Close to the Frozen Borderline

The two-disc set The Frozen Borderline is worthwhile: the first disc is The Marble Index plus outtakes & demos, the second is Desertshore plus outtakes and demos. There are alternate versions of "Frozen Warnings", "Memento Hodie", "Julius Caesar", and (one of my favorites) "No One is There", denuded of Cale's viola.

& if you like the harmonium, The End has very little of Cale's production and the harmonium is much more prominent in the arrangements.

Thanks, I didn't know about that set. I have the two albums in earlier releases, without all the extras.

It would be interesting to hear raw versions of the songs, but I really like Cale's production work with Nico. He talks somewhere about how he had to find ways to work around the fact that the harmonium wasn't even in tune with itself. If that's not love....

The Nico moment that still tops them all was when she appeared on Merv Griffin's show in Nov. 1967. (I think I saw this clip in the Nico/Icon documentary, but if not there, can't figure out where else it would have been; it sure ain't on Youtube yet.) Merv introduced the ice goddess as "the girl of 1966 - and here's what she's doing now," and then Nico emerged, went to the harmonium, and played something from The Marble Index - quite a change of pace from Merv's usual musical fare of The Masked Singer (aka David Soul). She then went to the couch. Merv asked three or four questions about the "now sound," but Nico simply, silently stared into the bleak, oblique horizon. After two or three minutes of that Merv went to the commmercial. Ah, if only "The Singing Bee" were like that.

That's a great story. I'd really love to see the clip. I don't recall it being in Nico Icon -- it's been a while, but that seems like the kind of thing you'd remember.