Terms of Endearment

Flogging the Punk Horse

Punk As A Doornail’s first studio album, their 4th opus, 3rd completed opus, is called “Flogging the Punk Horse”

A lot of people ask, “What does that mean?” “What’s your name mean?” “How can I get a copy?”

People don’t seem to know good ‘ol ‘merican old farm termology anymore!

We’ll let’s help them out shall we?

The Exploited are most famous for the term , “Punk Not Dead”. Which in itself, is saying punk is dead. If you have to inform people it’s not, then it’s basically dead. Thus “punk” and “dead” are synonymous. I guess I came up with this because I got sick of all the new punk bands sounding the same and I really hated pop punk.

Luckily I can share with you a literary work that I found a few years after coining both our band name, “Punk As A Doornail” and the album name “Flogging the Punk Horse”. Our name comes from the term “Dead As A Doornail”. The album name comes from the term “Flogging a Dead Horse.” Each has their own ironic take on “Punk Not Dead”.

Charles Earle Funk wrote a book called “A Hog on Ice”, which a book on word and phrase origins, like his other books “Heavens to Betsy”, “Horsefeathers” and “Thereby Hangs the Tail”. I basically came across this book because I’m a big dork. The Duke of Dork. I was so obsessed over our band name I had to find our what “dead as a doornail” meant. What the hell is a doornail anyway?!?

Charles doesn’t really seem to know what a doornail is, except it might be a nail used to hang the door knocker. I’d figure it could be for the doorknob too. People call us Punk As A Doorknob all the time. Why not Punk As A Door Knocker or Dead As A Sad Snail or Nail a Punk Knob, you Stud!? Dead (deaf, or dumb) as a doornail

This expression means very dead, of course (or dead, or dumb)- completely and absolutely non-responsive. It is very old, has been traced back to 1350 in literary use and was therefore probably used in common speech long before that, possibly for several centuries. But just why our remote ancestors conceived a doornail to be very dead, or deaf or dumb, is something that has never been satisfactorily explained. Todd, who published a revision of Johnson’s English Dictionary in 1818, advanced the notion that the ancient doornail was a heavy stud against which the knocker was struck. If such a nail was used for that purpose, perhaps some old-time wit proclaimed that it had been struck on the head so often as to be dead; or another, after pounding vainly upon it without response from within, proclaimed to be deaf or dumb. I don’t know-nor have I anything to support Todd’s theory. The earliest usage, as far as the records show, was with the adjective “dead.” When “dumb” first appeared, in 1362, it related to the door only; as in Langland’s “Piers Plowman”, ‘As doumbe as a dore’. “Deaf” did not show up until the sixteenth century, when it was applied indiscriminately either to the “doore” or to the “door nayle.”

That’s what Charles had to say…

While I was at it, I had to find out where “Flogging the Punk Horse” came from. At that point in time, Punk As A Doornail was a noise band. We didn’t have any songs, but every so called song was called, “Flogging the Punk Horse”. Here’s what Charles had to say about that:

To flog a dead horse

One means by this to try to revive interest in an issue that appears to be entirely hopeless. “Dead horse” has long been used (for more than three centuries) as meaning something of no present value- as, “to pay, or work, for a dead horse,” to continue to pay or labor for something that no longer exists, like continuing to pay the installments on an automobile after it was smashed. The present phrase, however, dates only to the last century. It is ascribed to the British statesman and orator, John Bright, who probably used it on at least two occasions. One was when John, Earl Russell, sought the passage by Parliament of a reform measure, and the other was when his friend, Richard Cobden, was similarly seeking a reduction in expenditures. Bright favored both of these measures; both had at one time interested Parliament, but that interest had waned. It was, as Bright said, like flogging a dead horse to rouse Parliament from its apathy.

I think my favorite part of Charles’ descriptions of these two phrases is the usage of the word “stud” and the phrase “entirely hopeless”. The stud could refer to Cary’s pee pee impaled. The phrase could refer to Keith’s quest for tonality on the skatar.

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