/|\(;,;)/|\ There's an ocean of music, and I'm swimming as hard as I can. I use this blog to post music & commentary; I hope you find something here that does it for you. Peace!
“Total Eclipse” by Klaus Nomi
Yes, I’m posting more Klaus Nomi. I’m not even going to try to define this artist—he’s his own thing, a genre of one—but if you’re one of those twits who need to slap a label on everything, try “avant garde German gothic new wave/art wave theatrical post-punk glam pop.”
“Lightning Strikes” by Klaus Nomi
I’ve been writing this blog for over a year now, and I still don’t understand a damn thing about why people like the music they do, or even why I like the music I do. Case in point: My girlfriend listens to Pop-Country, all that Taylor Swift kinda shit, and some J-Pop. There’s very little overlap to our musical tastes. But last night I played some Klaus Nomi, and she flipped. She listened to the whole record. She loves this guy. We both do. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, because Klaus here is one of the weirdest artists on my record shelf. The closest I can get to describing this music is “avant garde German gothic new wave/art wave theatrical post-punk glam pop.”
I can’t help myself—I’m on a Klaus Nomi bender today. Here’s Nomi’s take on the old classic “Falling In Love Again,” from the amazing Simple Man album.
Incidentally: Why is it some of the best rock stars seem like they came from another planet? David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Devo, Freddy Mercury, Funkadelic… Guys like Santorum have America all wrong. We’re not straight-laced conformists at all. We’re fuckin’ bent, and we loooooove weirdos.
Oh shit, I can’t believe I forgot to post this a few days ago. This song is called “Valentine’s Day” and it’s by Klaus Nomi. Depending on your age, you either remember Klaus as one of David Bowie’s backup singers, or you remember him as Phantom Limb’s evil henchman from an episode of The Venture Brothers.
Either reputation doesn’t do him justice. He had a vocal range that was out of this world. He was infatuated with both Pop music and Opera and played to both influences in bizarrely stylized performances with costumes of his own design. The guy started out as a pastry chef from Bavaria before moving to New York to make a name for himself, and who knows how far he might have gone? But he died of AIDS in 1983 while he was working on this album: Za Bakdaz, an science fiction opera or God only knows what you’d call it, but like all his work it’s definitely worth a spin.
Check out this video of one of his performances. Better yet, find a copy of his album Simple Man or his self-titled debut LP. The first time I heard this music was like the first time I read Naked Lunch: I remember thinking, “Either this guy is a complete weirdo, or he’s a genius. No, wait—could he be both?”
