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Chic Mystique

That forthcoming Velvet Underground & Nico deeeeeeeluxe box set includes the long-bootlegged Valleydale Ballroom set – a murky-but-magnificent audience recording that showcases the band’s most experimental leanings. The lengthy, drone-y “Melody Laughter” and “Nothing Song” are universes away from what your standard rock ‘n’ roll group was doing in November of 1966. Of course, the Velvets weren’t operating as a standard rock 'n’ roll group at the time, they were part of the Warhol-sponsored, multimedia extravaganza known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable – just a small fraction of the sensory overload the show’s audience was being subjected to. As a result, the band had the freedom to do pretty much whatever they wanted. And that’s exactly what they did, creating these spontaneous symphonies of sound, these neverendless epics. What I’ve got here today is “Chic Mystique,” a 27-minute jam made a few months before the Valleydale show, but in a similar vein. Taken from an April 1966 performance at The Dom in NYC, it was later used as the soundtrack to Jonas Mekas’ film “Walden.” Is it good? Yes, it’s totally awesome. The mighty Moe Tucker lays down an immovable proto-motorik (protorik?) pulse, as Cale, Reed and Morrison wreak havoc all around her. You can almost see the strobe lights. At various points, I think Cale is attacking his “thunder machine,” an instrument of his own devising, which can be seen in the “Symphony of Sound” video made at the Factory during the same era. There’s also what seems to be a melodica-type thing wafting in at times – is that you, Nico? All in all, “Chic Mystique” really does sound quite a bit like the exploratory krautrock Can, Neu! and Faust would get into a few years later – but I’m assuming those bands dreamed it all up themselves; there’s very little chance they’d actually heard any of these VU recordings. Great minds dream alike, I guess. 

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