And what about
Elvisium, Hendrixium and Winehouseium?
Inevitably, and agreeably, an online petition is demanding that one of the four heavy metal elements coming soon to an engorged periodic table near you be named "Lemmium", in honour of recently departed Motörhead frontman Ian Fraser Kilmister, aka Lemmy. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has …
[Amy Winehouse's] singing was as musical as my son's pet frog
I guess that's a matter of opinion, my dad and I both liked her but my mum, who is a music teacher, didn't find her to be to her taste.
The production of her albums though, was absolutely appalling, they even manage to sound harsh and compressed on my crappy car system, with the engine running. Back to Black is genuinely the worst sounding CD I've ever come across.
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Indeed it was a fiver. The amount seemed trivial in the face of the imminent enmythment of the Lemmy Name Origin apocrypha by some zygote weaned on Wikipedia, which had enraged me beyond the capacity for rational editing. Ten quid was a week's living money in them days.
Interesting coincidence, the NME coming up again. Just before Xmas while rooting in my garage I turned up a double page spread from NME that featured a Lowry cartoon lampooning Tommy (the movie). Big Lowry fan in them days, me. On the other side was a blow-by-blow report of the making of the Black Knight scene being filmed for the eagerly anticipated Monty Python and the Holy Grail fillum complete with a picture of the limbless kernigget in question. They also covered the filming of the "We're the Knights of The Round Table" musical number. It was reported as "chaos".
Lemmy liked to take the p1$$, so this is very much in his spirit. He claimed once that he got so bored of singing Ace of Spades for 2 years he sang 8 of Spades and no one noticed. (He might have been bored of the song but to the absolute limits of human endurance he gave the fans everything he could.) There will never be anyone like him again, forged from bits of Little Richard, Cochran et al when rock was born, educated shifting Hendrix's gear (...), riding the front wave of the punk explosion without being an actual punk and carrying on in that vain for 40+ years. We couldn't make another if we tried, so naming an element that even if we can create a few atoms of it it is gone in <1s seems appropriate to me.
The term 'Heavy Metal' was reputedly coined by Sandy Pearlman to describe the style of music produced by Blue Oyster Cult in the 70's, quite different from the Motorhead output which just happened to come out at the start of the NWBHM.
The reality is though that Motorhead are musically simple, extremely loud and original. As such they bridged and influenced sub genres and genders. Punks accepted Motorhead, later Thrash and Death Metal bands freely admit to the influence and Girlschool would not have had the exposure they achieved at the time without Lemmy's support. Society at that time wasn't as equal as it is now.
Even though he sung that the girl had 'No Class' this is precisely what he did have, form is temporary class is permanent.
So Long Lemmy, thanks for the great memories...
The phrase "heavy metal" also made an early appearance in musical context in Steppenwolf's "Born to wild" in the line "Heavy metal thunder!" in 1968, so late 60s early 70s is about right
Motörhead was fun whatever label you wish to put on it. I do not think Lemmy would mind being remembered as a heavy element that is born in a burst of energy, and disappears in a flash after a (too) short, (radio-)active life
Look a little further than Wikipedia and you will find Pearlman was a journalist, manager / founder of BOC and manager of Black Sabbath along with being a prolific record producer. Not disputing Steppenwolf used it as a lyric but as a descriptor of a genre, the balance of debate favours Pearlman.
I have been a rock fan from the early seventies and until the late seventies all references I recall were to hard or heavy rock. Perhaps this is why Lemmy rejected that Motorhead were a heavy metal band.
I assert that the term is being applied retrospectively to the early bands and the likes of Led Zeppelin in the sixties, who for the record, in my opinion are not a heavy metal band. Their style is of the original description, a hard or heavy rock band.
I wasn't looking at Wikiwhatever. I was looking at when I lived in Southern California back then. The term "heavy metal" back then referred more to the names and their on stage presence than to the type of music. I don't recall that term being used much outside of Southern Cal until much later. In musical style, yeah.. Motorhead wasn't heavy metal.
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"an astrological object (a star) has been named Lemmy to meet the IUPAC naming recommendations".
To be fair though, it would be far cooler to say you were born under the sign of Lemmy rather than Libra or Pisces etc. It would make your daily Horoscope simpler too -
"Tuesday 5th January: Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll."
"Wednesday 6th January: Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll."
"Thursday 7th January..."
And as to the new elements 113, 115, 117, and 118, none of them is worthy of the name Lemmium unless capable of melting brains and causing involuntary bowel movements for anyone within a 50 foot radius...
"How about the guys who actually built the kit that created & detected the atoms?"
Well, yes, quite right, it should be them. Then they can decide whether to line their pockets/support Tha Trumpster/whatever.
I hope that being high-order boffins mundane concerns will be beneath them, and they might choose something witty and fitting in order to embiggen the general jollification.
Someone also needs to comment on the "live fast, die young" ethos which I think was embraced by the man and is certainly embraced by the element. Note that both for elements and men, that attitude doesn't guarantee an early demise. It just means they are rolling the dice more often.