Nico • The Marble Index (Elektra, 1969)

I had reason to return recently to the Burrough of my birth. A long time associate has taken ill and is in the hospital. Traveling to the Crab Nebulae is easier, even if it does require a bone marrow replacement upon re-entry. But not complaining (at least not to my associate) I went...
As he lie in repose I could not help but marvel anew at the revaluation I had upon seeing a family member in the same state - everyone looks so small laying in a hospital bed. It's as if the body prepares for the final act of disappearance...

My associates distress is a mere infection of the leg and he'll be out in no time, so there isn't any need for worry. yet his recovery almost cheats the idea of a medical facility. While it is true they bring life into this world, spend enough time on Earth and they eventually become a repair shop. The flesh falters - life, eventually it'll kill you...

After my visit I had taken opportunity to walk around Downtown Flushing...How much has changed, and sadly not for the better. Where once eldritch buildings stood reflecting an amalgam of styles - Victorian through Art Deco, now everything has pretty much become just another shopping district where every building a glass box better to show off the merchandise residing inside. How sad that the RKO Kieth's sits a rusting mass. If a building could be said to be in a coma and kept on life support, this is it. With not enough potently commerce from it's rehabilitation, there it lies in state. The once grand marque now skeletal, glinting in the Autumn afternoon, as a anti beacon at the end of Main Street.

When one finds themselves in this mood of despairing nostalgia mixed with marvel what does one do? Well, since it's downtown Flushing you go get a roast pork bun, only to find that even that the place you bought them from is gone too...

Little did I remember what I had on my iPod that day. On the train ride in I was listening to various 45's and the Tea Company LP, by the time I reached the Hospital the last song was done playing; Make Love Not War with it's liberal cribbing from Help!. When I had left my associate the first notes I hear come through the earphones are that of a heavy piano chord, followed by airy celesta tones. The Marble Index's brief prelude was playing, clearing all that came before it.

The eight songs that follow occupy a unique space. On Nico's second album she abandons the folk rock approach of her first (Chelsea Girl). That album always sounded like a lesser extension of The Velvet Underground & Nico. And why not? Half of the songs there were written by either Reed or Cale, and the Velvets minus Mo Tucker often supply backing. On the Marble Index it's as if Chelsea Girl never existed, or could have even been done by the same person. The songs are all written by Nico and it is like she's invoking a Psychedelic Dark Ages. While Judy Collins or Odetta were updating sea shanties, Nico was delving deeper to Europe's past looking for melodies from the Black Plague.

Over Nico's simple harmonium sea saw style of playing, John Cale layers on musical accompaniment that at times are at odds to the quiet songs. On Lawns Of Dawn, the song is a example of Catatonia - repetitious lyrics that make little sense when repeated out loud are bathed in all forms of studio trickery. The quiet Celestia, deep tremolo bass, something that sounds like a slowed down Crows caw, slightly rhythmic slapping all swirl around her, sucking you down the Rabbit's hole. For a record recorded during 1968 and released almost a year later, nothing sounded even close, there just isn't any president. There were a few downer records released before it; Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation, HP Lovecraft's II, or even Pearls Before Swine's Balaclava, but almost as if out of nowhere is The Marble Index. It would take the 1980's Goth movement to utilize the sounds trail blazed by Nico and Cale, the melding of Slavic song form with Fluxis playing.

But before it can all be surmised as just proto art music for future generations of depressed teenagers, there is a deceptively simple song called Frozen Warnings. Nico's voice, surprisingly
strong when singing her own compositions is accompanied by layers of Cale's treated viola and organ. Building along the lines of minimalism, going from low C to high, it becomes a moment of clear beauty and respite in a often rewardingly harsh listening environment.

Please click on the review title for selected track: Lawns Of Dawns