I Am Damo Suzuki
Lyrics
Generous of lyric, Jehovah's Witness (2)
Stands in Cologne Marktplatz (3)
Drums come in
When the drums come in fast
Drums to shock, into brass evil (4)
What have you got in that paper bag? (5)
Is it a dose of Vitamin C? (6)
Ain't got no time for Western lesson (7)
I am Damo Suzuki
The park alight with acid rain
Give it to me, danke, every day (8)
Who is Mr. Herr Stockhausen? (9)
Introduce me
I'm Damo Suzuki
Soundtracks, Soundtracks (10)
Melched together, the lights
The lights above you
Listener was in cahoots with Fritz Lieber (11)
And read him every day
Recipe for fear gas, amount of salt ash (12)
I put by cup of meine fire, okay
I have no time for Western lesson
I am Damo Suzuki
May we go back to days pre-Virgin (13)
Cannot get on clear vinyl
The handle that was brass, is now brass evil
The rock that was an egg, is in wrong cradle
The hand that cradles the rock, makes egg gooey
I am Damo Suzuki (14)
Is this West latent pattern? (15)
Run it, says Damo's spirit
Is this lesser European?
Speak it, says Damo's spirit
I am Damo Suzuki
Notes
1. A tribute to the second lead singer of Can, one of MES's favorite bands. The artists that MES has expressed unqualified appreciation for over the years are relatively few, and generally, perhaps always, are acts that preceded the Fall. From memory, this category includes, aside from Can, Gene Vincent, Link Wray, Captain Beefheart, Bo Diddley, The Monks, The Velvet Underground, and The Stooges. Damo apparently liked the song (from The Wire):
A piece of latterday Can fandom resulted in Suzuki being 'immortalised' by Mark E. Smith in The Fall's "I Am Damo Suzuki", from the 1985 album This Nation's Saving Grace. What does he think of this tribute?
"When I first heard that song I thought there must be someone else called Damo Suzuki," he replies. "I never thought someone would make a song for me. I met Mark E. Smith twice after that time, when I was playing as Damo Suzuki Band. And that piece was really great. He also made a cover version of "Oh Yeah" [from Tago Mago] but in their own style."
Despite the "also," Suzuki later qualified this statement in the Fall fanzine The Pseud Mag:
The Fall did the song 'I Am Damo Suzuki', which sounds like 'Oh Yeah', but did they also record The Can song 'Oh Yeah' as a straight cover version? [I ask this because some Fall fans understood you to mean this in a previous interview, and have been looking for this straight cover version of 'Oh Yeah'.]
No, I was not that meaning they did real cover version.
They developed "Oh yeah" in thier style.
It's not only "Oh Yeah" if you hear "I'm Damo Suzuki"..much more compliation of feeling that Mark felt about me.
"Sic" for pretty much all of that.
"Oh Yeah" is indeed the song "I Am Damo Suzuki" is most obviously based on, featuring a similar drum part and vocal line. The descending changes that form the main theme of the song, however, do not come from "Oh Yeah," although they are, fittingly, a recurring pattern in Can's work, spanning several years: they first first appear on "Don't Turn the Light On" from Soundtracks, and the same descending chord figure appears in "Gomorrah," and later in "Bel Air" and "Midnight Men," and a similar pattern appears in "Hunters and Collectors." So it is a recurring theme in Can songs...
The chord progression that appears in the aforementioned Can songs is also found more or less identically in "Mark of the Mole" by the Residents from the album Assorted Secrets. See also "Old Loggerhead" by Sand (thanks to Tempertantrum from the Fall Online Forum).
MES's vocal imitates Suzuki a bit, exaggerating the Japanese accent a bit in the process, but the song is clearly intended as a tribute rather than a mockery. Reformation has helpfully reproduced the following information:
The ultimate namecheck to Damo came on The Fall's 1985 LP, This Nation's Saving Grace . Its skeletal yet oddly familiar riff was overladen with wordsmith Smith's trademark northern English surrealism.
"The moment I saw this I thought, 'There must be another Damo Suzuki," recalls Damo in amusement. "That same year I had a conversation with Mark E. and his wife Brix in their hotel room until early morning. I told them I thought their song was really good fun. He wrote quite a good lyric, which is based in part on my past life and quotes a Can song called 'Oh Yeah' "
On the original Tago Mago track, the band's gently urgent riff perfectly matches Damo as he builds from his serene delivery to a whelping scream. His allusive, almost-but-not-quite English lyric sits on the edge of sexual intimacy. MES took the 'Oh Yeah' riff and overrode it with a speed-freak surrealist tribute to Can and Damo himself while throwing in an oblique reference to Fritz Leiber, one of a number of supernatural horror authors who also obsessed him.
"It's quite amazing what he made out of it," praises the man himself, "if I listen to 'I am Damo Suzuki"', I think that Mark E. Smith is the real Damo Suzuki. " Given how personal an obsession Can were to him, for a while Smith may have felt that way himself. Damo, after all, had been just a rumour, a faint outline of legend, for a long time.
Christianity came into Damo Suzuki's life by way of a psychedelic epiphany. The more he tripped on acid, the more he perceived a spiritual light...(p118)
and
"Nowadays I'm reading The Bible every day, but that began in 1971 when I met Gitta, my future wife, whose mother is a Jehovah's Witness. Their world seemed to be believing in The Bible." (p119)
and
"I found the truth somewhere else," Damo says of his present-day spirituality. "I am not really interested in any church and any organisation. I like to find the real truth, which is starting from The Bible - not influenced by American-established organisations." (p119)
and, on the spiritual window that was opened in the early 1970s:
The book notes that Gitta still gets upset when people repeat the idea that she was responsible for turning Damo away from music - that was his decision. Of course, we often hear such things said about women breaking up bands, don't we? The book says that "his wife was left entirely in the dark about his reasons for quitting." (p123).
It was a window opened for him by his mother-in-law - not, he insists, by his less spiritually devoted wife of the time. (p119)
I’m a Jehovah’s Witness no more, but I believe in their God and I do believe in the Bible, which gives me a way of truth. Also, it’ll never die whilst the morals of today are changing and changing.
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C!"
9. I'll tell you who--Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) was an avant-garde composer who was known for electronic and aleatoric music. "Aleatoric," incidentally, is not an English word, but is the result of a translator's error ("aleatory" means "by chance" in English). Two of the founding members of Can, Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt, were Stockhausen's students (Stockhausen's contemporary and fellow experimental composer, Luciano Berio [1925-2003], taught at Mills College in Oakland where two of his students were Phil Lesh and Tom Constanten of the Grateful Dead; the influence of avant-garde classical music on psychedelic music of the time would be an interesting subject to explore).
10. Soundtracks is the second album by Can, and the first one Suzuki appeared on (Malcolm Mooney also sings several songs on the album). It is an album of music Can made for various movies, and the liner notes state "Can Soundtracks is the second album by the Can, but not album no. two..." Thus, the band considered Tago Mago (with Suzuki on vocals) to be the authentic follow-up to Monster Movie.
11. Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) was a fantasy author. Initially a Lovecraft acolyte, Leiber became a widely influential author in his own right, coining the term "sword-and-sorcery" for the kind of stories he told. The name, without the hyphens, has become accepted terminology for the subgenre of which Robert E. Howard and Leiber are considered major founding figures. Leiber is perhaps best known for his Lanhkmar stories. MES is a reader of Leiber, but I cannot find anything to suggest Suzuki is; an obvious presumption is that the "listener" here is MES himself.
12. In some incarnations of the Batman franchise, there is a villain named Scarecrow (or, on the TV series, named Shame) who uses "fear gas."
Even more suggestive, due to its possible connection with another Fall song, is SRH's suggestion:
"Zoltan Drago, the Marvel supervillain known as Mister Fear, created in 1965, used fear gas which created fear, anxiety and panic in its victims. Drago was killed by Samuel 'Starr' Saxon, who then himself became Mister Fear. To quote from Wikipedia, later "after breaking his neck, [Saxon's] consciousness began to occupy a robot duplicate of himself, programmed with his complete brain patterns, and capable of self-motivated, creative activity. His robotic materials, design and construction provided him with a number of superhuman capacities, including superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, agility and reflexes." This robot was known as Machinesmith from 1979.
13. Can signed with Virgin records in 1975, a year after Suzuki left the group. Robert points out that this may be a fan's lament that the Virgin material is inferior. Also, there may be a little joke about becoming a virgin again...
In any case, MES had this to say about Can's Virgin tenure, during a discussion of his relationship with Step Forward (thanks SRH):
"Have heard some terrible horror-stories about bands on labels like Virgin eg. Penetration vinyl fuck-up, Members fuck-up any fuckin band that signs to Virgin fuck-up. Always been true - since CAN & CPT. BEEFHEART even. I think S.Forward'll either split up within 2 years or become another Virgin - dig??"
14. I am not sure about the brass evil.
The lyrics pun on "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is the Hand That Rules the World," an 1865 poem by WIlliam Ross Wallace that extols motherhood:
BLESSINGS on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace.
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
It goes on like that.
And from "Diamond Mine" by Higher Elevation, "The hand that cradles the rock/Can certainly roll the world" (thanks to maleslate from the Fall online forum).
And Darrg makes a suggestion; I have never seen or heard of this, but it may be relevant:
"'The rock that was an egg' bit might be a reference to Monkey, the late 70s/early 80s Japanese TV show (based on a 16th century novel by Wu Ch'eng-En) about the mischevious Monkey-god who was 'born from a [stone] egg on a mountaintop' (as the theme tune tells us; Darrg added "stone" in brackets, as the book and TV series specify that this was the type of egg from which Monkey was hatched). The series had quite a following in the UK, where the characters' voices were dubbed by Brit actors using broad mock-oriental accents. Perhaps MES was reminded of this school of dubbing by his own attempts to emulate Damo Suzuki."
15. Does MES's Damo Suzuki come off a bit like a paranoid crank? I am not sure how much of this relfects the latter's character, and how much that of the former...I don't mean to suggest that MES is himself a paranoid crank, but he does seem to consistently get a kick out of paranoid crankitude.
Dan says:
Having read I Am Damo Suzuki, his biography, I think "paranoid crank" would be a not entirely kind but not entirely inaccurate description of Damo.
His views will have changed a bit since the 1980s, but probably not radically.
MES, of course, did not know Damo when he wrote the song.
More Information
Comments (96)

- 1. | 18/04/2015

- 2. | 05/06/2015
I don't know about the park, but Cologne's cathedral is often cited as an example of the damage that acid rain can cause to buildings.

- 3. | 27/12/2015
Incidentally, salt ash turns up nothing on Google but a town in cornwall, which I'm sure many folks have googled, but it's interesting that the town's name is derived from "ash tree by the salt mill," which sounds very Smith-y and also vaguely ties in to Blake via the mill...

- 4. | 27/12/2015

- 5. | 27/11/2016
Live versions make it clear this is "Western lesson".
Years ago I skimmed through the book "Tape Delay," which contains an interview with MES. The one thing I've always remembered was him saying that one of his greatest inspirations was Suzuki's mangling of language, from not knowing English/German so well at the time.

- 6. | 21/12/2016

- 7. | 23/12/2016

- 8. | 27/12/2016

- 9. | 28/12/2016

- 10. | 04/01/2017

- 11. | 04/01/2017

- 12. | 23/01/2017
Context for this (in my mind) is related to the MES interview I mentioned above: Damo ain't got time to learn any English... but he's gonna go ahead and sing in that language anyway.

- 13. | 23/01/2017

- 14. | 29/01/2017

- 15. | 04/02/2017
Now my adblock is completely turned off and this stupid anti-spam thing still says its on and i have to keep refreshing it. Anyone know how to deal with this?

- 16. | 04/02/2017

- 17. | 04/02/2017
EXCEPT, he might be saying "lesser," as with "Lesser European" in the next line...fuck, what now...

- 18. | 04/02/2017

- 19. | 05/02/2017
Granted, but 1) This is from the point of view of a Japanese character... and 2) This is far from the only time MES has used an odd phrase to describe something.

- 20. | 05/02/2017
Robert, above, recalls the "Tape Delay" MES interview. But what MES says there isn't that Damo had no time to learn English (in fact it's fairly clear MES doesn't know Damo at the time) :
He wasn't even singing lyrics in fact, he didn't even know what he was singing, the Japanese guy, he was just like, he was learning English, and he was just saying words, you know?

- 21. | 06/02/2017
It's right there in the quote you posted! He doesn't know the language but that's not going to stop him being the (influencial) singer.
I don't read the lyric entirely as "English lessons" ... more that Damo isn't going to do things (including singing) the normal way.
Calling him "the Japanese guy" there belies the fact that MES has been a Can fan since the 70s (he has mentioned going to see them back then). He would have known of Damo well enough at the time of that interview (mid-80s iirc).

- 22. | 08/02/2017
"I've got no time" can mean two things. It can mean you literally don't have time (and of course you can learn English without going to formal classes), or it can mean you are impatient or dismissive or scornful of the very idea. i.e. the difference between saying "I haven't got time to learn English" and "I've no time for people who think I should learn English", kind of thing.
Anyway, I agree that it's "Western" something and that it signifies a desire to do something differently.

- 23. | 08/02/2017

- 24. | 08/02/2017
Yes! This is the meaning I was trying to get across.

- 25. | 11/02/2017
This claim is irrefutable. I suppose if he didn't we'd all be out of a job...

- 26. | 11/02/2017
However, I understand Dan's hesitance, I am not 100% convinced he never said "medicine." But if he did, the studio version isn't going to help, another live version would be needed to restore a "medicine" or two.

- 27. | 11/02/2017
May we go back to days pre-Virgin
Smith here perhaps refering not just to Damo having left Can, but also to the widely-held opinion that their Virgin (and later) records were inferior.

- 28. | 14/04/2017
Shakespeare. Henry VIII, Act IV, Scene 2 (Griffith speaking):
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
Tenuous, but interesting.

- 29. | 13/05/2017

- 30. | 13/05/2017

- 31. | 13/05/2017

- 32. | 13/05/2017
I was following up my Shakespeare citation, and found an annotation on that line drawing attention to a Latin motto: Scribit in marmore laesus. "The injured man writes in marble". Also found in the form "In vento scribit laedens, in marmore laesus": Legends are written in the wind, betrayals in marble. "Laesus" can mean "hurt", "injury" and "betrayal" etc. "laedens" seems to literally mean "striking" - so something significant.
There's also a quote from Sir John Har(r)ington's translation of Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" (1st ed 1591):
Men say it, and we see it come to pass,
Good turns in sand, shrewd turns are writ in brass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Furioso
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ariostos-orlando-furioso-in-english-1591
https://zsr.wfu.edu/2016/orlando-furioso-in-english-heroical-verse-by-sir-john-harington-1607/
See also Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster". "Philaster" probably predates Henry VIII, which Shakespeare wrote in collaboration with Fletcher.
If you aim
At the dear life of this sweet innocent,
You are a tyrant and a savage monster,
That feeds upon the blood you gave a life to; 88
Your memory shall be as foul behind you,
As you are living; all your better deeds
Shall be in water writ, but this in marble...
http://www.bartleby.com/47/3/53.html

- 33. | 18/05/2017
Well yeah, that's of course the most important thing. Although maybe we should fight a little, maybe it'll give us an edge...but I don't really mean we're collegial, it's just that in a few kind of abstract ways we kind of share a view of things.

- 34. | 18/05/2017
That sounds really familiar, not just that I've seen it before, but that I've seen it recently....no idea where though.
....actually maybe a fantasy novel, which makes sense...

- 35. | 18/05/2017

- 36. | 23/06/2017
give it to me ???? everyday
'the park alight with acid rain’ might be the park around castle nörvenich, which was home of CAN’s first recording studio and where Monster Movie, Can Soundtracks, and Tago Mago have been recorded.
'give it to me daki (?) every day' ... daki is japanese 'indolence'. listened to various live- versions (the one from the hamburg markthalle is quiet interesting) and at least quiet sure it's not 'jaki'...

- 37. | 23/06/2017
There is the Can song "She Brings the Rain", which probably isn't significant.
re: "daki". Yeah, I'm hearing "daki" now as well. "Daki" could be a contraction of "Damo Suzuki", of course.

- 38. | 23/06/2017

- 39. | 24/06/2017
抱 will translate therefore as "huggable" or "holding" in Google Translate and babelfish.com
See also: http://jisho.org/search/%23kanji%20%E6%8A%B1
And in the Japanese phrase "ikki/ita dakimasu" is the equivalent of something like "bon appetit" - an embrace or a giving of thanks for receiving food. Which in the context of "give it to me... every day" seems to sort of fit, doesn't it? I mean, either in the "hugging" sense, or in the "bon appetit" sense. Maybe there's also a sexual sense.

- 40. | 24/06/2017
According to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8D, "ki" might mean "can" or "container", which is interesting. Google Translate translates き as "can". But I guess Japanese characters can represent a number of things in different contexts.
See also: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%8A%B1

- 41. | 24/06/2017

- 42. | 24/06/2017

- 43. | 24/06/2017
We need a Japanese speaker to help us with the idiomatic senses, maybe?

- 44. | 24/06/2017

- 45. | 24/06/2017
this acid rain thingy... I remeber acid rain was one of the big topics in the first half of the 80's, at least in western europe...
on the other hand: 'alight with acid rain' - (as a possible result of dropping acid) just a word-play on a psychedelic experience?

- 46. | 25/06/2017
Acid rain: see my comment #2, and note #8. Acid rain was definitely a thing, and we don't need to take the notion that it was setting fire to the park literally.
I listened to the youtube thing, and I'm not hearing "daki-ua", or not as a word. I think what you're hearing is just his accent.

- 47. | 09/07/2017

- 48. | 01/09/2017
it's clearly "jaki". can's drummer, sadly no longer with us.
I've done a couple of gigs with damo & had him round for tea. he loves a spliff, so he does.

- 49. | 01/09/2017

- 50. | 07/10/2017

- 51. | 07/10/2017

- 52. | 22/10/2017
So it struck me... is it possible that in the recorded and other live versions he is saying "danke" there?

- 53. | 18/11/2017

- 54. | 18/11/2017

- 55. | 03/06/2018
http://thequietus.com/articles/05559-this-nations-saving-grace-the-fall
Listen to 'I Am Damo Suzuki'... a song that marries the drum beat of one Can song ('Oh Yeah'') to the bass line from another Can song ('Don't Turn The Light On, Leave Me Alone') with lyrics replete with references to other Can songs ('Vitamin C' etc) and Can albums (Soundtracks etc)
And Rob Young's All Gates Open: The Story of Can (with Irmin Schmidt), includes this assessment of I Am Damo Suzuki:
The track was a shambolic riff on Can’s familiar descending four-chord trademark, although in execution all the instruments never quite managed to get in sync.

- 56. | 12/12/2018

- 57. | 19/01/2019
Dan: nothing there we don't have already really, but good to be complete and put that stuff down here

- 58. | 19/01/2019

- 59. | 19/01/2019
Here's the opening theme and narration - was indeed translated:
It's a plausible reference.

- 60. | 26/01/2019

- 61. | 26/01/2019

- 62. | 12/02/2019

- 63. | 31/03/2019
The ultimate namecheck to Damo came on The Fall's 1985 LP, This Nation's Saving Grace . Its skeletal yet oddly familiar riff was overladen with wordsmith Smith's trademark northern English surrealism.
"The moment I saw this I thought, 'There must be another Damo Suzuki," recalls Damo in amusement. "That same year I had a conversation with Mark E. and his wife Brix in their hotel room until early morning. I told them I thought their song was really good fun. He wrote quite a good lyric, which is based in part on my past life and quotes a Can song called 'Oh Yeah' "
On the original Tago Mago track, the band's gently urgent riff perfectly matches Damo as he builds from his serene delivery to a whelping scream. His allusive, almost-but-not-quite English lyric sits on the edge of sexual intimacy. MES took the 'Oh Yeah' riff and overrode it with a speed-freak surrealist tribute to Can and Damo himself while throwing in an oblique reference to Fritz Leiber, one of a number of supernatural horror authors who also obsessed him.
"It's quite amazing what he made out of it," praises the man himself, "if I listen to 'I am Damo Suzuki"', I think that Mark E. Smith is the real Damo Suzuki. " Given how personal an obsession Can were to him, for a while Smith may have felt that way himself. Damo, after all, had been just a rumour, a faint outline of legend, for a long time.

- 64. | 01/04/2019

- 65. | 01/04/2019

- 66. | 01/04/2019

- 67. | 04/04/2019
'Vitamin C' epitomises Damo's rise from vocal tranquility to mania - losing your vitamin C being an urgent situation, when that substance was seen as a corrective to a bad trip.

- 68. | 04/04/2019

- 69. | 05/04/2019
Christianity came into Damo Suzuki's life by way of a psychedelic epiphany. The more he tripped on acid, the more he perceived a spiritual light...(p118)
and
"Nowadays I'm reading The Bible every day, but that began in 1971 when I met Gitta, my future wife, whose mother is a Jehovah's Witness. Their world seemed to be believing in The Bible." (p119)
and
"I found the truth somewhere else," Damo says of his present-day spirituality. "I am not really interested in any church and any organisation. I like to find the real truth, which is starting from The Bible - not influenced by American-established organisations." (p119)
and, on the spiritual window that was opened in the early 1970s:
It was a window opened for him by his mother-in-law - not, he insists, by his less spiritually devoted wife of the time. (p119)
The book notes that Gitta still gets upset when people repeat the idea that she was responsible for turning Damo away from music - that was his decision. Of course, we often hear such things said about women breaking up bands, don't we? The book says that "his wife was left entirely in the dark about his reasons for quitting." (p123).
The book confirms that in 1983, Damo was diagnosed with cancer. And he did refuse a transfusion.

- 70. | 09/04/2019
His views will have changed a bit since the 1980s, but probably not radically.
MES, of course, did not know Damo when he wrote the song.

- 71. | 27/04/2019
Yeah that story is in all Gates Open too. Anyway here are more reasons I was happy with "Western Medicine." But if he doesn't say it, he doesn't say it.

- 72. | 27/04/2019

- 73. | 27/04/2019

- 74. | 27/04/2019

- 75. | 13/06/2019

- 76. | 21/06/2019

- 77. | 20/06/2020
Cannot get on clear vinyl"
Please excuse me if I haven't been thorough enough going through the comments but this seems to me a reference to the original pressing of the first, eponymously-titled, Faust LP-with the clear hand X-ray cover, CLEAR VINYL and clear "lyric/tracklisting" sheet...I know it's a different band yet the same genre ("Krautrock", though I prefer "Kosmiche Muzik", and obviously they were to come out on Virgin but I believe the first pressing was through Polydor?
Just a thought....

- 78. | 21/06/2020

- 79. | 21/06/2020

- 80. | 21/06/2020
I must admit though that I can't find any quotes where M.E.S expresses admiration for Faust, are you aware of any?

- 81. | 24/06/2020
As you do too everyday". Similar delivery used by M.E.S on the two occasions, too.

- 82. | 28/06/2020

- 83. | 12/09/2020

- 84. | 12/09/2020

- 85. | 13/09/2020

- 86. | 30/09/2020

- 87. | 04/10/2020

- 88. | 27/10/2020
When I first heard 'Faust Banana' on the John Peel show I was sure it had a reference to Faust's 'No Harm', but I see this isn't generally accepted. In an interview MES stated his preference for the 1st album and The Faust Tapes (see notes and comments on 'Dktr Faustus').
Many musicians have been quoted as saying Virgin "ruined" their favourite bands. MES complained bitterly about Can and Captain Beefheart. I think this is a little harsh as there are many excellent records on the early Virgin label, Henry Cow for example, not to mention their (post-)punk and reggae releases.
If there is a reference in the song to the TV show Monkey - the lead actor was the frontman in the excellent GS band The Spiders (check them out along with fellow Japanese band Les Rallizes Denudes), maybe MES' stream of consciousness took him from brass to "brass monkeys" to Monkey. Also there are the three wise monkeys - "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". which are often cast in brass.
Zoltan Drago (Draygo's Guilt?), the Marvel supervillain known as Mister Fear, created in 1965, used fear gas which created fear, anxiety and panic in its victims. Drago was killed by Samuel "Starr" Saxon, who then himself became Mister Fear. To quote from Wikipedia, later "after breaking his [Saxon's] neck, his consciousness began to occupy a robot duplicate of himself, programmed with his complete brain patterns, and capable of self-motivated, creative activity. His robotic materials, design and construction provided him with a number of superhuman capacities, including superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, agility and reflexes." This robot was known as MachinESmith (my capital ES) from 1979.
This tribute to Damo Suzuki is complemented on TNSG by the tribute to Malcolm Mooney on the track L.A .where Smith's repeated ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs are an echo of Mooney's on 'Father Cannot Yell'.

- 89. | 28/10/2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Fear

- 90. | 14/11/2020
I had written:
"Also, there may be a little joke about becoming a virgin again, although "pre-Virgin" in this case would have to be prior to birth or something, so maybe not..."
Yes to the joke, but I no longer know what I meant by the last bit (a bad sign) so I took it out.
88. There may well be an echo in MES or Brix's mind, or both, of "No Harm," but it seems too speculative to run with, we can't know and there's not a clearly identifiable allusion. Same as above, really--Occam's Razor, but that doesn't mean these claims are false...but if you can direct me to a source where MES mentions Can's Virgin records being inferior, that would be very relevant here.

- 91. | 20/11/2020
"S.Forward aren't too bad, they continuously owe us money, but that's the price you pay for freedom, we have final say in everything - art, ads (if any!!),tracks studio producer, Yvonne left a week before we started LP & we just rang S.Forward up & told 'em we'd do it without her & they didn't say a thing which is ok, y'know? Have heard some terrible horror-stories about bands on labels like Virgin eg. Penetration vinyl fuck-up, Members fuck-up any fuckin band that signs to Virgin fuck-up. Always been true - since CAN & CPT. BEEFHEART even. I think S.Forward'll either split up within 2 years or become another Virgin - dig??"
Not sure if this link will work:http://thefall.org/news/010930.html#vsign

- 92. | 16/01/2021

- 93. | 11/09/2021
It seems he was still going to be deported even after Stockhausen's letter, but then on the very day he was taken to the airport, Irmin Schmidt contacted the head of WDR (regional TV station) Werner Höfer, and he persuaded the German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel to intervene.
(from All Gates Open)

- 94. | 19/01/2022

- 95. | 15/09/2022

- 96. | 04/05/2023
Generous of lyric
Jehovah's Witness
Stands in Cologne Marktplatz
Drums come in
When the drums come in fast
When the drums can turn schlock into brass evil
What have you got in that paper bag?
Is it a dose of Vitamin C?
Ain't got no time for Western lesson
I am Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
The park alight with acid rain
Give it to me, danke, every day
Who is Mr. Herr Stockhausen?
Introduce me
I'm Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
Soundtracks, soundtracks
Melched together
The light
The light above you
Listener was in cahoots with Fritz Lieber
And read him every day
Recipe for fear gas and mounds of salt ash
Ride Puch bike putt putt
Mind afire, OK
I have no time for Western lesson
I am Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
May we go back to days pre-Virgin
CAN not Can on thin vinyl
The handle that was brass is now brass evil
The rock that was an egg is in wrong cradle
The hand that cradles the rock makes egg gooey
I am Damo Suzuki
Is this West lesson pattern?
Ram it, says Damo-spirit
Is this lesson European?
Speak it, says Damo-spirit
I am Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
I am Damo Suzuki
Could be a Batman reference?
http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Fear_Gas
Dan