Gherms? Weasels? Buggas? Music Row Speaks A Language All Its Own

On any given day, someone who works in the country music industry might have to navigate their way around gherms, speed bumps, diesel sniffers and even giant naked people.

The music industry, and Music Row in particular, speaks a language all its own, peppered with an amusing array of names, terms and expressions only true insiders can appreciate.

To kick the New Year off on a light-hearted note, I reached out to about two dozen industry pros to compile of list of their favorite such terms and definitions. With big thanks to all of those who contributed, a few of whom are named below, here, then, is our country music dictionary:

• Gherm: A rabid country music fan who tries to gain access to artists. The beauty of this word, as Capitol Records’ Judy McDonough correctly points out, is that it can be used as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. It’s multi-functional!

Cross-Gherming: When millionaire athletes call to ask for free concert tickets and millionaire singers do the same for sporting events.

• Swag: The logo-ed t-shirts, pens, bags, key chains, table tents, 3D mailers and assorted crap used to promote artists and companies. I once used this term at a family function and was surprised to learn from my banker brother that, in his industry, “swag” has a completely different meaning he defines as “a best guesstimate as to the potential revenue from a deal.” Who knew?

• Goat Ropings: According to Equity Music Group’s David Haley, it’s a term artists use for events that go horribly awry, such as when they show up to perform and there is no sound system, no stage or, worse, no audience.

• The Artist Protection Program: Labels that seem to sign acts for life plus 20 years, or labels that sign acts and never (or rarely) release music from them are said to have acts on the Artist Protection Program.

• CME: Country Music Emergency: Defined by a label publicist who probably doesn’t want their name associated with this as those times “when people are all uptight and high strung, slamming doors and acting like the world is coming to an end. People, it’s just country music, not heart surgery. No one is dying. Put things in perspective.”

• Speed Bumps (aka Hood Ornaments): Radio music directors who have no real say over the music decisions at their stations and whose primary function is to slow down label access to their programmer bosses.

• Train Wreck: Regent Broadcasting’s Bob Moody defines this as “a particularly dissonant segue” between records played on a radio station.

• Scholarship Program: In the pre- Eliot Spitzer days, any radio programmer suspected of being on the take from labels was snidely said to be on the “scholarship program.”

• Starter Stations: Those radio stations with longer playlists that are more likely to be the first to start playing a new single.

• Contest Pigs: Radio listeners who make it their life’s work to win prizes from radio stations.

• Diesel Sniffers: Monk Family Music’s Charlie Monk describes these as “women who follow star’s busses from gig to gig.”

• Tanny Tannersons: Over spray tanned women, often with fake hair, who fawn over male artists and try and get on the busses.

• Mailbox Money: The dividends that keep paying off for songwriters who have penned a big hit.

• Buggas: Defined by one publicity pro as “annoying, small time journalists who expect advances, interviews and photos of artists for absolutely no coverage.”

• Fanscare: Previously known as Fan Fair, part of the CMA’s annual summer music festival in Nashville.

• CRS: Really stands for Country Radio Seminar, of course, but for people who overindulge at that particular winter event, it has been known to mean “Can’t Remember S*#t!”

• Promo Weasels (aka Tune Weasels): A particularly derogatory name for record promotion execs.

• The Evil Empire: Derogatory term sometimes used to describe the powerful radio megagroup Clear Channel.

• No Name Nancys: Defined by a publicist as women “who try to get into our award show parties that are not on the lists.”

• Glam Squad: The hair, makeup and stylist entourage that follows the artists around everywhere they go, fluffing and primping.

• Manscaping: Masculine landscaping of male artists (highlights, waxing, Botox, teeth whitening, etc.)

• Wannabe: Any aspiring artist.

• T.T.H. (Trying Too Hard): Wannabe artists acting like they are Martina McBride.

• Annies: Artists who starve themselves in order to be thin.

• U.G.H. (Unacceptable Get-up and Hair): Awful red carpet ensembles.

• Music Row Wallet-ectomy: Tenacious Entertainment’s Jeff Lysyczyn amusingly defines this as “the craft of recognizing unsuspecting ‘investors’ who wander onto Music Row, carefully performing the delicate operation of extracting copious sums of money to launch an ‘endeavor,’ and slipping quietly into the night before the ‘patient’ awakens from his Grammy-induced anesthesia.”

• The Naked People (also known as the “Nekked” People): A reference to the giant sculpture of dancing nude figures at the Music Row Roundabout, which is head-scratchingly said to represent the spirit of music. The Naked People are usually referenced while giving directions from the interstate or downtown to a Music Row location (e.g. “veer left around the Naked People”). I have a friend who once had a few too many at the Tin Roof and tried to mount one of the male figures, but that’s a story for another time.