.S.
That would be exactly where you would find such a thing.
D: It’s not really what I wanted for breakfast, eating fried chicken first thing in the morning. Mine had syrup and fried eggs as well.
T: I wondered, do you put cheese on toast? Like a grilled cheese sandwich?
Yeah, that’s a very common thing here.
T: But you don’t make it on a grill right? You make it in the frying pan.
I guess I never thought of that. Grilled cheese is cooked in a pan usually.
T: My girlfriend is from America and she sometimes calls it ‘cheese toast’
I’ve never heard ‘cheese toast’ referring to a grill cheese sandwich.
D: This isn’t about food, but why do radio stations there all start off with letters?
Oh, those are call letters. I don’t know why they’re there exactly. I know it’s a form of identification, just like airports all have codes, like Portland is PDX and New York has JFK. But I don’t know what radio stations call letters actually mean.
D: Another difference, and I’m just sort of mocking it, but why do you celebrate the 4th of July on the 7th of April?
What? Oh, you mean the way we arrange dates? Like 7-4 to us is the 4th of July, but you’d see that as the 7th of April. I think it’s because of the way we say the date- it’s July 4th, so 7-4, but I get what you mean about arranging the date in order of day, month, year.
I think it’s the same reason we do a bunch of backwards shit out here. We have no common sense.
D: I think Americans observe what we do and then just switch it around to differentiate themselves.
Yeah, we need to just be different. It’s why we refuse to convert to the metric system. We just have to be rebellious.
Speaking of customs, tell me about Morris dancing. Is that a thing over there?
D: A friend of mine is a Morris dancer. It’s got a bit of a resurgence, but it’s more of a folk thing. This friend of mine has been a Morris dancer for ages, so I guess it’s still a thing. I don’t know much else about it.
When I looked it up I saw a couple pictures and I realized that there was a group who did this back where I lived in NY and they would wear the white outfits with bells on them and flowers and they would dance in this neighborhood black party sort of thing we would have every year and I never knew what it was all about.
What about Swan Upping? Do you know it.
T: Swan Upping?
D: Is it when we get flooding here in the UK people come out and they lift the swans up even higher?
(laughs) No, apparently it’s a census that is taken of the swan population because the Queen owns all the swans in England.
T: Ah ok. It’s illegal to kill a swan in the UK. The Queen can do it. She can go out and kill all the swans she wants to because she owns all of them.
Another thing I find odd is that in your newspapers it’s totally normal to just find a page dedicated to topless models.
T: It’s the Page 3 girl. When I was kid I had a paper route. And Sundays is when they would print that page in the newspaper, so it would always take me about two hours longer to deliver all my papers that day because it was quite popular.
That was a paper called The Sun, which was quite an institution.
D: It’s a shitty publication though.
T: It’s trash. They can’t really do it much anymore though because it’s becoming a bit socially not cool.
We don’t really do that in American newspapers. In fact, we don’t really have all that many newspapers anymore either.
T: Yeah, it wouldn’t be in the high-end newspapers here. It’s in the trashy papers.
