URGH! A Music War

In the middle of the early-80s new wave and punk band performances in the movie URGH! A Music War (which chronicles that genre), a very odd-looking singer takes the stage and provides a unusual vocal performance. The band members in the background have long hair and the venue is a standard dive. But the signer, Klaus Nomi, has a unique voice and an outlandish appearance and he forces the audience to experience his performace on different terms.

The opening shot of his performance starts with his shoes: shiny black heels with long, pointy toes. The camera pans up to black spandex and a plastic triangular top with the white V of a tuxedo. He is in white face, with black lipstick and perfectly styled hair. His movements are robotic and unnatural. The song, Total Eclipse, begins with staccato lyrics, and Nomi's style is to place Shakespearean emphasis on each syllable. His wide-open, heavily-lined eyes fixate on something intently and then move suddenly to something else. For the chorus, his voice unexpectedly switches to an impressive countertenor (falsetto). The switch enhances the sense that Nomi is foreign and unusual, but it simultaneously draws the audience in because he hits each note perfectly.

Derek and I saw URGH! at Anthology Film Archives before Christmas and loved it for various reasons. The early and intimate performaces of bands like Devo, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Gang of Four were fun to watch and made us nostalgic for music we barely knew. The songs seemed fresh and you could tell the bands were having fun with the punk mindset and music. We went to a tribute concert at The Knitting Factory, but while we were watching the video of URGH between sets, I realized I was just waiting to see Klaus Nomi again. There's something very satistying about listening to him sing, and watching him pull off the costume and character is entertaining in its own right.

The Nomi Song

We found a bit more information about Nomi online. Mainly, he was a cultish figure with some avid fans, but he was one of the first victims of AIDS. His career was cut short right after he had made it big and found his ideal medium: the music video. We also found out that a documentary was being made about him called The Nomi Song. It opened at Cinema Village on Friday, and we were able to see the show when Andrew Horn, the director, was there to answer questions. The film and the Q&A afterward gave us a crash course on Nomi's life and I left with the impression that he was slightly more than a vocalist with a wacky costume.

Though slightly uneven at times, the film shows parts of nearly all the footage available of Klaus Nomi. Friends' interviews provide the narrrative for the film and help set up shots of Nomi's early work. The sense that Nomi's career was cut short and is not fully understood is enhanced by the film artifacts left in the documentary -- the director leaves blank spots (where salvaged film runs out) and blotches of dust on old cuts. The Nomi Song begins and ends with a very appropriate, low-quality 50s shot of a U.F.O landing and taking off, with group of bewildered spectators huddled nearby ("The world just wasn't ready.").

Klaus Nomi grew up in Germany, spend seven years in Berlin (some training to be a tenor), and arrived in the West Village at the same time many Andy Warhol types were heading there for the scene. There is one interview with him in German where he comes across as a very warm person. He tells a story of getting some money and rushing out to buy an Elvis album, only to have his mother exchange it for Maria Callas. He uses the story to explain his taste in music -- he's stuck somewhere in between those two disparate influences. He combines the drama and music of opera with the anti-authoritarian flash and energy of rock music.

Nomi does more than than invent a music genre all his own. Early Nomi shows were performance art pieces. In some, his head and arms are made to seem like they are not attached. His own movement seems to suprise him. He borrows from the Kabuki aesthetic and the stiffness of 60s space-age aliens in sci-fi movies. In effect, he has combined classic theatrical styles with modern ones in an alarming way. Many of these stage theatrics play on standard themes: the artist's relationship to the audience, the dislocation of the artist on stage from reality, and the struggle of the audience members to reconcile the artist's representation of reality with their own.

I like the use of Nomi's extremely unusual profile as his logo -- it evolved out of the shadow created by his profile in the spotlight on a striped set. The resulting image is an alien head in a circle with bars on it. It suggests a performer's restrictions: his confinement to the public personna he has established, the fact that the public personna is only a shadow of real experience or identity (see Plato's cave, any postmodern interpretation of anything, etc.). The lyrics of The Nomi Song demonstrate this struggle as well: "If they saw my face, would I still take a bow; Will they know me, know me, know me, now." (The play on words there with "know me" and "Nomi" is clever, too). One of the journalists interviewed for the film explains how he felt after a show by saying "[Klaus] is art. We're not."

You can see from the first two videos Nomi made that the format was perfect for him. Special effects, close-ups, and abstract backgrounds heighten the sense of an other-worldly presence. The stark contrast of the dark makeup and hairline against the white, washed-out face, which can be superimposed on any sort of background, drive home the same point.

Nomi's trick was to make these concepts available to the minds of punk rock audiences. They're unsure of how to interpret his alien appearance and mannerisms, but when he serenades them with an operatic arias, they can't help but appreciate the music. Nomi makes us aware of how beauty can bind the audience to a performer and influence a reassessment of the visual aesthetic. The wierdness accentuates the art. Hearing opera out of context enhances its beauty, and the extreme contrast of Klaus to everything around him brings a surreal, transporting quality to the moment. Eliciting this type of conflicted reaction is one that few artists achieve. It makes us aware of the art itself AND the artist's manipilation of his audience.

More Information

First album: Klaus Nomi

Second album: Simple Man

The Nomi Song

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