No mat­ter how eccen­tric Glenn Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tions of major com­posers might have been, his friend and pro­mot­er Leonard Bern­stein found them wor­thy of per­for­mance, even if he didn’t quite agree. In “The Truth About a Leg­end,” his trib­ute essay to Gould after the pianist’s death, Bern­stein wrote, “Any dis­cov­ery of Glenn’s was wel­comed by me because I wor­shipped the way he played: I admired his intel­lec­tu­al approach, his ‘guts’ approach.”

Are these con­tra­dic­tions? Glenn Gould was a com­pli­cat­ed man, a bril­liant­ly abstract thinker who threw his full phys­i­cal being into his play­ing. When Gould slowed a Brahms con­cer­to to a crawl, so slow that “it was very tir­ing” for the orches­tra to play, he was con­vinced he had dis­cov­ered a secret key to the tem­po with­in the piece itself. Bern­stein had pro­found doubts, tried sev­er­al times to dis­suade Gould, and warned the orches­tra, “Now don’t give up, because this is a great man, whom we have to take very seri­ous­ly.”

Not all of Gould’s admir­ers were as tol­er­ant of Gould’s unortho­dox views. In 1968, Gould pre­sent­ed a seg­ment of the week­ly pub­lic tele­vi­sion series Pub­lic Broad­cast Library. His top­ic was “How Mozart Became a Bad Com­pos­er.” This was, per­haps suf­fice to say, a very unpop­u­lar opin­ion. “The pro­gram out­raged view­ers in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, includ­ing for­mer­ly sym­pa­thet­ic fans and crit­ics,” Kevin Baz­zana writes in Won­drous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. It would nev­er again air any­where and was only recent­ly dig­i­tized from 2‑inch tape found in the Library of Con­gress Nation­al Audio-Visu­al Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter.

Gould opens the show with a selec­tion from Mozart’s Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor, then in his crit­i­cal com­men­tary, alleges the piece “has had a rather bet­ter press than it deserves, I think. Despite it’s gen­tly swoon­ing melodies, its metic­u­lous­ly bal­anced cadences, despite its sta­ble and archi­tec­tural­ly unex­cep­tion­able form, I’m going to sub­mit it as a good exam­ple of why I think Mozart, espe­cial­ly in his lat­er years, was not a very good com­pos­er.” Then Gould real­ly digs in, casu­al­ly com­par­ing Mozart’s “depend­able” crafts­man­ship to “the way that an accounts exec­u­tive dis­patch­es an interof­fice memo.”

It is a shock­ing thing to say, and Gould, of course, knows it. Is this hubris, or is he delib­er­ate­ly pro­vok­ing his audi­ence? “Glenn had strong ele­ments of sports­man­ship and teas­ing,” Bern­stein writes, “the kind of dar­ing which accounts for his fresh­ness.” His con­trari­ness might have inspired at least a few view­ers to lis­ten crit­i­cal­ly and care­ful­ly to Mozart for the first time, with­out hun­dreds of years of received opin­ion medi­at­ing the expe­ri­ence. This is the spir­it in which we should view Gould’s eru­dite icon­o­clasm, says Library of Con­gress Music Ref­er­ence Spe­cial­ist James Win­tle: to learn to lis­ten with new ears, “as a child,” to a com­pos­er we have “been con­di­tioned to revere.”

Gould’s unpop­u­lar opin­ions “did not always take a turn toward the neg­a­tive,” Win­tle writes. He cham­pi­oned the works of less-than-pop­u­lar com­posers like Paul Hin­demith and Jean Sibelius. And his “great sense of inquiry,” Bern­stein wrote, “made him sud­den­ly under­stand Schoen­berg and Liszt in the same cat­e­go­ry, or Pur­cell and Brahms, or Orlan­do Gib­bons and Petu­la Clark. He would sud­den­ly bring an unlike­ly pair of musi­cians togeth­er in some kind of star­tling com­par­a­tive essay.” Gould’s musi­cal inven­tive­ness, taste, and judg­ment were unpar­al­leled, Bern­stein main­tained, and for that rea­son, we should always be inclined to hear him out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Glenn Gould’s Eccen­tric­i­ties Became Essen­tial to His Play­ing & Per­son­al Style: From Hum­ming Aloud While Play­ing to Per­form­ing with His Child­hood Piano Chair

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

Glenn Gould’s Heav­i­ly Marked-Up Score for the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions Sur­faces, Let­ting Us Look Inside His Cre­ative Process

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The idea of an orches­tra per­form­ing 1970s pro­gres­sive rock sounds at first like the stuff of purest nov­el­ty. And while the excess­es of that move­ment bent on the artis­tic “ele­va­tion” of rock-and-roll quick­ly became easy tar­gets, its music has unde­ni­able res­o­nances with the clas­si­cal canon, broad­ly defined. In a piece on the mod­ern reeval­u­a­tion of “prog-rock,” The New York­er’s Kele­fa San­neh quotes a Rolling Stone crit­ic label­ing the ambi­tious new sound “jazz-influ­enced clas­si­cal-rock” in a 1972 review of the debut album of Emer­son, Lake and Palmer, who lat­er “reached the Top Ten, in both Britain and Amer­i­ca, with a live album based on its bom­bas­tic ren­di­tion of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion.”

King Crim­son, anoth­er pil­lar of the sub­genre, once played a “fero­cious set” that end­ed with “Mars, the Bringer of War,” from Gus­tav Hol­st’s The Plan­ets suite — as an open­er for the Rolling Stones. But no band to rise out of the prog-rock fer­ment has made more of an impact, or more fans, than Pink Floyd.

Their 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon remains, as of this writ­ing, the fourth best-sell­ing album of all time (to say noth­ing of its T‑shirts and dorm-room posters), and though its ten songs fair­ly demand trib­ute, pay­ing prop­er homage to their elab­o­rate com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion is eas­i­er said than done. Enter the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dublin’s stu­dent-run Trin­i­ty Orches­tra, who take it on in the video above, filmed at Christ Church Cathe­dral dur­ing 2012’s 10 Days in Dublin fes­ti­val.

“Time,” the best-known of The Dark Side of the Moon’s album tracks, is here rearranged for a full orches­tra, band, and singers, and going by sound alone, you might believe you’re lis­ten­ing to one of the Floy­d’s more rich­ly instru­ment­ed live shows (not that they were known to skimp in that depart­ment). But there’s no mis­tak­ing this orches­tral ver­sion of “Wish You Were Here” (from their epony­mous fol­low-up album) for the gen­uine arti­cle, cer­tain­ly not because of inad­e­quate musi­cian­ship, but because most of the musi­cians are play­ing man­dolins. Con­duct­ed by Boris Björn Bag­ger, these Ger­man play­ers include not just man­dolin­ists but the late Michael Rüber front and cen­ter on elec­tric gui­tar — an all-impor­tant instru­ment, it seems, no mat­ter how far rock pro­gress­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of The Dark Side of the Moon in Full

A Live Stu­dio Cov­er of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Fin­ish

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

If the age of Amer­i­can musi­cal satire is behind us, Tom Lehrer may have end­ed it sim­ply by being unsur­pass­ably good at it. No less a com­e­dy-song mas­ter than “Weird Al” Yankovic still walks among us, of course, but he spe­cial­izes in broad par­o­dy rather than bit­ing irony. Despite hav­ing retired from pub­lic life, Lehrer too lives on, and at 92 has tak­en action to assure his work a longer exis­tence by releas­ing it into the pub­lic domain. On his offi­cial site you’ll see a state­ment from the man him­self: “All the lyrics on this web­site, whether pub­lished or unpub­lished, copy­right­ed or uncopy­right­ed, may be down­loaded and used in any man­ner what­so­ev­er.”

Direct­ly below his mes­sage you’ll find a list of near­ly 100 of Lehrer’s songs, which when clicked lead to down­load­able PDFs of their lyrics, and in some cas­es their sheet music as well. Ready for you to repur­pose are such sig­na­ture num­bers as “The Masochism Tan­go,” “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” and “The Ele­ments,” a ver­sion of the “Major-Gen­er­al’s Song” from Gilbert and Sul­li­van’s Pirates of Pen­zance that name-checks each and every one of the phys­i­cal ele­ments known in 1959.

That Lehrer has also includ­ed the “Aris­to­tle ver­sion” of “Ele­ments” — in full, “There’s earth and air and fire and water” — just hints at the many play­ful touch­es to be found in this col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als.

Not just a singer-song­writer but a math­e­mati­cian who worked at both the Los Alam­os Sci­en­tif­ic Lab­o­ra­to­ry and the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency dur­ing the Cold War, Lehrer did­n’t shy away from address­ing the tech­ni­cal, the polit­i­cal, and the top­i­cal in his music. “Wern­her von Braun” sends up the rock­et sci­en­tist secret­ly recruit­ed by the Unit­ed States from defeat­ed Nazi Ger­many (“Don’t say that he’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal / Say rather that he’s apo­lit­i­cal”). “New Math” gives a sim­i­lar treat­ment to the Sput­nik-spooked U.S.‘s ill-advised scram­ble to reform math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, and I got a laugh out of the song in child­hood despite grow­ing up long after the retrench­ment of New Math itself.

Whether hear­ing or read­ing Lehrer’s lyrics today, one mar­vels at both how they’ve retained their bite, and how wide­ly they were con­sid­ered too edgy for air­play in the 1950s. The BBC, for exam­ple, banned ten of the twelve songs on his debut album, includ­ing “Be Pre­pared,” which spins the Boy Scout’s mot­to into an ode to mis­be­hav­ior (“Be pre­pared to hold your liquor pret­ty well / Don’t write naughty words on walls if you can’t spell”). But now we’re free to craft new con­texts to make them trou­bling again, and with the hol­i­days com­ing up, this assures us very Lehrer Thanks­giv­ings, Christ­mases (“Mix the punch, drag out the Dick­ens / Even though the prospect sick­ens”) and Hanukkahs (“Here’s to Judas Mac­cabeus / Boy, if he could only see us / Spend­ing Hanukkah in San­ta Mon­i­ca”) to come. Enter his site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

We’re All Doomed!: Weird Al Yankovic Tries to Make Sense of the Dis­as­trous Trump vs. Biden “Debate”

The Music, Books & Films Lib­er­at­ed into the Pub­lic Domain in 2020: Rhap­sody in Blue, The Mag­ic Moun­tain, Sher­lock, Jr., and More

Every Pos­si­ble Melody Has Been Copy­right­ed, and They’re Now Released into the Pub­lic Domain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Get­ting banned from a venue can hurt a band’s career, but in most every case I’ve heard about, it’s a cloud with a gold­en lin­ing. Hard­core band Bad Brains built a lega­cy on get­ting banned in all of D.C.‘s clubs. Elvis Costello’s career didn’t seem to suf­fer much when he was banned from Sat­ur­day Night Live in 1977. Jimi Hen­drix’s ban­ning from the BBC did­n’t hurt his image any. Then there’s the Doors….

The band earned the dis­tinc­tion of being the first to have a mem­ber arrest­ed live onstage in the infa­mous “New Haven inci­dent” of 1967. Three months ear­li­er, they per­formed live, no mim­ing, on The Ed Sul­li­van Show. Things did not go as smooth­ly as the pro­duc­ers may have hoped,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock. No, Jim Mor­ri­son didn’t expose him­self or antag­o­nize the audi­ence.

On the con­trary, giv­en the Doors’ oth­er noto­ri­ous “inci­dents,” the offense is as mild as it gets—Morrison sim­ply sang the lyrics to “Light My Fire” as writ­ten, defy­ing pro­duc­ers’ request that he change “Girl, we couldn’t get much high­er” since it sound­ed like a drug ref­er­ence. Not only did they ask Mor­ri­son to change the lyric, but they also appar­ent­ly asked him to sing “Girl, we couldn’t get much bet­ter,” which doesn’t even rhyme.

One can see why he would have resist­ed.

“Band mem­bers have giv­en vary­ing accounts of whether they ever agreed to change the line or not,” UCR notes. Accord­ing to The Ed Sul­li­van Show site, a pro­duc­er came into the dress­ing room, told the band they should smile more, and told them the line was “inap­pro­pri­ate for a fam­i­ly show on nation­al tele­vi­sion.” As soon as he left the room, Mor­ri­son said, “We’re not chang­ing a word.”

The band went on after Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, a last-minute replace­ment for anoth­er com­ic. They played “Peo­ple Are Strange,” then the offend­ing song. Dan­ger­field became a reg­u­lar on the Sul­li­van show. The Doors–booked for six more appearances–never went on again, though they had plen­ty of oth­er TV book­ings and wild, dis­as­trous stage shows to keep them busy.

When informed after the show that they’d been banned, Mor­ri­son report­ed­ly said a most Jim Mor­ri­son thing: “Hey, man, we just did the Sul­li­van show.”

Watch a clip of the per­for­mance just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From the BBC (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Like the great prog drum­mers of old—Bill Bru­ford, Neil Peart, Phil Collins—Tool’s Dan­ny Carey is an arti­san. They don’t make drum­ming like that any­more. He says so him­self (sort of) in an inter­view with Music Radar about his side project Leg­end of the Seag­ull­men with Mastadon’s Brent Hinds. Remem­ber­ing how Robert Fripp would stand on the edge of the stage, watch­ing Tool play when King Crim­son opened for the mod­ern prog-met­al giants, Carey remarks, “We weren’t sync­ing to some bull­shit like so many oth­er bands. We were actu­al­ly play­ing live. It’s a sad thing when almost every band you see isn’t doing that. It’s the clicks and back­ing tracks that are keep­ing time. I’ve nev­er played to a click on stage in my life.”

A “click track,” for those who don’t know, is exact­ly what it sounds like: a play­back of clicks (or any per­cus­sive sound) to the desired tem­po, pumped into a musician’s ear­piece to keep them play­ing in time. A use­ful tool of the record­ing stu­dio, many musi­cians, as Carey says, now use it on stage, along with vocal pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware and pre-record­ed back­ing tracks to make sure every­thing sounds exact­ly like it does on record.

All of this tech­nol­o­gy ruins the feel of live per­for­mance, Carey main­tains. He would know. He’s been play­ing live since the 80s and play­ing with Tool since the band formed thir­ty years ago. He also jams every oth­er month, he says, “with these weird dudes who played with Miles Davis or Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra.” So… yeah. The dude’s got some clas­sic chops.

But tech­nol­o­gy isn’t all bad in live music, far from it. Being a drum­mer used to mean that hard­ly any­one could see you on a big stage. You might be the most tal­ent­ed, best-look­ing mem­ber of the band, but you were hid­den away behind your kit with the singers and gui­tarists soak­ing up the glo­ry. Even when cer­tain celebri­ty rock drum­mers get their own stages (with their own mini-roller coast­ers), it can be impos­si­ble to see what they’re doing up close. No longer. Thanks to unob­tru­sive cam­eras that can stream video from any­where, no cor­ner of the stage need be obscured. We can watch a Tool show from over Carey’s shoul­der, as in the video of “Pneu­ma,” live in con­cert, at the top, pro­duced by drum equip­ment com­pa­ny Vic Firth to demon­strate Carey’s new sig­na­ture sticks.

It’s bet­ter to let Carey’s play­ing speak for itself, but for ref­er­ence, “Pneu­ma” comes from Tool’s very eager­ly-await­ed 2019 album Fear Inocu­lum, just one of many tracks “filled with twist after turn, con­ven­tion­al song struc­ture be damned,” Ilya Stemkovsky writes at Mod­ern Drum­mer, “with Carey at the cen­ter of the storm, pro­vid­ing the heav­i­est, most mas­sive bot­tom pos­si­ble. He even gets his own solo per­cus­sion track, ‘Choco­late Chip Trip,’ on which he incor­po­rates gongs and bells, among oth­er sounds.” Maybe this live view, and Tool’s well-deserved Gram­my Win for Best Met­al Per­for­mance this year for “7empest,” will inspire more drum­mers to drop the click and bring back what Carey calls the “ded­i­ca­tion to your vibe” from the days of arti­sanal drum­ming.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Wit­ness Rush Drum­mer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

See Why Gin­ger Bak­er (RIP) Was One of the Great­est Drum­mers in Rock & World Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When the pan­dem­ic ends and trav­el resumes, you’ll hope­ful­ly find pup­peteers Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana enter­tain­ing folks, both young and old, on the streets of Madrid. Above, watch them enter­tain passers­by with a mar­i­onette of Fred­die Mer­cury singing the Queen clas­sic, “I Want to Break Free.” Down below, you can see their mar­i­onette take on the Bea­t­les.

Here’s some quick back­sto­ry on their work:

Perip­lo Pup­pets are Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana: design­ers and mak­ers of pup­pets and sto­ries. We began in 2003 with TitiriBea­t­les at the Ram­blas of Barcelona and study­ing self-taught at Insti­tut del Teatre Library. We trav­eled with our pup­pets through the streets of Europe and Amer­i­ca gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ence, until in 2009 we decid­ed to live in Madrid and be a The­atre com­pa­ny. …We focus on audio­vi­su­al per­for­mance mix­ing video map­ping, string pup­pets, and latex pup­pets to make shows that involve the audi­ence.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Make an Adorable Cro­cheted Fred­die Mer­cury; Down­load a Free Cro­chet Pat­tern Online

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

If you’re a read­er of this site, it’s like­ly you known the name Klaus Nomi, the diminu­tive Ger­man singer who stunned New Wave audi­ences in New York with his angel­ic sopra­no voice and opera cov­ers. If you know of Nomi, you like­ly know of Nina Hagen, who start­ed releas­ing records in her native East Ger­many in the late 70s, mix­ing opera with punk, funk, and reg­gae and cov­er­ing clas­sics from Tina Turn­er to The Tubes “White Punks on Dope.” She became a major star, but her name does not come up often these days. She is long over­due for a revival.

Like Nomi, Hagen was a mas­ter of fright make-up and exag­ger­at­ed, Expres­sion­ist faces. She did not, how­ev­er, have an alien alter-ego or col­lec­tion of space­suits. What she had was a whol­ly orig­i­nal style all her own, full of eccen­tric vocal­iza­tions crit­ic Robert Christ­gau com­pared to The Exor­cist’s Lin­da Blair.

Her stage shows were what Hagen her­self described as “inde­scrib­able.” She applied her “umpteen-octave range,” as Christ­gau wrote, with­out restraint to every imag­in­able kind of mate­r­i­al, from cabaret to Nor­man Greenbaum’s “Spir­it in the Sky.”

Impos­si­ble to clas­si­fy, Hagen was beloved by the likes of the Sex Pis­tols and the Slits. Less than a decade after her 1978 debut with the Nina Hagen Band, she appeared in Tokyo with the Japan­ese Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra in a con­cert broad­cast to 15 coun­tries, per­form­ing the songs of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. (See her that same year, 1985, sing from Car­men in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, just above.) She con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty lat­er in life, fre­quent­ly sings gospel tunes, and released an album called Per­son­al Jesus in 2010 fea­tur­ing a cov­er of the icon­ic Depeche Mode song.

Hagen emerged in 1978 along­side a num­ber of the­atri­cal female singers with preter­nat­u­ral­ly unset­tling voic­es, debut­ing at the same time as Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, and Dia­man­da Galas (who has received her own com­par­isons to Lin­da Blair). But her own jour­ney was par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al. “Lis­ten­ing to Hagen chat mat­ter-of-fact­ly about her life,” wrote The Irish Times in a review, “Madon­na seems like Doris Day in com­par­i­son, while your pre­tender Lady Gaga is, in Hagen’s own words, ‘a pop pros­ti­tute who has more to do with biki­ni adver­tis­ing.’”

Put more in more pos­i­tive terms, the singer honed her the­atri­cal “quick-change” per­sona through a “bar­rage of influ­ences,” the New York Times not­ed. Crit­ics were divid­ed over her eclec­ti­cism. Rolling Stone called her 1982 solo, Eng­lish-lan­guage debut the “most unlis­ten­able” album ever made, an unfair­ly harsh assess­ment that did­n’t stop her from exper­i­ment­ing with even more dis­so­nant, dis­ori­ent­ing sounds.

As Hagen her­self tells her sto­ry:

I grew up in East Berlin, in a fam­i­ly of artists. I heard opera all day long. From the time I was 9 years old I was imi­tat­ing the singers; lat­er I stud­ied opera. But we also got West­ern tele­vi­sion and radio, from the Amer­i­cans in West Berlin. When I was 11 years old, I turned into a hip­pie and gave flow­ers to police­men. And when I was 21 and left Berlin for Lon­don, I became a punk.

She became a punk diva, that is. Hagen’s vocal range—which you can hear demon­strat­ed in the thor­ough video analy­sis above—over her band’s prog-like jams (as in “Naturträne), con­jured up both angels and demons. She evokes dread with gut­tur­al growls and wide-eyed stares, she can look “child­like, sweet or ter­ri­fy­ing,” or all three at once, and she nev­er lacks the essen­tial qual­i­ty an opera singer needs to make it in rock and roll: a sense of humor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi Per­forms with Kraftwerk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1982)

Watch Klaus Nomi Debut His New Wave Vaude­ville Show: The Birth of the Opera-Singing Space Alien (1978)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

How to Lis­ten to Music: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness