- A very hard candy.
- Slang. A word that is difficult to pronounce.
- A machine that crushes rock or ore.
jawbreakingly jaw'break'ing·ly adv.
Dictionary:
jaw·break·er (jô'brā'kər) ![]() |
| How Products are Made: How is a jawbreaker made? |
Background
The jawbreaker is a type of hard, round candy that is ideally so difficult to bite down on that it must be sucked. Jawbreakers range from the size of a hazel nut to the size of a golf ball, and come in many flavors and colors. They are popular with children, and often sold in vending machines. Though originally a trade name, the term jawbreaker became so widespread that it is considered a generic name for any brand candy of this type.
History
Both written and pictorial records indicate Egyptians prepared sweets with honey, sweet fruits, spices, and nuts. Sugar was not known in Egypt, and the first written evidence of its appearance dates to A.D. 500 in India. The method of making sugar from the boiled syrup of the sugarcane plant spread from India through the Arab world, and sugar was introduced to Europe sometime around A.D. 1100 It was first thought of as a spice, and even up through the fifteenth century, sugar was so rare that it was used, for the most part, only medicinally, prescribed in minute doses by physicians. By the sixteenth century, widespread sugarcane cultivation and the technology for refining sugar developed sufficiently that sugar was not such a precious commodity. Small manufacturers produced crude candies in Europe at that time. The methods used were all simple, and produced the kinds of candies that could still be made at home today. By the late eighteenth century, entrepreneurs had developed candy-making machinery, and more complex candies were made and on a greater scale.
Candies are distinguished in broad categories by their hardness, and this corresponds to the temperature to which the sugar is heated. Sugar cooked at a low temperature results in chewy candy; medium heating results in a soft candy; and sugar cooked at a high temperature becomes hard candy, where the sugar is fully crystallized. The jawbreaker, being a type of hard candy, is similar to many candies popular in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. These hard candies were generally sold singly. A storekeeper pulled out the desired number of pieces from a loose bunch in a glass case or jar. By the mid-1800s, there were close to 400 candy factories operating in the United States, turning out penny candy and other types.
The jawbreaker was made famous by the Ferrara Pan Candy Company of Forest Park, Illinois. The origin of the name, however, is obscure. The word jawbreaker first showed up in the English language in 1839, used to mean a "hard-to-pronounce word." Later, it was used as a slang or derogatory term for a dentist. Ferrara Pan was founded by an Italian immigrant to the United States, Salvatore Ferrara, in 1919. Ferrara came to the United States in 1900. Though he was a skilled confectioner, for years he worked various odd jobs, including as dishwasher and as a railroad foreman. Eventually, he saved up enough money to open his own pastry shop in Chicago in 1908. Among his products was a kind of sugar-coated almond known in Italy as confetti. These became so popular that Ferrara started a separate company to make them. In 1919, Ferrara teamed up with his two brothers-in-law, and founded the Ferrara Pan Candy Company. The new corporation focused on making candies in the hot pan and cold pan process. Ferrara Pan produced many well known confections, including Boston Baked Beans and Red Hots, as well as its original Jaw Breakers. These candies became so popular that the earlier meanings of the term jawbreaker disappeared, and it began to be applied to all candies of this type. There are many manufacturers of jawbreakers today, though Ferrara Pan remains the leading maker of hot pan candies in the world.
Raw Materials
The crucial ingredient in the jawbreaker is sugar. All other ingredients form only a tiny percentage of the finished candy. Jawbreakers use natural and artificial flavors and a variety of artificial colors. Manufacturers may also add calcium stearate, a binding agent, and a wax such as carnauba wax, to provide a shiny, polished surface.
The Manufacturing Process
Jawbreakers are made by the hot pan process, and the type of pan used is very important. Candy-making pans are little like pans found in an ordinary kitchen. They are huge spherical copper kettles with a wide mouth. The pans rotate constantly over a gas flame so the sugar inside is kept tumbling. The worker who makes candy in using these pans is known as a panner.
Pouring the sugar
Adding other ingredients
Polishing
Measuring
Bagging
Quality Control
Quality control is generally simple for jawbreakers. They are a relatively pure product, since they are close to 100% sugar. Workers rely on visual inspection to make sure a batch of jawbreakers is forming correctly. Since the process of making these candies takes about two weeks, and the pans are open, workers have many opportunities to observe the jawbreakers and see that they are shaped right. Each day, a worker may remove several jawbreakers from the batch in process and break them open. The crystalline structure inside should look like concentric rings. Workers also do a taste test. Making jawbreakers is a process that requires little technology, and quality control does not demand any elaborate chemical or physical analysis.
Byproducts/Waste
If quality control reveals any defective jawbreakers, they cannot be melted down and reused. Since the sugar is crystallized throughout the product, it would have to be ground down. So there may be a small amount of waste in the process, if a portion of the product has to be thrown out. Otherwise, the manufacturing process creates no byproducts.
Where to Learn More
Books
Broekel, Ray. The Great American Candy Bar Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, Inc., 1982.
Mintz, Sydney W. Sweetness and Power. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
[Article by: Angela Woodward]
| Artist: Jawbreaker |
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| Discography: Jawbreaker |
| Wikipedia: Jawbreaker (band) |
| Jawbreaker | |
|---|---|
Left to right: Adam Pfahler, Blake Schwarzenbach and Chris Bauermeister in a promotional photograph of Jawbreaker.
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| Background information | |
| Origin | San Francisco, California, USA |
| Genres | Punk rock Emo Post-hardcore |
| Years active | 1988–1996 |
| Labels | Shredder Records, Tupelo Recording Company, Blackball Records, DGC |
| Associated acts | Shorebirds, Jets to Brazil, Horace Pinker, The Thorns of Life, Whysall Lane, J Church, forgetters |
| Members | |
| Blake Schwarzenbach Chris Bauermeister Adam Pfahler |
|
Jawbreaker was an American punk band from San Francisco, California, from 1988 to 1996. The band also had roots in Los Angeles, where members Blake Schwarzenbach and Adam Pfahler attended Crossroads High School together, and New York City, where Schwarzenbach and Pfahler met bass player Chris Bauermeister at New York University in 1988. The band put its DIY ethos into practice by managing themselves.[citation needed]
Jawbreaker released four full-length studio albums between 1990 and 1995 as well as a number of EPs, 7 inches and splits. Even though they were signed to a major record label for their final album Dear You, Jawbreaker failed to achieve much commercial success during their years of recording and performing. The band split up in 1996 and members of Jawbreaker went on to form or feature in several bands since then. In January 2008, Pfahler announced that the band had recently reunited for an upcoming documentary.[1][2]
Contents |
Unfun, Jawbreaker's first LP was recorded in Venice, California, and released in 1990. It is a combination of pop-influenced punk and DC-influenced hardcore. However, unlike contemporary "pop-punk", Unfun has a dark quality and a maturity emblemized by its literary aspirations.[citation needed] While many bands at the time were willing to settle for pat social commentary, Jawbreaker pushed its lyrics, emphasizing depth and resonance.
Jawbreaker went on hiatus from late 1990 to early 1991 while members of the band finished college. Upon reforming, they relocated to San Francisco's Mission District. Around this time that they began to gather a following at 924 Gilman Street, a Berkeley venue. The band immediately began to write songs for a new album, Bivouac, which was recorded in 1991. The album was a sprawling epic—it featured slower, gloomier songs than "Unfun", as well as more complex arrangements. While the CD release of the album had its share of poppy moments the remainder of the album gravitated toward lush, dark songs punctuated by instrumental breakdowns infusions of call-and-response interplay among the three band members. Almost a period piece, the instrumentation and record quality has the watermark of late '80s/early '90s indie music. Largely, this was a very ambitious effort for the band and, unfortunately, according to many critics, largely fell short of its ambitions.
The vinyl release's track layout - as a whole - boasts a considerably darker demeanor than the CD version (which included the "Chesterfield King" EP.)
Touring relentlessly in support of "Bivouac", Schwarzenbach's raspy vocal stylings finally caught up with him, requiring throat surgery. After Schwarzenbach's surgery the band recorded 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, released in 1994. The bulk of the album was recorded by well known indie producer Steve Albini (though it is officially credited to Albini's cat, Fluss). The liner notes to the "Etc." compilation, note that Albini charged the band $1,032 for recording the album.
Not only had Blake's singing become slightly less raspy on "24 Hour Revenge Therapy", but the band's songs had also become shorter and more imbued with a festive elation than those on Bivouac.
In the midst of the writing/recording process for the album, the band embarked on their "When It Pains, It Roars" tour. Growing criticism from core fans, especially after the band played a few dates in late 1993 with major label superstar Nirvana, left Jawbreaker disillusioned. 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is largely heralded as Jawbreaker's crowning achievement. Its songs encapsulate the range of emotions and specific experiences of many of the educated but working-class population that largely comprised Jawbreaker's fanbase.
After the success of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Jawbreaker signed with Geffen Records and worked with producer Rob Cavallo, who had received acclaim producing Green Day's breakthrough album Dookie. Dear You was a stark departure from the harder edge of their earlier recordings. Blake's singing and the guitar sound were cleaner. Cavallo gave the album a "radio-friendly" polish their previous albums lacked. The band had mixed feelings about this new sound and major label atmosphere. Adam and Blake talked extensively about the benefits of self-managing their band and how major labels spelled financial death for many bands. Adam and Blake's views are epitomized in their comments in Maximum Rock and Roll's major labels issue.
Nevertheless, Blake has stated that this album kept the band alive, as they were on the verge of breaking up after 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. Despite a vigorous marketing push by Geffen, album sales for Dear You were anemic in the wake of a post-Green Day market and failed to come close to those of their previous albums. However, the album was a critical success, bringing Jawbreaker's artistic maturity to a new audience. In 2004, the members of the group reacquired the rights to Dear You and successfully put the long out-of-print album back into circulation with additional tracks, including a more polished version of "Boxcar", an interactive copy of their only music video ("Fireman"), and updated liner notes that include a picture of Kurt Cobain wearing a Jawbreaker t-shirt. Their hit "Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault" was included on EA Sports video game NCAA Football 06
After Dear You was released in September 1995, the band soldiered on for another year before calling it quits. One of their last tours found them opening for the Foo Fighters. A San Francisco stop on this tour is featured on their post-breakup release; Live 4/30/96. The LP version of the live album was a mail-order only offer limited to one hundred copies from Allied Records.
Singer Blake Schwarzenbach went on to form the New York City-based band Jets to Brazil, which has since broken up. Between bands, he found work as a freelance writer, even writing a few game reviews for GameSpot. He is now an adjunct English professor at Hunter College in New York City. After a brief stint with The Thorns of Life, he is currently playing with forgetters.
Drummer Adam Pfahler lives in San Francisco and currently runs Lost Weekend Video and Blackball Records, which primarily keeps the Jawbreaker catalog in print. He has played drums in Bay Area pop punk band J Church and played in Whysall Lane with Richard Baluyut, the lead singer for Versus.
Bassist Chris Bauermeister briefly played with Horace Pinker while he was working on a doctorate degree in History at Purdue. He moved to Olympia, Washington, where he played bass in the band Shorebirds with singer/guitarist Matt Cannino from the band Latterman. As of 2009, Bauermeister is in a new band with Cannino: Mutoid Men.
On January 3, 2008, Pfahler announced that during the course of filming a Jawbreaker documentary, the band played music together in private. These comments ignited rumors about a possible reunion.[1] [2] Pfahler had this to say:
"Yes, the documentary is still on, still being made. The hold up is that Keith and Tim have yet to find a distributor who is willing to pony up the closing costs to finish this thing (flights, editing time, blowing it up to 35mm. etc.). So they are doing this as a labor of love in between their regular gigs and family time. I trust this love bodes well for the finished product. A few months back they came to SF and we got some really great footage with all three of us and Billy Anderson (who worked on Bivouac, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy and a couple one-offs as a producer/engineer). We even played together, but didn't roll footage out of both respect for the sanctity of the moment and fear that we'd suck. Anyway, I have audio of it. Maybe I'll post that some day."
Jawbreaker's music is characterized by raw vocals, a driving rhythm section, and grinding guitar—a mix used by many punk bands. Unlike most other punk bands, Jawbreaker delves into complex song structure, melody, instrumental interludes, and obscure sampled recordings. Jawbreaker's lyrics, written largely by Schwarzenbach, are imbued with a literary melancholy comparable to the work of early Charles Bukowski and late Anne Sexton. Jawbreaker's songs fuse personal longing with animistic fetishization of both public objects (boats and boxcars) and private (books and bottles). Many of Jawbreaker's songs reflect on post-college depression, social issues, and youthful aspiration.
The band's cult status as the definitive nineties punk band has grown since its breakup. In 2003, a Jawbreaker tribute album, Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault, was released on Dying Wish Records, and featured covers by 18 bands including Fall Out Boy, Nerf Herder, Sparta, and Face to Face. Another tribute album, So Much for Letting Go, was released on Coptercrash Records. Chris Conley of Saves the Day has cited Jawbreaker as an influence on his writing. Jesse Lacey is known to cover Jawbreaker songs such as "Accident Prone" in some of his concerts. Set Your Goals covered "Do You Still Hate Me" on a Bay Area punk compilation. Bob Nanna (Braid, Hey Mercedes, The City On Film) and Mike Kinsella (Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc, The One Up Downstairs, American Football, and Owen) can be seen on Youtube performing duets of 'Boxcar' and 'Chesterfield King'. Author Dave Roche frequently cites Jawbreaker as one of his favorite bands. Bird flu phylogeographer Robert Wallace quotes a Schwarzenbach lyric on his website. A character in the punk rock webcomic Nothing Nice To Say routinely refers to Jawbreaker as one of his favorite bands. This character's name is Blake, and he seems to be modeled after Schwarzenbach. Jawfaker, an East Coast band, formed in 2006 to perform Jawbreaker songs live. Author Tao Lin references Jawbreaker throughout his novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, including multiple references to the song "Ache". Lagwagon also covered Jawbreaker's "Want," which can be found on their b-sides album, "Let's Talk About Leftovers." The Lawrence Arms and The Sour Notes have also been known to cover Jawbreaker songs, and cite them as an influence which is clearly evident in their music and lyrics. Comparisons have also been drawn between early Jawbreaker and Face to Face, who as mentioned above covered Chesterfield King on the tribute album and their own covers album Standards and Practices Ampere makes a lyrical reference to "Kiss the Bottle" in their song "Abject Failure". In addition, Rise Against has been known to cover "Tour Song" from time to time in various acoustic sessions (such as on Sessions@AOL). Alternative county band, Lucero, also cover the Jawbreaker B-Side, "Kiss The Bottle" both live and on record. The recorded version can be found on the Re-Issue of The Attic Tapes.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009) |
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| Translations: Jawbreaker |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - kæbeknuser
Nederlands (Dutch)
woord waar men zijn tong over breekt, toverbal
Français (French)
n. - (US) mot très difficile à prononcer
Deutsch (German)
n. - Zungenbrecher
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γλωσσοδέτης, δυσκολοπρόφερτη λέξη ή όνομα
Italiano (Italian)
scioglilingua, parola difficile da pronunciare
Português (Portuguese)
n. - palavra (f) de difícil pronúncia, bala (f) dura (doce), máquina (f) de britar pedra ou minério (Mec.)
Русский (Russian)
труднопроизносимое слово, твердая карамель
Español (Spanish)
n. - trabalenguas, caramelo de goma, triturador
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - tungvrickande ord
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
难发音的字
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 難發音的字
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 발음하기 힘든 단어, 딱딱한 사탕, 광석 분쇄기
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 発音しにくいことば, 硬いキャンデー, 発音しにくい言葉
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) كلمه يصعب نطقها
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - שוברת שיניים (מלה), ממתק קשה
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