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Momus

MomusAKA Nick Currie

Born: 11-Feb-1960
Birthplace: Paisley, Scotland

Gender: Male
Religion: Atheist
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Critic, Singer/Songwriter

Nationality: Scotland
Executive summary: Scottish music critic, famous for 15 people

Twisted the ubiquitous Andy Warhol quote in his 1991 essay, "Pop Stars? Nein Danke!": "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people." Momus is a music critic and journalist by trade, but he makes music as well, adapting the baroque formalisms of a foppish man-about-town for the purposes of irreverence.

In 1998, Momus was sued for libel by Wendy Carlos over the song "Walter Carlos", later deleted from his album The Little Red Songbook. Apparently Momus got in trouble with Carlos for singing about that composer's 1972 sex change operation, a fact which is apparently an open secret in the music business, forbidden from discussion despite being entirely obvious. The song's lyrics hypothesize so very maliciously that were time travel possible, Carlos could travel back in time and marry his un-transgendered self:

Walter Carlos no longer exists / He's in Elysium
But let us imagine him in our space-time continuum.

Walter Carlos!
International transsexual composer of that glorious epoch,
The high analogue synthesizer / Baroque!

He is now to be / Known as Wendy
Had a gender operation done
Just after making Switched on Bach, Volume 1

And when travelling through time is possible,
Wendy can enter a wormhole and go back to the future to marry Walter
A few baroque summers earlier
A couple of models of Moog back in time

(Sung in a round: Fine fine fine / In the summertime / Singing tra-la-la-la-la / And be fine in another time)

Unfortunately,
Einstein informs us
That when time travel is finally possible,
There will be no returning to periods previous to the point at which time travel first became possible!

So like Walter Carlos until such time as it's feasible,
We'll have to restrict time travel to the realm of the musical.

In order to cover his legal expenses, Momus coined the term "patronage pop", meaning that, for a fee of $1,000, he would write a song to the glory of his patron. The result was his 1999 album, Stars Forever, "a pop album of portraits".

His eye patch is present due to an infection of amoebic keratitis caught from a contact lens. After several operations doctors were not able to save the eye, though it did not require removal.

    Momus

Official Website:
http://www.imomus.com/


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