Chords for Klaus Nomi's 1978 debut at New Wave Vaudeville, Irving Plaza (NYC)

It's newer than new, it's you-er than you, it's now-er than now, and it's wow-er than wow.
1978, I played in a rock band called Come On, and I remember at one point my friend George and I,
George was the guitar player, we're sitting in Kiev in the East Village, having our breakfast,
and we noticed a flyer on the wall, so I thought, that looks interesting, maybe we should check this out.
George looks at me and goes, I think that's a lot of crazy people, I don't think we should get mixed up in that.
But one thing led to another, and I took the number, and I ended up calling them.
And welcome to the Irving Plaza Vaudeville Theater in Manhattan, [C] and I know you've traveled far and wide,
from California, Ohio, [Ab] Indianapolis, and you're all here for a special reason.
[N] It's because you're marvelous and wonderful and interesting and creative.
And you're welcome!
Well, the vaudeville show was like the traditional vaudeville show, except using new [G] wave ads.
What's up?
_ What's up, [E] team?
[D] [C] Good morning.
We put [A] ads up on [Db] posters [Bm] around town, asking [Am] for Egyptian slaves, Beagle [Em] hostesses, [Eb] robot [A] monsters, geeks, [Ab] Nazis, emotional cripples,
and [Bb] assembled this group of [F] crazies from the club scene.
_ So I remember we [N] made some guitars out of foam rubber, and they were all painted up,
and they pretty much looked like guitars, except they flopped all over the place.
And we realized if we scrunched these up, we could get them into attaché cases.
So we'd go on stage, the attaché case would open up, the guitars [B] would pop out.
That was our show. _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ [B] _ _ _ [G] We also thought at the [C] time, this is really lame, this is just stupid.
[F] We didn't think this was going to fly at all.
But it turned out it was one of the hits of the show.
So we were in.
Everybody else in the New Wave Vaudeville show was charming, inept, funny.
They were all kind of like in this community where they were palling around together, doing this sort of like punk version of Mickey Rooney.
We're going to do a goofy show.
Oh, [Ab] I feel a little loco coming on now.
And it feels really, really good.
Stuff [N] that you could slap yourself on the back and think you're kind of hip because we're doing this [Em] outsider theater.
And then Klaus came on, and it was a whole [Db] different level of accomplishment to me.
It wasn't silly.
It could be [G] perceived as silly because of the way he looked [Ab] as this kind of gnomish creature.
[C] But he was so [G] convincing, and his voice was [Dbm] so beautiful.
And [Ab] I do remember David McDermott, after the first performance, every performance, he had [Dbm] to come out and say,
this is not [Db] an electrical recording.
He's actually singing because people didn't believe it was him. _ _ _ _ _
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What I [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ [Db] used to do is I would be backstage directing and stage managing
and peeking out of the curtains to see how the [Bb] audience was reacting to certain acts.
And then when Klaus went on, I [Am] would leave the stage and go around to [Ab] the back of the theater,
go up the stairs to the balcony to look down and see Klaus [A] perform and watch the audience.
It was [F] always so exciting because [Bbm] all these young rock and rollers who [Ab] were pretty cynical
would just become [Db] like statues, just stunned. _ _ _
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[Ab] _ _ [Db] _ _ I remember even, it's going to sound a little [Eb] sentimental, but I remember crying.
It was just such [Bbm] a great moment of theater to [Ebm] see the audience being so [Bbm] stunned and astonished.
[Fm] And that was always, I think, the [C] pinnacle of success [E] is to leave people absolutely speechless.
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