Saturday, February 19, 2022

The 1981 Listening Post - Klaus Nomi - Klaus Nomi

 Klaus Nomi - Klaus Nomi


#217

1981 Housekeeping

Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi

Genre: Robopera

3.75 out oof 5


Highlights:

Wasting My Time. (Your mileage may vary with this one, guys)



Here we go, folks. Into a territory that I can’t begin to express. Nomi is an opera singer, I think, right? If he didn’t exist on his own I think David Bowie or Andy Warhol would have had to create him.

This thing starts off new wavy and then immediately takes a hard left into MGM showtimes by way of the house band for Cafe Flesh. 


I love operatic rock. I can’t get enough of Freddie. I once drove 45 minutes to a record store because they were the only one in Los Angeles that had a copy of Barcelon by Freddie and Montserrat Caballe. This isn’t that. This is almost designed to make you hate it and make all those flyover people say, “yeah, this is why art sucks, man. Go, Colts!”


Germanic Richard O’Brien versions of “You Don’t Own Me” are something I didn’t miss. 


Looking at this cover I really wanted this to move me like a New Wave version of The Elephant Man but it’s less Lynch than it really could have been. In fact, when Nomi goes full Opear, as he does on “The Cold Song” I am more compelled. And that haunting “Nomi Chant" fold nicely into the best piece, "Samson and Delilah (Aria)”, which is not rock but at this point…fuck it. It’s the 80s, man.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXHyQWUmrNo

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