So Cold You Can't Feel Your Fingers...

Photographs by Lisa Law 1967

Nico - Frozen Warnings

This comes from another album that I'm unhealthily attached to. 'The Marble Index' was not a commercial success. Statement of the obvious. Luckily, Joe Boyd loved it, otherwise it wouldn't have a follow up as great as 'Desert Shore'. Which is another album I'm unhealthily attached to. I'll yap on about that one another time.

So - Nico. Unsettling, dark, droning, blah blah blah. All I care about is her fantastic imagination, the obtuse lyrics that have a greater resonance than any straight batter could achieve, and the fact that this is great folk music in the way that Joy Division were a great blues band. Forget the form, here is the thing itself.

Oh yes. Make no mistake, this is close to the heart of things.

There's a great line from Joyce that drops into my head every now and again: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake".
Nico sounds like she walked straight into it and made it her home. And she takes me there, too: I’m a ghost in the snow of this song, outside time, outside flesh, but not outside the history of souls from which the song is made.

Is it just me or did it suddenly go cold in here?


Buy - The Marble Index Amazon
Buy - The Marble Index iTunes
Visit - Nico
Visit - The Marble Index
Visit - Nico Wikipedia
Play - Velvet Underground 3D Death Chase

Mike.