Pitchfork

In January of 1972, before any of them had established themselves as solo performers, the three semi-estranged principles of the disbanded Velvet Underground found themselves in Europe at the same time and played a legendary one-off "unplugged" concert at a thousand-seat venue in Paris called Le Bataclan. The set they played that night has long been available on poor-quality bootlegs, and though I've never heard any of those bootlegs, I cannot imagine how the sound quality could be any worse than on this official release. Sometimes it actually sounds as if the tape were slowing down, and various instruments have that weird, warbly sound that one associates with old cassette tapes well along the way to becoming spaghetti. Still, the novelty of hearing these by-now overly familiar songs in these lo-fi, round-robin, coffee-house renditions has a certain charm that is at times both poignant and illuminating. And the stage banter, always a key selling point with any live Velvets album, is suitably deadpan and entertaining.

"Waiting for My Man" opens the set. The traditional, scene-setting Moe Tucker drum kick-in being unavailable, Cale opts for traipsing in with an almost comically earnest school-recital piano figure. Reed, the star pupil, seems to be concentrating on his Sinatra-esque phrasing at the expense of his strumming, but he's in rare form with the quips. Before "Berlin", he tells the French people, "This is my Barbra Streisand song." Before "Wild Child", he explains, "This is about a wild child, funnily enough." The mandatory "Heroin" is given a decent read, Cale sawing away on his viola, and "Black Angel's Death Song", arranged for viola and acoustic guitar, turns out to be laugh-out-loud funny.

Cale takes center stage after some extended tuning, and some frustratingly inaudible off-mike conferencing with Reed (this is often better than the stage banter), before running through a song off Vintage Violence, and two previously unreleased numbers: "The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group of All", which sounds like one of those old Peter, Paul & Mary sing-along children's songs, and "Empty Bottles", a stately love song he originally wrote for Jennifer Warnes. This last song is the first genuinely moving moment of the entire set. Of course, Lou pipes up: "Anybody got a straw?"

The boys kick in with "Femme Fatale" soon after, without Nico, as if they didn't trust her to talk on-mike, but they have to stop as she misses her cue. You can hear her sigh audibly and give a little embarrassed laugh before the song restarts. Her singing is so careful, it's clear that she's terrified. She doesn't have Reed's above-it-all snottiness, or Cale's formal detachment to hide behind. Her gift, such as it is, is pure human sadness unadulterated by irony. The song ends, the crowd finally goes nuts, and rightfully so. She is the evening's entrée.

She does three of her own songs next, ending with a literally gut-wrenching version of "Janitor of Lunacy": She erupts in a fit of coughing for almost a full-minute after the song ends. Then, Reed, as if he didn't deign to speak directly to Nico, instructs Cale, "Uh, John, have Nico tell them this is the last song." More coughing, then finally Nico recovers and is back at the mike. The crowd cheers her on. "I want to sing the last song now. If I can," she says in her halting English, "I try my best." After a beat, she feels compelled to add, "I don't smoke cigarettes." "I'll Be Your Mirror" is the song. Nico's voice is wrecked, the sound is crummy, but somehow, with Reed and Cale propping her up with two-part harmonies, and finally wrenching substantial sounds from their acoustics, it's an incredibly affecting, heroic rendition. The encore ("All Tomorrow's Parties") can't touch it, but gives the audience a chance to exhale.

If you collect fine-art photography, you probably won't care much for this record. It's under-rehearsed, poorly recorded, and the uneven performances range from the sublime to the incoherent. But if you appreciate the fleeting revelations to be found in snapshots, then this may be just the bit of quicksilver for you, a unique moment in musical history just before these three erstwhile Jekylls became forever Hydes.