Encore... (Nomi's Best) LP

Okay, so picture an opera singer who wandered into a New York art-punk party and just... stayed: that's basically Klaus Nomi, born Klaus Sperber in Germany, who landed in the East Village after emigrating in 1972. He and songwriter/arranger Kristian Hoffman built his sound by stacking operatic covers next to originals, all picked to flex that absurd multi-octave range. This set, Encore... (Nomi's Best), pulls from his catalog plus rarities, including a live cut of "Total Eclipse" lifted from the Urgh! A Music War concert film. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1983, horribly early in that epidemic.