If you’ve secretly harbored the belief that Nico, the sultry German chanteuse who sang briefly with the Velvet Underground, was a major but sadly unappreciated cultural icon, your moment may be at hand.
Just last month John Cale, who worked with Nico in the Velvets and produced the best of her solo recordings, devoted the first evening of his three-night residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music paying tribute to Nico with a program of her songs. And at the Cutting Room the night before Mr. Cale’s Nico concert, the performance artist Tammy Faye Starlite presented “Chelsea Mädchen,†the show in which she has been channeling Nico in all her Teutonic glory - using songs, interview excerpts and interpolations of her own - sice 2010.
Now the Cutting Room is giving Ms. Starlite a residency of her own: she will present “Chelsea Mädchen†at the space every Monday evening in June.
She did get an endorsement, of sorts, from Mr. Cale, who approved of Ms. Starlite’s interest in bringing out Nico’s dark humor in the spoken parts of her production.
“I think it’s a really good idea,†Mr. Cale said. “It’s the other side of the coin. The humor in Nico is very hard to find. She was really good at creating the perfect storm. She would read a room, and would say things that would send everyone off at the same time. As an agent provocateur, she was perfect.â€
In the meantime Ms. Starlite is turning her attention to a portrayal of another, more recent downtown rock goddess, Deborah Harry of Blondie: she will be fronting the Pretty Babies, an all-female Blondie tribute band, in a Blondie tribute on Feb. 22, also at the Cutting Room.
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