I stumbled across this waste of cyberspace today through a link on the 6 Music website: a history of the umlaut in Metal (those two dots over the second 'o' in Motorhead, for example.
Apparently, "The umlaut in Motörhead was contributed by the graphic designer of the band's first album cover. In the words of Lemmy, Motörhead's front man: "I only put it in there to look mean."
Motorhead are the obvious umlaut users, but here are many more - Blue Öyster Cult, Spinal Tap (the umlaut is over a consonant- nice!), Amon Duul, Husker Du (although I think their umlaut is actually legit, and anyway they aren't metal).
It also includes this terrific exhortation from an old Hawkwind album (which to my shame I still own...)
"TECHNICIÄNS ÖF SPÅCE SHIP EÅRTH THIS IS YÖÜR CÄPTÅIN SPEÄKING YÖÜR ØÅPTÅIN IS DEA̋D"
Motely Crue - there's another...
2 comments:
Do you remember the band "B*witched"? Irish, pappy girl pop from around 1998. No umlauts, but an asterisk, which soon put paid to their career as that meant that they could have no internet identity, "*" being one of the symbols you can't use in a web URL.
Of course I remember them! They were at large when I was working at Virgin, and we called them 'B star Witched' with what I now recognise as a total lack of wit.
One of the girls is appearing in panto in Nottm this year at the Theatre Royal...
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