I once got a shout to do a gig with Damo Suzuki in my city in Ireland. I’d never heard of him or Can at that point. I thought he was going to be at least half Irish with a name like Damo
The message was something like Damo Suzuki needs a pickup band for tonight would you play guitar? I was like sure what’s the Craic with it? It’s just a jam and see what happens. Free/noise/art thing? Sounded like something I’d never done and then I embarrassingly kept calling him Damo as in Damien all night until the gig was over
One of his fans pulled me aside horrified to tell me that I was pronouncing his name totally wrong. I’ve since gotten into Can and I grabbed a few signed solo albums off him that night. We got on well. Nice fella! That’s my Damo Suzuki story
That’s a good story, Can are pretty interesting.
It’s ダモ in Japanese, which in English sounds like the ‘da’ sound from ‘dagger’ and the ‘mo’ sound from ‘mokasine’, if that makes sense.
On the subject of saying names wrong, many moons ago I once had to spend a few days in hospital in Japan. There was a nurse that was assigned to look after me (she could speak good English). I’m really bad with names (forget them straight away in any language) but this time I thought I’d make a special effort to remember her name.
Before I went in for my stay we had a meeting so she could explain everything that was going to happen. She introduced herself as Chigusa. I kept saying it over and over and over in my head and tried to use it at any opportunity. ‘
Yes Chigusa’, ‘
I understand Chigusa’, etc… When she had finished talking to me I said ’
Thanks Chigusa’. When we said our goodbyes, of course I said ‘
Bye Chigusa’.
When Chigusa had got out of earshot my wife (Japanese) looked at me with a... you’re such and idiot kind of face and said ‘
Why did you keep calling her that the whole time?’, I replied ‘
That was her name'. ’
No it wasn’t’ she said. ‘
Well, what was I calling her then?’. ‘
You kept calling her chibusa’. ‘
What does chibusa mean?’. ‘
Breast’...
I learnt a new word that day and I’ve never pronounced Chigusa (a fairly common girls name here) wrong again.