Nico "Chelsea girl"

In 1991 I was working as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant as I attended college.  The job paid shit but I could eat all I wanted so it was a trade off I could live with.  The head chef was a bohemian who loved Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground and surrealist art.  We hit it off and became friends, I'm pretty sure he liked to live vicariously through my youthful enthusiasm for anything subversive. Some nights after work I would skateboard to the house he rented with his wife and child and we would sit in his living room and paint and draw.  He would buy me cheap bottles of Wild Irish Rose (jack kerouack's poison) and he'd disappear to his driveway to smoke weed.  He'd play records and whistle out of tune to vocal lines.  One of his favorites was the first Velvet Underground album, it was sort of like hearing punk or metal for the first time again. A style of music that was unique to itself.
There was a head shop in that small town that resembled a small flea market.  Amongst the incense and bongs they also sold comic books out of boxes and used records and CDs.  One day I was digging through the boxes of discs and recognized Nico's name from that VU album.  I snagged it for a couple of bucks (all I had ) and brought it with me to the Chef's house that night after work.  He was unfamiliar with it and we listened to the album as we pushed paint around on some plywood he found in his basement.  The record is a strange melancholy affair and #nico germanic deep vocals washed over us. We played the cd too loud and were scolded by his wife.  We played it a second time immediately so he could tape the album for himself.
Ten years later a couple of these songs turned up in the soundtrack for the movie "The Royal Tenebaums". I remember I had to rewind the movie because hearing the songs brought me deep into a nostalgic trance.  Sure wish I had saved some of the paintings I had done with chef at that time.  They were experimental and free from self-conscious editing, and it was also when I began to really search music out and listen to unique things that my peers didn't know.  Like this gem of a sad album.