[MUSIC] Klaus Nomi, "Cold Song"
Apr. 5th, 2005 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldBack in October I wrote, in the preface to a personal response to Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," that I had a history of writing in some detail on music that matters to me. Music is important to me, not only in my very recent and second-order role as a creator of said, but as an active and informed consumer. Popular music is both background and foreground for me, inspiration for future deeds and a commentary on past tasks, something I listen to for certain specific reasons and something I listen to simply for the purely hormonal rush that emanates from somewhere my brain stem when I play a track.
Simply put, music matters to me. I hereby declare that a new category of postings now exists on this blog.
* * *
I first heard of Klaus Nomi in the course of a USENET discussion, when he was mentioned as one of the first famous casualties of HIV/AIDS. His death, in August of 1983, was a very tragic thing, and it was indeed notable for being one of New York City's first celebrity AIDS deaths, but Nomi should be known for many other things, like the music and the image that made him so famous.
Nomi's biography is simple. Born Klaus Sperber in Bavaria in 1944, following the death of his soldier father in the last phase of Hitler's war he was raised in Berlin by his mother. He emigrated to New York City in 1972 to work as a pastry chef, finding employment at, among other restaurants, the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Centre. Sperber also had a remarkably capable if untrained countertenor voice, a strong interest in opera, growing interest in New York City's New Wave scene, and a desire to bring everything together. Beginning in 1978, Sperber cultivated a fairly remarkable stage persona as Nomi (an anagram of Omni, his favourite magazine), a radically androgynous space alien with a spectacular voice and a very eclectic song list.
Nomi quickly attracted a lot of attention, working with such figures as Man Parrish, Kristian Hoffman, and Joey Arias, and recording his 1980 debut Klaus Nomi under contract to RCA. Klaus Nomi didn't sell very well in the United States, though he attracted significant attention in western Europe and Japan, with Hoffman's song "Total Eclipse," in particular, gaining renown. The reactions to 1982's Simple Man seem to have been more positive, but unfortunately by that time Nomi was already falling sick.
Nomi's death aborted a promising career. 1983's Encore and 1986's In Concert did introduce new live material to his fans, but after the initial reaction to his death his profile dropped quickly as a cursory search of USENET suggests. Even so, from the early 1990s on there was a haphazard revival. Rush Limbaugh, bizarrely enough, chose his "You Don't Nomi" as the themesong for his show's monthly anti-gay report. (Would that homophobia could also engineer its mockery so well.) A variety of compilation albums (1994's Klaus Nomi: The Collection, 1999's Eclipsed: The Best of Klaus Nomi, 2002's Klaus Nomi Essential) were also released over the decade, while the expansion of the World Wide Web created spaces for Nomi fan sites. Finally, starting at least in 2000, director Andrew Horn began work on the biographical documentary The Nomi Song, recently released to a flourish of mainstream recognition.
I'm not altogether sure that I can evaluate him as an artist, since I lack the specific knowledge of operatic conventions, of gay camp, and of the zeitgeist of 1980-era avant garde New York City that Nomi reacted to. Increasingly, I think that Tori Amos might work as a comparison. Both recording artists have unorthodox musical backgrounds, eclectic ideals as artists and (what I see as) a hit-or-miss record. When they hit, though, the effect's remarkable.
The Nomi song that has the strongest effect on me is his cover of "Cold Song," off of Simple Man. Written by Henry Purcell for his 1691 semi-opera King Arthur and barely four minutes in length, when I first heard it I stopped typing.
The lyrics are beautiful, and the arrangement appropriately stately. Nomi's voice takes the song to a new realm, rising from a tenor to a frail and delicate falsetto and back down again. It's a straightforward interpretation, lacking the energy of his remarkable reworking of "I Feel Love" or his manic "Just One Look." Nomi's voice gives "Cold Song" a haunting elegiac power that is quite new to this jaded popular-music fan, for his efforts at synthesis worked: He managed to revive pre-rock popular music for New Wave audiences.
Incidentally, towards the end of this February, while down at Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street and looking for something to buy, I'd found a copy of Encore on the popular music racks. It is sad that Nomi died at such a promising stage in his career, and I would have liked to have seen him in performance: What would have had done next? Still, at least he still has his fans. Hopefully he'll have more.
Isabelle Betemps' bilingual website is the best Nomi resource on the Internet, featuring a full array of lyrics, photographs, interviews and--best of all--MIDIs of many of Nomi's songs. The![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
klausnomi livejournal community is one public blogging forum where Nomi fans can interact. Friends of Nomi is another Nomi fansite, heavy on photos, while Keys of Life features a synopsis of his career, and Nomi images that include his postcards and the covers of the French and Japanese singles of "Cold Song." This French-language fan page has a variety of interesting links, while this online photo album is full of Nomi images. http://www.klausnomi.com/, unfortunately, seems only to be a shell linking to his various albums at Amazon.com.
Turning to interesting single-page links, Nomi's page at The Estate Project features a biography and discography. Madeline Bocchiaro's 1997 article for Roctober, "Klaus Nomi - Riding the New Wave", is a personal reflection on the evolution of Nomi's career, from her first encounters with Klaus Sperber to his Saturday Night Live performance to the apogee of his career as Nomi. Johnny Ray Huston's 2000 article for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Kurt Loder's review of Klaus Nomi's life each provide complete biographical and critical overviews of Nomi, while photographer George Dubose's page has photos of Nomi in performance and his memories. This page has pictures of Nomi and his friends, while this link has some reminiscences, and this document describes a 1998 performance, by the Salzburg Theatre, of a ballet about Nomi's life.. And this animated Flash tribute to Nomi has to be seen to be believed.
There are plenty of sites relating to The Nomi Song, starting with the movie's official website and the trailer at Apple. An excellent review ishere at Outrate, along with an interview with director Andrew Horn.
Fortunately for the non-album-owning fan, there are plenty of Nomi mp3s online.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
terless posted links to many Klaus Nomi mp3s. At Chrisis, studio versions of "After the Fall" and "Cold Song" are available, while "Just One Look" is available from a blog, as is a live version of "Mon Coeur" from Samson and Delila. George Elliott's Heliocentric offers a CD single featuring the original "Za Bak Daz" (apparently intended for his third album) and a 1979 cover of "Silent Night." All of Nomi's albums are available from reputable online merchants like Amazon.ca.
UPDATE (28 May 2005, 1:15 PM) : Via his blog, producer and musician Man Parrish advertises that he has a remix (mp3 format) of Klaus Nomi's "Total Eclipse" up. While it's nice to have new Nomi material up, it would have been nice to have had an undiscovered or lost track up. As someone who isn't a fan of Parrish's brand of techno, I'm not sure what I think about the remix, either.
Simply put, music matters to me. I hereby declare that a new category of postings now exists on this blog.
I first heard of Klaus Nomi in the course of a USENET discussion, when he was mentioned as one of the first famous casualties of HIV/AIDS. His death, in August of 1983, was a very tragic thing, and it was indeed notable for being one of New York City's first celebrity AIDS deaths, but Nomi should be known for many other things, like the music and the image that made him so famous.
Nomi's biography is simple. Born Klaus Sperber in Bavaria in 1944, following the death of his soldier father in the last phase of Hitler's war he was raised in Berlin by his mother. He emigrated to New York City in 1972 to work as a pastry chef, finding employment at, among other restaurants, the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Centre. Sperber also had a remarkably capable if untrained countertenor voice, a strong interest in opera, growing interest in New York City's New Wave scene, and a desire to bring everything together. Beginning in 1978, Sperber cultivated a fairly remarkable stage persona as Nomi (an anagram of Omni, his favourite magazine), a radically androgynous space alien with a spectacular voice and a very eclectic song list.
Nomi quickly attracted a lot of attention, working with such figures as Man Parrish, Kristian Hoffman, and Joey Arias, and recording his 1980 debut Klaus Nomi under contract to RCA. Klaus Nomi didn't sell very well in the United States, though he attracted significant attention in western Europe and Japan, with Hoffman's song "Total Eclipse," in particular, gaining renown. The reactions to 1982's Simple Man seem to have been more positive, but unfortunately by that time Nomi was already falling sick.
Nomi's death aborted a promising career. 1983's Encore and 1986's In Concert did introduce new live material to his fans, but after the initial reaction to his death his profile dropped quickly as a cursory search of USENET suggests. Even so, from the early 1990s on there was a haphazard revival. Rush Limbaugh, bizarrely enough, chose his "You Don't Nomi" as the themesong for his show's monthly anti-gay report. (Would that homophobia could also engineer its mockery so well.) A variety of compilation albums (1994's Klaus Nomi: The Collection, 1999's Eclipsed: The Best of Klaus Nomi, 2002's Klaus Nomi Essential) were also released over the decade, while the expansion of the World Wide Web created spaces for Nomi fan sites. Finally, starting at least in 2000, director Andrew Horn began work on the biographical documentary The Nomi Song, recently released to a flourish of mainstream recognition.
I'm not altogether sure that I can evaluate him as an artist, since I lack the specific knowledge of operatic conventions, of gay camp, and of the zeitgeist of 1980-era avant garde New York City that Nomi reacted to. Increasingly, I think that Tori Amos might work as a comparison. Both recording artists have unorthodox musical backgrounds, eclectic ideals as artists and (what I see as) a hit-or-miss record. When they hit, though, the effect's remarkable.
The Nomi song that has the strongest effect on me is his cover of "Cold Song," off of Simple Man. Written by Henry Purcell for his 1691 semi-opera King Arthur and barely four minutes in length, when I first heard it I stopped typing.
What power art thou
Who from below
Hast made me rise
Unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow.
See'st thou not how stiff
And wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold.
I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath
Let me, let me
Freeze again
Let me, let me
Freeze again to death.
The lyrics are beautiful, and the arrangement appropriately stately. Nomi's voice takes the song to a new realm, rising from a tenor to a frail and delicate falsetto and back down again. It's a straightforward interpretation, lacking the energy of his remarkable reworking of "I Feel Love" or his manic "Just One Look." Nomi's voice gives "Cold Song" a haunting elegiac power that is quite new to this jaded popular-music fan, for his efforts at synthesis worked: He managed to revive pre-rock popular music for New Wave audiences.
Incidentally, towards the end of this February, while down at Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street and looking for something to buy, I'd found a copy of Encore on the popular music racks. It is sad that Nomi died at such a promising stage in his career, and I would have liked to have seen him in performance: What would have had done next? Still, at least he still has his fans. Hopefully he'll have more.
Isabelle Betemps' bilingual website is the best Nomi resource on the Internet, featuring a full array of lyrics, photographs, interviews and--best of all--MIDIs of many of Nomi's songs. The
klausnomi livejournal community is one public blogging forum where Nomi fans can interact. Friends of Nomi is another Nomi fansite, heavy on photos, while Keys of Life features a synopsis of his career, and Nomi images that include his postcards and the covers of the French and Japanese singles of "Cold Song." This French-language fan page has a variety of interesting links, while this online photo album is full of Nomi images. http://www.klausnomi.com/, unfortunately, seems only to be a shell linking to his various albums at Amazon.com.Turning to interesting single-page links, Nomi's page at The Estate Project features a biography and discography. Madeline Bocchiaro's 1997 article for Roctober, "Klaus Nomi - Riding the New Wave", is a personal reflection on the evolution of Nomi's career, from her first encounters with Klaus Sperber to his Saturday Night Live performance to the apogee of his career as Nomi. Johnny Ray Huston's 2000 article for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Kurt Loder's review of Klaus Nomi's life each provide complete biographical and critical overviews of Nomi, while photographer George Dubose's page has photos of Nomi in performance and his memories. This page has pictures of Nomi and his friends, while this link has some reminiscences, and this document describes a 1998 performance, by the Salzburg Theatre, of a ballet about Nomi's life.. And this animated Flash tribute to Nomi has to be seen to be believed.
There are plenty of sites relating to The Nomi Song, starting with the movie's official website and the trailer at Apple. An excellent review ishere at Outrate, along with an interview with director Andrew Horn.
Fortunately for the non-album-owning fan, there are plenty of Nomi mp3s online.
terless posted links to many Klaus Nomi mp3s. At Chrisis, studio versions of "After the Fall" and "Cold Song" are available, while "Just One Look" is available from a blog, as is a live version of "Mon Coeur" from Samson and Delila. George Elliott's Heliocentric offers a CD single featuring the original "Za Bak Daz" (apparently intended for his third album) and a 1979 cover of "Silent Night." All of Nomi's albums are available from reputable online merchants like Amazon.ca.UPDATE (28 May 2005, 1:15 PM) : Via his blog, producer and musician Man Parrish advertises that he has a remix (mp3 format) of Klaus Nomi's "Total Eclipse" up. While it's nice to have new Nomi material up, it would have been nice to have had an undiscovered or lost track up. As someone who isn't a fan of Parrish's brand of techno, I'm not sure what I think about the remix, either.
