Outlandish!

[imomus]

The true eccentric never believes herself to be so; all she sees is that other people seem increasingly bland, and have a tendency to brand her in increasingly exaggerated, lurid ways. The same day I was berating the world for wearing jeans, the London Evening Standard's free commuter paper London Lite ran a review of my Thursday night show at the Spitz which, while essentially positive, painted a rather frightening picture of a person way out on the margins of society, flirting with madness.



For reviewer Joe Muggs, my performance was "tiring, even uncomfortably close to insane". "Scotsman-turned-world-citizen Nick Currie - aka Momus - took the stage in pyjamalike suit, ludicrous Beatle-wig and his trademark eyepatch, with only a laptop for accompaniment," Muggs wrote, mentioning my "mind-boggling" blog and "unashamed wonkiness". The headline to the piece ran "Mad Momus is an inspiration".

"You do look pretty close to madness!" commented my mother, who famously refuses to walk down the street with me these days, afraid that people may throw a straitjacket around her. "Glad they are saying some good things though."

At the Tate Gallery last night the "uncomfortably close to insane" line was running through my head as I lay face down on a table in the august and imposing Room 9 of Tate Britain, filled with heroic Victorian military and naval scenes, early Turners, and a screen showing scenes from "Funky Forest". My hands, bound at the wrists by invisible ropes, twitched violently as I simulated being anally raped by an invisible medieval knight. In my mind it was perfectly clear that I was playing The Lady of Shalott, and that exactly such scenes could well appear in any one of the paintings hanging on the walls nearby. Early Momus songs were inspired by exactly the kind of perversity I'd see in paintings at the Tate and the National Gallery.

Apparently when No Bra played this same room, the sudden appearance of Suzanne's breasts almost made the organizers halt the performance -- again despite the fact that many of the paintings and sculptures nearby featured scenes of bare-breasted women. The Tate also requested the artists performing to "please decline from using any pornographic or violent video footage within their performence". I immediately cancelled plans to show images of The Rape of the Sabine Women and Judith with the Head of Holofernes, or make any reference to The Bible or, indeed, the new Stephen Fry comedy series, the trailer for which features a parrot shouting "Fuck me! Fuck me! Come on my tits!"

A great range of normal human behaviour veers "uncomfortably close to insanity"; even the most eccentric or extreme art doesn't show the half of it. Still, I'm grateful to the Tate (in the shape of funky culturepreneurs Adrian Shaw and Dexter Bentley) for letting me perform under the paintings. You can also hear me today live in session on Hello Goodbye, Dexter's show on Resonance FM, between noon and 1.30pm UK time. The webstream is here. I promise not to sing any rude words or be at all mind-bogglingly mad in the interview.

Comments

Hello, it is me, Joe Muggs

[suburban-disco.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found the review generally complementary - it was certainly meant to be. The headline, of course, was the subs', not mine, and the whole text was heavily cut from what was orginally filed. Here is what I wrote in full:

POP
Momus, Spitz E1
3/5

Upon walking in to the Spitz, it was hard to believe that this wasn’t a filming of some Chris Morris satire of the art world. Onstage were two young men in thick-rimmed specs, sitting on opposite sides of a café table loaded with cups, glasses and a steaming pot of tea. A loud soundtrack of street noise and snatches of music was playing. One of the duo – BoyleAndShaw, according to the posters – was hammering percussively at an amplified typewriter on his lap, and occasionally passing paper to his thickly-bearded colleague, who was murmuring, ranting and occasionally chanting, monk-like into another microphone. After some twenty minutes of this, they stood up and the crowd applauded wildly.

Unsurprisingly, this crowd were a bohemian bunch. In the break, as cool ambient/classical drones played, it was possible to overhear earnest conversations about Chinese Confucianism, Barcelona techno venues and Jay Joplin’s White Cube gallery all at once. Everyone made a point of looking cool, unruffled and unembarrassed as next support act Suzanne Oberbeck, aka No Bra appeared, living up to her stage name – clad in nothing but neon pink micro-miniskirt, stockings and blonde toothbrush moustache. Unruffled they may have been, but that didn’t stop them eagerly (if coolly) taking pictures and post-ironically commenting on her breasts. Amazingly, though, No Bra’s ultra-deadpan delivery of grimy urban tales and parodies of trendies and scenesters, over brooding electro beats – think a depressive Peaches – quickly transcended gimmickry or titillation.

Scotsman-turned-world-citizen Nick Currie – Momus – is a veteran of such boho scenes. From the early 80s on, he has plied clever, quirky and hyper-literate electronic pop to a cult audience without ever making waves in the wider music scenes, except in Japan where he now lives. His poppiest songs often resemble the Pet Shop Boys, but in almost every way he represents the opposite of their populist, disco-driven ambition and Englishness.

Taking the stage in pyjama-like suit, ludicrous Beatle-wig and his trademark eyepatch, with only a laptop for accompaniment, Currie began with a couple of PSBs-like wistful pop songs, but rapidly diverted into stranger electronic sounds and more abstracted lines. He zipped through medieval folk, kitsch exotica samples, trip-hop beats, electronica songs about Beowulf, nonsensical lyrics translated by Google from Japanese, and a shockingly sexy Curtis Mayfield falsetto on ‘Born To Be Adored By Women’. Currie, as anyone who has read his mind-boggling blog – imomus.livejournal.com – has a restless intelligence. At times, this made his performance tiring, even uncomfortably close to insane, but each time he appeared to be too far off on a tangent, he would always return to the melodic hooks he writes so well. It’s easy to mock the eccentric and arty-farty, but such unashamed wonkiness can provide invention to be treasured.