KLAUS NOMI - BIZARRE FATHERS' DAY GIFT!

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” (Proverbs 17:22)

On Sunday, my 24-year-old son Jon presented me with a really bizarre Fathers’ Day gift, and yet I LOVE IT!  It’s the Klaus Nomi C.D. by Klaus Nomi.

You HAVE to have a totally bizarre sense of humor to appreciate Klaus Nomi.  You also have to be a LONG-TERM Rush Limbaugh listener to appreciate Klaus Nomi...somebody who was an avid listener to Limbaugh in the early 1990s, which I was.

I miss the “old” Rush Limbaugh...the one who had some sort of canned rock music for one of a half dozen or so “update themes”.  In those days, there was the Homeless Update and the theme was “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry; there was the Condom Update and the theme was “Wouldn’t You Like To Ride In My Beautiful Balloon?” (by The Fifth Dimension, I think), AND one of my favorite update themes was for the Gay Rights Update which was a remake of the pop hit, “You Don’t Own Me” sung by KLAUS NOMI.  How do you describe a song about a romantic desire for another man (BY a man) who is singing with a German accent in a totally feminine high voice?!  The song and it’s upbeat, peppy electric piano accompaniment is, well, hysterically funny!

Some of you will be very disappointed in me and will think of me as very juvenile and not a whole lot different FROM Rush Limbaugh or Howie Carr, but, well, as far as my sense of humor goes: I’m very juvenile and not a whole lot different FROM Rush Limbaugh or Howie Carr!  Somewhere around twelve years ago, Rush Limbaugh came on the air excitedly announcing that one of his producers had gone to some suburban record store in the New York City area and found an album by Klaus Nomi which included “You Don’t Own Me”.  Limbaugh gave a “heads up” that he would be playing some particularly funny pieces from the album and that listeners might want to get their tape players ready to record.  I DID, and from time to time I still dig that old tape out, play it and laugh.  Limbaugh played Nomi’s version of Lou Cristy’s hit “Lightning Strikes” which was very funny and Nomi’s version of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” which was SO funny I was laughing, crying, and having trouble breathing the first time I heard it!  I played that tape for a friend of mine shortly after recording it- the friend told me Limbaugh HAD to have been pulling my leg and that Klaus Nomi could not possibly be a real person.  In fact HE WAS!

Klaus Nomi’s real name was Klaus Sperber.  He was a German national.  He was a homosexual and an outstanding singer, with some very bizarre tendencies.  Klaus Nomi died of A.I.D.S. in 1983.  If you do an internet search for Klaus Nomi you can learn more about him.  In fact, my son DID an internet search and the result was learning how he could order Klaus Nomi’s C.D. entitled “Klaus Nomi”.  I “imported” some of the songs into the iTunes on the home computer.  For me, this Klaus Nomi C.D. was better than a tie, or a gift certificate to Home Depot or anything!