OFF: What's the German for "Krautrock"?

[Eric Siegerman]

Some questions for the German speakers on the list.

So, I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on Krautrock (actually
it's a section of the article on German Rock,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_rock).  It raises a couple of
questions in my mind.

First, the article says, "In Germany, the term 'Krautrock' is not
used."  Is this true?  The German Wikipedia has an article called
"Krautrock" (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krautrock).

It seems to me that the word might well be considered insulting,
given its origins.  Is that the case?

Later, the article says that T. Dream and Faust called what they
were doing "komische musik", and someone on the discussion page
suggests that that's "a translation of 'krautrock'", but that a
particular German speaker disagreed.  A few questions here:

  - Should that be "kosmische"?  "Cosmic" seems rather more
    appropriate than "comic", for the music in question :-) But
    "komische musik" gets over 500 Google hits -- far less than
    "kosmische", but the first bunch are all on German-language
    pages, so I hesitate to edit the article without
    confirmation.

  - Does that term (whichever is the correct spelling) now refer
    to Krautrock in general, or was it limited to those two
    bands' usage of it "back in the day"?

  - Shouldn't "Musik" be capitalized?  (That's about the only
    rule of German grammar that I think I know, so again I'm
    skating on pretty thin ice...)

Speaking of the German-language article, it looks as though that
has quite a detailed etymology of the term, including references
to John Peel (RIP) and Amon Düül.  Too bad I can't read it.

Thanks much.

P.S.: If you point Google at the German article, it translates
Krautrock *into* English as "herb skirt".  Too funny!

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
        - Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"