Brain Candy #92 - The Nomi Song

My part in this month's story starts way back in the early 1980s. I was a grad student in Tempe, Arizona. It was probably in the weekly New Times that I saw the ad. One of the local record stores ran it a few times. I remember three things about the store. One was that the owners were militant Northern Irish Catholics. Another was that the store eventually burned down under suspicious circumstances. The third was a picture they used in the ad, of an extremely strange looking man with freakish makeup. I didn't know who it was at the time, but I cut the picture out and put it up in my cubicle - it was so striking. He didn't remain a stranger for long.

I found out who he was after seeing a New Wave music documentary, called "Urgh - A Music War," which came out in 1981. Looking at the bands involved in the movie, I may have been attracted by the major names - "The Police," "Devo," "Oingo Boingo," "The Go-Gos," Gary Numan, "Wall of Voodoo" - they were all bands I'd heard of and was interested in. I may, however, have seen a trailer with the strange singer in it. Along with the big-name bands, there were also some up and coming bands, and some of these were, to put it mildly, weird. There were "The Cramps," a New Wave combination of rockabilly, horror show, and soft-core S&M, whose music alone might cause your jaw to drop. There were "The Surf Punks," whose act was a raunchy homage to excesses of the surf life and surf music. There was "Pere Ubu," Cleveland's own experiment in musical surrealism and Dadaism, with their very large and musically challenging lead singer David Thomas. But one act in that movie left all of these in the dust for true weirdness. The musician's stage name was Klaus Nomi and one look at him, and you would forget the others. And then he began to sing, and you were surprised all over again.

The strange singer, Klaus Nomi, was born Klaus Sperber in late 1944 in the Bavarian Alps. He moved to New York City in 1972. At some time in his life, perhaps before this move, he wished to sing classical opera - as a countertenor and a baritone. His vocal range was exceptional, and he could sing skillfully throughout his range. When singing in the soprano range, his voice did not sound strained. In New York, he sang his own New Wave compositions, campy covers of tunes such as "Lightning Strikes", "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" and "The Twist," along with fairly straight renditions of operatic music from composers such as Purcell and Saint-Saens.

Nomi combined his beautiful and powerful voice with a weird sense of style. The word 'alien' is probably the most frequently used adjective when describing him. His makeup was usually black and white, with black lipstick, and his hair was usually spiked to several points. His clothing was usually bizarre in the extreme, often resembling Kabuki outfits. Fans who saw him perform often have noted that he rarely blinked when performing. He has been described as looking like a huge toy. Nomi was an early performance artist - a great one. Friends say that once he adopted the Nomi persona, he never abandoned it.

Nomi's performance in "Urgh" was taped at New York's Roxy Theatre. He performed his most well-known song, "Total Eclipse," combining his striking vocal talents with a peculiar, astonishing choreography - again the word 'alien' comes to mind.

Nomi was frequently shown on New York local television, and occasionally appeared on national television. His most famous television appearance was on "Saturday Night Live" on December 15, 1979, where he appeared as a backup singer to David Bowie. Bowie's costume for the first song did not allow him to walk, so the relatively small Nomi and another backup singer carried him onto the stage.

Although he had a strong start on a successful career in both the rock and classical music worlds, a different fate awaited Nomi. He became sick, his immune system failing for what were then unknown reasons. He never knew why, in the prime of life, he sickened and wasted away, finally dying of a disease then known as "gay cancer". Nomi was one of the first well-known persons to die of AIDS in 1983.

Still, Nomi's story isn't over. Last year, a documentary of his life called "The Nomi Song" was filmed and it is now being shown across the world. It is scheduled to be shown at the Cleveland Cinematheque (www.cia.edu/campuslife/cinematheque/default.asp) on April 28 and May 1. You can find out more about the movie at www.thenomisong.com . Visit the News section of the web site to see a movie trailer that will give you a far better idea of what Klaus Nomi was about than anything I might write. You might also want to visit www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/palladium/1306/nomi2.htm , which provides a lot of details about his life, by way of a number of record reviews. As a geocities site, it will of course, barrage you with ads and popups, but if you want to know a lot more about Nomi, it's worth a look.