Entertainment For Lively Minds
From the desk of Danny Baker - searching for anyone who played fast and loose with the language in their search for a novel name
Posted by David Hepworth on 25 February 2010 - 11:22am.
Today on the show we got to wondering if BoC were the first to play the umlaut card. And who else has followed. I think they were the first. I also think their old "hook" logo was hijacked by Prince for his squiggle. He obviously was influenced by another minuscule front man.
Anyway I think it might be worth brainstorming at Word for other groups who have modified the language to achieve their brand. Have you done this already? The Monkees? Def Leppard? LED Zeppelin?
That's not how its spelt....
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Let me begin
Shakespear's Sister.
Floor's yours.
Pedantry Alert! Pedantry Alert!
Except that 'Shakspear' could be correct, given that Will famously couldn't be hugely arsed with spelling his own name correctly (http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/content/view/689/623/)
Which, as Bill Bryson pointed out
means that any variant of his name is correct, apart from the one - Shakespeare - we widely use today.
Pre-
and indeed
-cisely
Erm...
A bit obvious, but The Beatles.
Most of Slade's hit singles
Mama Weer All Crazee Now
Gudbuy T'Jane
Coz I Luv You etc.
Not the band, but an essential part of the brand.
Gorillaz spring to mind...
Motley
Crue (can't work the umlauts on my laptop).
And
those 'Thee' bands - Thee Hypnotics and Thee Headcoats spring to mind, although there may have been others.
Those Killed by Death
funsters
Motörhead
...and umpteen other Umlaut Metal bands
Spinal Tap
Have a grammatically impossible umlaut on the 'n'.
Limp Bizkit.
I love Umlaut Metal
best subgenre ever! In fact I'm surprised it doesn't appear here alongside Teutonic Traditional Heavy Metal and Blackened Deathly Thrash Metal
gorillaz
which points to hip hop culture which is a whole sea of crazy spelling some of it verging on incomprehensibility.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
were one of the first I can remember
One or two
The Mo-dettes
Kajagoogoo
Jonzun Crew
Eminem
L'il Louis
Del Tha Funky Homosapien (at a push)
Mos Def
DJ Toolz
Siouxsie
The Mar-Keys
Jazzyfatnastees (their first album is a wonder. No, really)
Rhythim Is Rhythim
more
The Dandy Warhols?
Audio Bullys?
Dizzee Rascal?
Fabolous?
Paramore?
Zwan?
Sugababes?
Jamiroquai?
Mighty Dub Katz?
Motörhead?
Outkast?
Pharoahe Monch?
Playdoe?
Snoop Dogg?
Do you not get dictionaries at fame school?
Wouldn't it be quicker...
to do bands that didn't take liberties with the spelling?
Freur
Just a squiggle that no one could get to grips with.
And morse code
Doot doot
Became
Underworld, dontcha know.
The Byrds
How silly, but great, is that?
What were they thinking?
Haysi Fantayzee
And not just the name...
INXS
or Inxus as I thought it was.
At work today
in reference to the death of Kristian Digby, a colleague compared it with that of "Michael Hutchinson of the Inks"...
N-Dubz
which should be spelt K.N.O.B.S
Always thought
Sting was a funny way to spell ar*ehole.Sorry,how about Split Enz.
Damn
Ya beat me to it - fashionable misspelling and a reference to their Kiwi origins.
Actually...
...loking at the posting dates you beat me to it by miles. Sorry, been away.
Mötley Crüe
Megadeth
Queensrÿche
And in the beginning there was
Tutti Frutti: "A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam bam..."
OK, it's a song not an artist but Jerry Lee is immediately identified with this...
Little
Richard,actually.
It's been a long day
already...
Not a band
but this made me think of the 1940s film Hellzapoppin'.
It's certainly not the earliest liberty taken with the English language for commercial reasons, and appropriately has a turn by Slim Gaillard who decided he needed his very own language to take liberties with http://www.pocreations.com/vout.html
As Kerouac says in On The Road...
"it's all one big -oroonie, baby"
Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus have two dots over
letters in their names, but ... erm ... they're supposed to be there.
See also Erik Hässle, Frida Hyvönen and quite a few other Swedish artistes.
Actually, come to think of it, Swedes normally do the reverse of Mötley Crüe, as they drop the two dots (not an 'umlaut' in Swedish) to anglify their names. So ... Erik Hassle.
Hälsningar från Stockholm
And of course
in Swedish you would pronouce Mötley Crüe as Mutley Crew, which conjours up an image of old dogs sniggering in a wheezing fashion, which is quite apt nowadays really. And ü not a valid letter since the extra Swedish letters are only ö,ä and å, pronounced roughly uh, eh and aw respectively. I knew those Swedish lessons would come in useful one day. Don't know about German umlauts though.
In German, the 'ö' sound is
In German, the 'ö' sound is like the 'o' in worm, so not much difference.
Crüe, however, would be prounced something like 'crew-eh'.
..
Mutley Crew
Is the name of a dog walking/sitting service.
By the way, I'm tempted to give you an arrow for putting the umlaut over the zero, but that would spoil the effect.
Was one of those pesky double posts
so I thought I'd tidy it up by reducing it to an umlaut. The over the zero result was a happy accident, much as I'd like to take the credit.
Have an arrow
for your honesty then.
What?
No-one's mentioned Sigur Ros? A whole language there on the CD titles. And what about that Sunn ))O or whatever they call themselves. The question is whether such linguistic foibles are an adolescent scrawl on the schooldesk, or encapsulate a whole new world conjured up by the creative artistes. OK, that is a rhetorical question.
Sigur Rós (sic)
Jónsi may sing in "hopelandic", or whatever it is he calls it, but I thought the album titles were all 'proper' Icelandic:
- Von [Hope]
- Ágætis Byrjun [A Good Beginning]
- ( )
- Takk... [Thanks...]
- Hvarf / Heim [Haven / Home]
- Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust [With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly]
Maybe one of our Icelandic contributors can help out here...?
Not Icelandic but...
I do know quite a bit about them. Mostly it's only the ( ) album that is sung in Jonsi's own Hopelandic language, though there are a few tracks elsewhere. Everything else is in Icelandic. For example, the track "Staralfur" roughly translates as Star Elves. No joke. "Hoppipolla" is about a game involving puddles. Random or what. That's why its best to not translate their songs!
Sigur Ros
I cannot imagine any possible lyrics that for those wonderful tunes that would make them better rather than worse. I'm happy not knowing.
The The
Uniquely noun-free. Definitely.
Uniquely?
How about The Who?
and The Guess Who
Mostly Metal Bands making a statement
Helloween
Ratt
Waysted
Megadeth
Kreator
Witchfynde
Starz
Tigertailz
Godz
Hells Belles
Stryper
Limp Bizkit
Lawnmower Deth (although I think that one is on purpose)
and
Bill & Teds band: Wyld Stallions (would,ve been better with a 'z' on the end)
you're selling William "Bill" S. Preston & Theodore "Ted" Logan
short its fully glory is "wyld stallyns" !:)
The answer, as always is
XTC
Wot !!! No
Tygers Of Pan Tang (Where are Uncle and Patrick ? )
Jay Z (Jazzy)
3rd Bass (Third base)
Gang Starr
The Bizzie Boys
Masta Ace
a few more from my iPod
Bob B Soxx & the Blue Jeans
The Cryan Shames
Galaxie 500
Hüsker Dü (or is that correct?)
Maxïmo Park
Miike Snow
The Qemists (from a Now Hear This CD)
Redd Kross
Salt 'n' Pepa
Shadows of Knight
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Sugababes
Tha Dogg Pound (2 for the price of 1)
Wizzard
Husker du?
without umlauts means "Do you remember?" in Norwegian and Danish. According to Wikipedia the name was inspired by a popular boardgame from the 60s and the umlauts were added to make the name more HM.
"Husker du" was also the name of a TV show for OAPs in Norway in the 70s and 80s.
TAFKA
Prince, back in his slavery days... o-I->
Nick Lowe,s..
" Bowi" e.p...and Bowie,s "Subterraneans" on Low, around four mns in , sounds like he,s singing about Cheers actress Shelley Long!
The Rumour...
....may have originated this cute wordplay 'tribute' concept earlier the same year. Their first album without Graham Parker was called Max in response to the multiplatinum success of an album by a certain Anglo-American band.
I always thought it was a shame they didn't go the whole hog
and call it 'Macs'
punctuation
there's
- the wandering exclamation of Godspeed You! Black Emperor
- !!!
- Akron/Family
- Therapy?
- ? and the Mysterians
- HAMU(e)MON
- Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (also with quotes instead of inverted commas)
5ive
I'm not a 5an....in 5act I think they're 5ucking aw5ul!
OI! was fertile ground for those who had a misspelt youth
Skrewdriver
Cock Sparrer
The (ahem) 4 Skins
and talking of the umlaut, you do of course have early Bauhaus - nee bäuhäus
A couple
Dukes of the Stratosphear and Eurythmics for spelling.
Toad The Wet Sprocket for gibberish.