Hit me with your rhythm stick!

[muckefuck]

During the inevitable multilingual pop culture geekery that follows from any meeting between me and aadroma, I baffled everyone with a reference to the inimitable song stylings of albino German sensation Heino.

Trying to clarify by tossing in the word Schlager only made things worse. Eventually, aadroma figured out what I meant, but he said that he'd always seen that word written Schläger. I find this curious, since a Schläger is something for bashing with--a baseball or cricket bat, a tennis racquet, a kind of sabre used by German fraternities--or someone who administers the bashing. Germans, AFAIK, never confuse the two. Does the rest of the world?

I tried to search for instances of Schläger for Schlager online, but couldn't come up with any. Does anyone know how to get Google not to ignore diacritics during a search? Does anyone have pointers to a song site that spells the word with an umlaut?

(BTW, danbearnyc, this picture is not to punish you for that horrible Hasselhoff icon you posted in comments some time ago and it's very petty of you to think so.)

Edit: Speaking of beautiful love songs, here are the complete lyrics to "Rory Rides Me Raw". As you can see, aadroma, I was wrong about the artist: The Vaselines, not Sebadoh. (I think the short-circuit connexion is SubPop.)

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't never think such a thing. The red roses are your sign of LUV for me.

Wie der Heino uns vorsingt

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Wahre Liebe ist stärker als der Tod."

Re: Wie der Heino uns vorsingt

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right for the Teutonic temperament.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Ger your own Andy Warhol action figure! (The Warholas are from the Sudetenland, no one will know he's not Heino...)

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

The plural's surely more common than the singular? Or am I confused again?

FWIW, many Beck fans know Heino:

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I just emailed the lyrics to my friend Anne Rice - no, not her, to the one who can write - to share with her husband Rory.

Ego tibi gratias.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Actually, this article features the umlauts, and is in support of my "the music style has umlauts" statement ... supposedly it's some branch-off of the English "hit" that's gone horridly awry to now specify super-cheezy music.

And now I need to print those lyrics and show them to Rory -- I can't believe he's never heard 'em!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You're not confused, honey; you're GAY.

You are, however, mistaken as to the plural of Schlager; it's invariable, like Bagger--der Schlager, die Schlager.

P.S.: OH MY GOD that album cover is a scream! Were do I get my signed copy??

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

There is SO MUCH wrong with that article, I didn't even notice the spelling! Die spinnen, die Vikinger!

As for the Vaseline lyrics...I should lend you the album some time. It's really a lovely ballad.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

adding you if it's OK?

i promise not to drool on your LJ ;), but i love reading German almost as much as hearing it, and i've seen you post in a bunch of friends' journals.

the post about the irises just clinched it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Any particular reason why? Like did the love of your life seduce you to the tune of Danke Schoen or something?

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

not the love of my life, but there was this guy from near Stuttgart last fall...

yet, in truth, he merely capitalized on an existing weakness.

the answer is actually: my grandparents. more, my grandmother. and my father, who still listens to a German radio station every weekend, and - i think - misses his parents, his youth.

i'm a hundred percent Black Forest-ish stock, and i miss the language, having studied it in high school, heard it from my relatives, then went to college and never used it again. :/

yet another thing i'm recovering a love for, after the life-explosion. :)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Where in the Black Forest? Ich wohnte ein Jahr in Freiburg, waehrendessen ich die Uni besuchte. Die Stadt fehlt mir; oefters traeume ich, dass ich dort auf Besuch bin.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

You have reached the voicemail of (pause) Chris Herrmann (pause). Please leave your message after the tone.

BEEP.

--

hey, i didn't promise not to faint again.

--

i've never been to Germany - yet - but i'd love to go. Freiburg is on my list.

the address of my nearest relatives there is Kornwestheim. they run a hotel, i believe. i have another set of relatives, more distant, and, i think, further north. my grandmother was from (again, details fuzzy) somewhere called Obergarten (?) my mom's family was supposedly from southern Germany as well, but her parents were actually born here, so it's a further time back to trace.

still... i really want to, some day.

i started to, and ran into military service during WWII and started to wonder if i wanted to know, and then Real Life intruded, and it just got away from me.