NEW YORK — Longtime Fugazi fan Trent Smith corrected Guy Picciotto on the pronunciation of his own last name after meeting him in person at a local independent bookstore, sources who now aren’t sure how “Fugazi” is pronounced confirmed.
“So there I was at McNally Jackson browsing around in the historical non-fiction based on miserable political atrocities section when I see him there, my favorite musician Guy Picciotto,” said Smith. “He was in the indigenous vegan cookbook section when I went up to him and asked if he was Guy Picciotto and he said yes but it’s actually ‘PI-CHOH-TOH.’ I couldn’t believe he didn’t know how to pronounce his own last name so I said ‘Excuse me but I’ve been a Fugazi fan since 1997 and know that your last name is actually pronounced PIK-EE-OTTO.’ He also didn’t know that his first name is actually pronounced ‘JHEE.’ Boy, never meet your idols, because they can be pretty stupid.”
Ian MacKaye, who took a brief moment from his daily schedule of being interviewed for a music documentary, says he has also been corrected on how to say his last name.
“This sounds like it might be the same guy who came up to me once and told me my last name is pronounced ‘MACK-KAY’ and not ‘MEH-KAI,’ and that my first name is actually EYE-AN,” said MacKaye (McKai?). ‘Whatever, he can think my last name is pronounced however he wants. I was just happy to have someone not ask me if I’m still straight edge for once. Everyone knows I was sixteen when I wrote that song and that I’ve done a lot of other stuff since then, right? Maybe I should just move to the woods.”
Independent music critic and journalist Jordan Rickford says luminaries in the punk and hardcore scene not knowing how to pronounce their own last names is a common problem.
“It’s really quite amazing how many of these musicians say their own name wrong. Henry Rollins still says ‘RAH-LINS’ when everyone knows it’s actually ‘ROLE-INS,’ said Rickford. “Some of these older punk guys even get their band names wrong. I interviewed Danzig once and kept saying Samhaim wrong. I kept having to remind him that I was a music journalist which means I almost went to college, so I know how it was actually pronounced.”
Picciotto was unavailable for a comment as he was currently stuck hanging upside down from a YMCA basketball hoop.