_The Nomi Song_ biography -- screening in LA and NY on Friday (FAP thread!)

I know the director (well, "know" might be a bit strong. I've played bridge with him a couple of times in Berlin). He's really trying to get this film out there. It won a Golden Bear at last year's Berlin Film Fest, so that gives it a nice boost.

Is the DVD a boot? I can't find any release info anywhere. Tell us more!

I'd love to see the SNL version of TVC-15 - the pink robot poodle!

And yup, Purcell! Opera was his first love and he had a lot of training in it, so there ya go.

as ned said, the voice is everything. he may come on as novelty but it ends as LOVE

my favorite of the two albums is Simple Man, but THEY ARE BOTH GREAT

impatiently waiting for a DVD video & concert compilation

About the voice training -- he did have some but not necessarily the full complement, so perhaps I overstate above. He definitely. Here's what can be found on the film site:

Remember, my background is totally strange - German classical opera. So I was uncertain about coming from that to rock. It was just as shocking for me to sing opera in a falsetto soprano in Germany. It was another rule I was breaking.

From Nomi himself, and from an interview with someone else:

Klaus Sperber, however, came from in a small city in what was then West Germany, a child of the Second World War. The Nomi Mythos relates that he began his career singing in the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Truth be told, any singing he did was after the show, while sweeping up with his fellow ushers. His aunt relates that he came from a family that was always singing, “even while vacuuming the house or whatever”. Like a whole generation of rockers who learned to play music as kids by copying their favorite records, Klaus learned to sing from listening to albums by Maria Callas. While the other kids listened to Armed Forces Radio and wanted to be Elvis, when Klaus grew up, he wanted to be a soprano - and Elvis. Needless to say, at the music conservatory he attended in Berlin they didn’t know what to do with him. He also didn’t know what to do with himself. After hanging around Berlin for a few years, singing arias in drag at a local gay club, an infatuation with an American boy took him to New York...

Oh! ned--Say Hi to Kristian for me! Say it's Ian from The Quick, who sang bu on that Mumps EP.

Certainly suffers from the same aggravating problem most documentaries do -- tantalizing you with a nonstop barrage of fragments of some of the most unbelievable, rare archival footage you've ever seen, and keeping it going for 20 seconds before fading down quickly and cutting to someone saying something like "Myself I think the thing about Nomi that made him special was his incredible, uh, talent, really..." etc

If anyone involved with the film is reading, I beg you: load the DVD with 2+ hours of all the archival footage. Especially that unbelievable sequence with him leading the symphony orchestra at the end -- the director was a sadist to cut away from that footage.

My fave haircuts: Kristian, Johnny Ramone, The Dickies, a couple Go-Gos, Toni Childs, Angie Bowie.

Hey--I owned a guitar *and* a pair of scissors!

http://www.nwfilmforum.org/nomi/

yes, this one's in the film in one or two live versions. where did you find this? (I only have 'simple man' and the 'encore' compilation)

the idea of a very nomi christmas

I'm going back to the cover connections thread - it's taking over my life.

as for Bowie and Iggy, well, as said in the movie, Nomi was just a nice temporary prop for them that month, apparently.

As for Jones and Byrne, well, yeah, I can see it to some degree.

Awesome. Thanks, Puddin'.

Good Mr. Donut picked up the first album on vinyl during our swing through Vancouver. A fine thing.

there's enough here for another DVD compilation which I hope we don't have to wait too long for.

The 'Nomi Song' DVD does include the "Cold Song" performance with full symphony orchestra as a bonus, though.

shocked to find brand new album staring at me from a shelf, a little nervous but it had 'za bakdaz' so I sprang for it. turns out to be a huge frankenstein of variable-fidelity demos and works in progress meant for the third album, assembled in the wake of the shooting of 'The Nomi Song' by the musicians.

unfortunately, none of these songs had vocal takes of any sort at all, except for 'silent night', and a few seconds of fragments from concerts including the live version of 'za bakdaz' --

http://zabakdaz.com/

PW: We had partial recordings, things that had gotten taped over, and things Klaus hadn't sung on yet. We started to reconstruct and map out the whole piece, and realized we had some holes. Now we had an 'ethical' dilemma: We could do it the easy way, and bring in a countertenor or soprano to fill out the parts; or we could do it the hard way, use what we had- that meant serious micro-editing in a few places.

You did it the hard way?

PW: I am proud to say this is 100% Klaus Nomi vocals, guaranteed- thanks to the "Nomellotron"...

GE: -Except Enchanté where Nomi & I did a duet, and Valentines Day where Klaus's friends Joey & Tony make a cameo and I sing backup.

Nomellotron?

PW: I made samples of Klaus' voice that corresponded to all 12 notes of the scale, so I could play him like an organ!

if you were hoping for new Nomi songs, or more of his personality, it's not here -- these aren't performances. but the Nomellotron makes for some genuinely strange music (think early 80's Residents circa 'Intermission'). I went from disappointment over my dashed expectations for Nomi album #3 to being kind of happy I'd bought this by the fourth track. the conceit that the Nomellotron's sample kit of disconnected vowels and sustained soprano notes actually make for the libretto of an unfinished opera sung in 'Nomi Language' is one level a total dodge, and on another level -- play a track of this for anyone with out tastes and they will want to know what it is

Real, real damn shame to learn via rosemary on the obit thread on ILE that Andrew Horn, who wrote/directed this wonderful film, passed on due to cancer the other day.