"He Came From Outerspace To Save the Human Race"

Astro Boy!

"I might as well look as alien as possible because it reinforces a point I am making. My whole thing is that I approach everything as an absolute outsider. It’s the only way I can break so many rules. 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. You just didn’t do that. And I am helped by the fact that pop and rock, which you would think has no rules at all, is really just as conservative as classical music. So what I do is doubly shocking. The difference is that punk audiences admire that I can shock them. Nothing is sacred to me. Who is making the rules anyhow?" - Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi photo by Curtis Knapp

I finally got a chance to see Andrew Horn's The Nomi Song.
Klaus Nomi always fascinated me. I think the first time I really saw him was when he was on Saturday Night Live as a background singer/performance artist for David Bowie. With his AstroBoy hair and opera-trained voice, he was amazing to watch. He was poised to be bigger than the stage, gearing up for the new MTV Nation. Sadly Klaus was one of the first gay artists to die of AIDS.