Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jägermeister (Circa 1980)

If the gen­der-defy­ing Ger­man per­former Klaus Nomi (above) was an acquired taste, so is Jäger­meis­ter, the hang­over-defy­ing (some say induc­ing) Ger­man 70-proof herbal liqueur.

Syn­er­gies aside, it’s still sur­pris­ing that any com­pa­ny big enough to have share­hold­ers would elect to have as bizarre a scene­mak­er as Nomi to endorse their prod­uct.

Appar­ent­ly they knew their audi­ence. The ad was part of a series that ran in New York mag­a­zine in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s. (Nomi died of AIDS in 1983. You can see his last per­for­mance here.)

The oth­er spokes­peo­ple are unknown to me, but I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they all knew each oth­er.

And pledg­ing their alle­giance to the bit­ter bev­er­age may well have cov­ered a cou­ple months rent on an East Vil­lage walk up.

As one Tum­blr wag com­ment­ed: “Klaus Nomi drink­ing Jäger­meis­ter is like Lau­rie Ander­son drink­ing Bud Light.”

If you can iden­ti­fy any of Nomi’s fel­low Jäger­meis­ter fans, please let us know in the com­ments. Not every won­der­ful crea­ture gets the doc­u­men­tary he or she deserves, but Andrew Horn’s 2004 The Nomi Song can hip you to the crea­ture who came from out­er space to save the human race. Watch it for free here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí in Clas­sic 1968 Bran­iff Com­mer­cials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the award-win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday