Momus

Momus, born Nicholas Currie in Scotland (1960), is a special kind of artist. Let me introduce him to you through a very interesting interview he gave to Kris Kirk for the Gay Times in 1990:

"I myself am heterosexual, but I have a fascination with the homosexual view of the world, the deep-seated bitterness against the predominant culture. I've always been stigmatised as a homosexual, and if that happens to you, you do tend to hold up the stigmata."

Momus - named after the Greek God of satire, chucked off Mount Olympus for being too cheeky and bold - has released a handful of albums whose extraordinary content and quality make him one the most interesting singer/songwriter/lyricist in Britain. Currie has always been personally fascinated by sex, and the pain and pleasure of the erotic urge pervade his material; nothing is taboo when it comes to his special brand of voyeurism. Needless to say, gay sex features very strongly in his work. For Currie is that fascinating thing, a Straight Queen.

"I've always been fascinated by the homosexual view of the world" says Currie, a beautiful, languid beanpole of a boy with a blond cow-lick and a big mouth full of teeth like Jacques Brel, one of his many heroes. "I suppose my attraction to that outsiderdom has a pretty banal explanation. I went to boarding-school and we were all into Glamrock and at twelve everybody at school was in bed with somebody else in the dorm: it was that big latency period. We were all listening to David Bowie and Lou Reed and Marc Bolan, and convinced we were gay ourselves and that that was a good thing to be."

Born in Paisley in 1960 into an academic family (his brother is a deconstructionist critic/lecturer), Currie went to Aberdeen University where - ever the gauche and shy outsider at parties - he gained a First in English. A serious minded intellectual saved by a dry, ironic sense of humour and sense of fun, he is by nature an iconoclast, a kicker against the norms. "I feel that in public life, gays who 'come out' and constitute themselves as a public body defined by sexuality make the most interesting public form of debate. There are few things that move or touch me, but I'm always moved by watching public issues about gay life. Like a recent documentary on gay clergy really touched me, and I don't know why that is. I always think 'This is something I'm part of, though I'm not sexually part of it'. I'm like a fellow-traveller. I relate to the stereotypes. Not the macho clone stereotype, but all that refined, delicate, aesthetic 1890s Alfred Douglas side of things."

But those were secretive days; are gay men the inner rebels they were? Aren't they mostly trying to legitimise themselves nowadays, saying 'We're just the same as everybody else'? "Gay people won't ever feel themselves sufficiently legitimised not to be in some way bitter. The transparency of normality disappears when you haven't internalised the values of the dominant culture. That's when things get interesting, when you realise everything is arbitrary and to do with power structures. Like the concept of the family, which most people think is natural and God-given, but gay people know in their bones it's a totally arbitrary politically-motivated structure. With a different pair of eyes you automatically see all the hypocrisy of that stuff, that none of it is 'natural'."

Gay themes have continually been grist to Momus' artistic mill, from his first solo album Circus Maximus (set in Ancient Rome and about "characters in the Bible or from Ancient Rome whose high intentions were undermined by their sexuality. My theme has always been seduction" ) via Tender Pervert ("I wanted to call the album 'The Homosexual', but my record company dissuaded me in the end") to his more recent material about pantomime hairdressers and sapphic masturbators. "Gay themes are like the world turned upside down. Like the ice-skaters who are meant to be the perfect couple and yet they're gay, they're not attracted to each other at all. I love looking at that gap between appearance and reality. And the gay thing really annoys people. I love to tease with gay themes, because the whole subject of homosexuality still really sorts out the sheep from the goats. You can meet somebody who seems like a really liberal, open-minded guy and you say 'gay' and instantly the gates of prejudice are slammed down. I'm always drawn to taboos. I've always felt that writing is just verbal waffle unless you stand on people's corns."

It's like I'm talking to somebody who's more gay than I am. "People have always assumed I'm gay. Or maybe I'm paranoid and just assuming they were assuming and projecting my own gay element onto them. But at school they always called me poof, and I always gravitated to gay people, especially if they were literary because they often had the best libraries! I'd hear people assuming that I was gay and my attitude always was 'I don't mind your saying that - what's the big deal about it?' Women especially always assumed I was gay, until I started making moves on them. Funnily enough, I've often thought I'd probably have much better relationships if I were gay. But it so happens that what I'm sexually turned on by is women. Preferably small women with black hair. Preferably Japanese. And - I don't know what this says about me - preferably unable to speak the language!"

With Momus the lyrics take care of themselves. But then there is the music. Currie - like some of his critics - tends to put the music down. Of course he's not completely original - Momus admits "Everything I write is parody or pastiche. I don't have a musical style which is me expressing myself. There again, you can make a case for all pop music being self-aware parody. The Rolling Stones have to be very aware that what they're doing is a complete parody of black music and rock & roll."

Pastiche perhaps, but there's something more to Momus' music than that. Not just the insidious melodies he keeps finding which put him up there with the Pet Shop Boys in the cheap, evocative, moving pop bubblegum stakes. (It's no surprise when Currie mentions "You know Neil Tennant and I run a mutual appreciation society?" ). There's something about the way he fuses all sorts of influences - Brel with Weill, Kafka with Mishima, Bowie and Gainsbourg and chanson and Europop - with his own tongue-in-cheek immense seriousness that sets him apart as a completely original talent on today's constipated pop scene.

But I should really get on with the music, after all that's what you here for, isn't it?

His 1st album came in 1986 and was called, as was already mentioned, Circus Maximus. It was a highly irreverent album, with songs like The Lesson Of Sodom (According To Lot), in which Lot and his daughters, being the only survivors to the destruction of Sodom (since his wife had been turned into a pillar of salt), resorted to incest out of necessity. Other titles include John The Baptist Jones and King Solomon's Song And Mine. The most subversive song in the album, in my opinion, is the opening track, Lucky Like St Sebastian. Referencing the patron saint of gay people, the song is about famous people who actively seek, rather than just accept, martyrdom. Some of the lyrics:

Once upon a time there was a man called Saul

Who persecuted Christians until he saw

The work was bearing fruit for the Christians

So the man changed his opinions and his Christian name to Paul

And he wrote important chapters in the Bible

But the blood on his writing hand reeked to high heaven

And Paul resolved to die

So he wrote to friends in Rome

A senator who owed him a favour

Asking for an executioner

So Paul could make his exit as a martyr

The senator sent this answer:

He said "Should you be so lucky like St Sebastian

Preferring the ache to the aspirin

Swooning as they shoot the arrows

Through your narrow chest

Stripping naked in the Circus Maximus

With a martyr-eating lioness

Bartering with flesh for a little pain

Scenes like this give sadomasochism a bad name"

The video:

He followed that up in 1987 with The Poison Boyfriend. This album mostly dealt with his relationship with women. It contains great songs, like Closer To You and the opening track, called Murderers, The Hope Of Women. It's about what marriage does to romance. Not an unusal subject, but the lyrics pull no punches:

I will buy a ring of gold

And you will practise birth control

Sweet Fanny Adams

Like a puppet on a string

Of oestrogen and progesterone

Sweet Fanny Adams

This is where your misery starts

This is where your mystery stops

We'll rent a television

To replace Pandora's Box

And I will wear a business face

And you will learn your proper place

From those Proper Little Madams

And in my world of cut and thrust

I will learn that my place, my place must .....

Be with the murderers, the hope of women

Death in every new beginning

I must take this woman for my sentence of life

And she must take my knife

The video:

A few months later came the album that is our focus for today, Tender Pervert. It's my favorite album of his and his most gay-centered. Here's what he himself says about it:

One spring night in 1988 Momus lies awake in his canary cage bedsit a stone's throw from the King's Road and decides to call his new album 'The Homosexual'. Gide, Mishima, Mao. So many unpatented new defence mechanisms: a gay man pretends to be a straight man pretending to be gay, a cold man pretends to be a warm man pretending to be cold. Provocation and paradox. The first fruits of the influence of Serge Gainsbourg. A world begins to emerge, a habitable planet, Planet Momus. There, the angels are voyeurs. Sexuality is cold and cruel. Innocence meets experience and leaves first blood. Pale, effeminate men who are one day to surge to fame in groups with names like Pulp and Suede prick up their ears.

The opening song is as provocative as they come. Here's the opening verse:

God is a tender pervert and the angels are voyeurs

Watching us forever, their vision never blurs

They make us then forget us for a hundred million years

And then by chance they glance at us and something in them stirs

They find us so provocative, so weak, so full of pride

Our cleverness, our nakedness, fills them with delight

The way we hold our coffee cups, the way we pick our words

God is a tender pervert

And the angels, and the angels are voyeurs

And the video:

The following song, Love On Ice, is about a gay man and a lesbian who are a famous ice-skating couple, whom the press present to be romantically involved with each other, while in fact he's in love with their manager and she's in love with their PR lady. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video online.

After I Was A Maoist Intellectual, a satire of Pop Music politics, comes The Homosexual: a very funny song, set to a catchy dance tune, it's about the revenge of the Straight Queen:

You who called me shirt-lifter in Chemistry class

You who sniggered "look out for your arse"

Now your women wash your shirts, now your kids are born, baby, look out for your horns

You who called me teapot, who plagued me with your bile

Guess who I've got coming to the boil

Why not grab the nettle I'll settle for being the kettle if you're the pot

I take my tea like my revenge: sweet and hot

'The Homosexual' they call me

It's all the same to me

That spectre they projected I will now pretend to be

Since their neurosis is what passes for normality

It's okay with me if I'm queer

Since their tone-deafness is called the love of music

I won't disabuse them

I'll make love with their women

I'll make them sing notes of pleasure

Their husbands will never hear

The video:

The next song, possibly my favorite, is called Bishonen. This is a Japanese term and describes a young man whose beauty and sexual appeal transcend the boundary of gender or sexual orientation. Here's the whole song, since it tells a story that is better experienced as a whole:

I was born in the town of Paisley in early 1960

And placed in the care of an old eternal bachelor

A strict disciplinarian, a passionate antiquarian

His collection of myths and legends was spectacular

As a younger man he'd been to see Japan

Where a master in a white kimono taught him

In a shining moment the myth of the bishonen

The youthful hero doomed to fall like blossom

And how could I forgive the ugly fugitive

Who brought me up according to a fantasy?

For when the old man stared at me

He drowned in evil beauty

Thinking of the early death in store for me

He taught me to be good with words, he bought me ceremonial swords

And in this way came grace and expertise

The words were to cut down and to kill the muscle-bound

The swords to fell my intellectual enemies

And women should be hated but first impersonated

Charm, he said, is essential to misogyny

He taught me how to woo the girls in order to outdo the girls

And the fun would come when I'd got them to love me

And how could I resist the old misogynist

Who brought me up according to a fantasy?

My softness and fragility

My feminine grace and delicacy

Made death himself afraid for me

And so in time I grew to be blond and beautiful

Pale and frail, with many male admirers

I was promised by my father a retainer for a partner

So loyal that nothing could divide us

Shocked by my suggestion that I'd rather have a woman

My stepfather replied I had no choice

This man would cut his entrails open protecting his bishonen

He informed me in a solemn, trembling voice

How could I disobey that surreptitious gay

Who brought me up according to a fantasy?

For when the old man stared at me

He drowned in evil beauty

Thinking of the early death in store for me

So me and my retainer encountered many dangers

On travels through the North and through the South

We ripped open the bellies of many famous bullies

And our reputation spread by word of mouth

In the mountains of Morocco we stopped and shared a bottle

With a blind old man with a bearded, bandaged face

And though the sun had sunk and the man was very drunk

He seemed to speak with my stepfather's voice

Saying "How could you forget the ageing martinet

Who brought you up according to a fantasy?

Your softness and fragility

Your feminine grace and delicacy

Will be the death of me"

Surprised at 28 to find myself so late

Changing from a boy into a man

I'm starting to feel guilty that nobody has killed me

Early as my stepfather had planned

I've found myself a girl and stopped roaming the world

My retainer's gone to be a mercenary

Now I work in a merchant bank, I'm well-liked by the senior ranks

Though behind my back the juniors call me fairy

And how can I placate the ugly reprobate

Who brought me up according to a fantasy?

For when the old man stared at me

He drowned in evil beauty

Thinking of the early death in store for me

I stay awake some nights when my wife turns off the lights

And starts breathing regularly next to me

And I think of fallen petals and bodies pierced by metal

And how I'll never now fulfil my destiny

Father spare my shame, let me pass my name

To a boy with greater beauty and more bravery

For if I have a son I'm going to raise him to die young

And lay him in the grave that you prepared for me

The video:

Right Hand Heart, Ice King and In The Sanatorium are all very good songs, but since this entry is already much longer than it should be, we skip them to focus to two more songs: A Complete History Of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24) is another fun song, catchy and clever. Here it is:

The Charm Of Innocence is a short biography of the Straight Queen:

I was born with the charm of innocence

On my back like a cross

Thorns upon my forehead

Round my neck I wore it

Sometimes a rabbit's claw

Sometimes an albatross

It began at a school that turned boys into gentlemen

Then turned them on to debauchery

I was forced to my knees in front of these gentlemen

If I refused they would torture me

On Sundays I'd stalk the Botanical Garden

And under my uniform something would harden

Whenever I passed a girl of my own age

Or did it begin with au pair girls from Germany

Paid by the hour to look after us?

Did it begin with that first opportunity

To corner a stranger with nakedness?

Maybe the clinical way they undressed me

Stayed with me and deeply distressed me

I think, at heart, I'm something of a prude

Then at 18 I decided I wanted

To be a commercial photographer

I rented a studio down by the docks

Which I shared with a friendly pornographer

I photographed models in fluorescent light

Whose veins were so blue and whose breasts were so white

I assumed, like the moon, women were blue cheese

When I left home I already had five years

Of self abuse under my belt

I found certain women who'd let me try anything

Just to find out how it felt

In some garish hotel room with vile decoration

The wallpaper witnessed my first pollination

The paisley patterns witnessed an abortion

In the army they taught me to share the abuse

That I'd kept up 'til then to myself

There's nothing like killing

For coaxing a shy boy of twenty-one out of his shell

In the dark continent with a peace-keeping force

I fell in with a bunch of Algerian whores

And promised them I'd try and keep in touch

We met up again in the 18th arrondisement

I remember them well

Their lank stringy hair and their big bulbous noses

Their unmistakable smell

I'd approach all the ugliest, seediest jerks

And ask them to keep a young model in work

Some men, thank Christ, don't discriminate at all

I will pass my old age by a pale two-bar fire

Patiently waiting to die

Twitching the lace as the schoolgirls go past

Tracing a page of Bataille

And if you catch sight of my secondhand coat

Leaving behind it a faint whiff of goat

Remember both of us are naked underneath

I thought it would end with the first obscene phone call

The second professional kill

But somehow detached from my actual behaviour

This innocence burdens me still

Up in the attic I pick up the brush

Paint in the crow's feet, paint out the blush

The face this portrait is of is still capable of

The face this portrait is supposed to be of is still capable of

The face this portrait is of is still capable of (Paint out the blush of shame)

The video:

Momus has recorded around 30 studio albums (as recently as 2015), that experimented with various styles and sounds. He has written for newspapers and magazines and has published several books. He has lived in London, Paris, Tokyo, New York and since 2010 he lives in Osaka, Japan. I bet he will continue being creative till the very end.