Tuesday Top Ten: Favorite Velvet Underground Songs

On Sunday, rock and roll lost one of its great rebels and poets, Lou Reed.  Like many (I assume), I discovered The Velvet Underground in college.  Before that, I knew who Lou Reed was, and I had heard The Cowboy Junkies' haunting cover of "Sweet Jane" from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, but in college I actually started listening to them.  I found the band to be fascinating because, for the most part, they sounded nothing like anything else that was from that era (1967-1970).  Their songs ranged from what seemed like Gregorian chants (thanks, Nico) to garage rock to droning to extended jams to pop to country rock to folk to tongue-in-cheek to straight up rock and roll.  But they were largely ignored by mainstream society, with no songs that came anywhere close to charting, and three studio albums out of five barely cracking Billboard's Top 200.

 

There's a famous saying that only 30,000 people ever bought a Velvet Underground record, but every one of them started a band.  It's verifiably false, but the sentiment is important.  The VU and Reed were punk rock and art rock primogenitors, influencing punk, glam, alternative, and rock music from 1967 to the present.

 

Admittedly, I know a lot more VU's music than Lou Reed's solo stuff (or his odd collaboration with Metallica a couple years ago), so I thought it would be more appropriate to compile a list of my ten favorite Velvet Underground songs than my favorite Lou Reed songs.  Reed wrote pretty much all of VU's songs anyway.  With that, here they are:

 

Honorable mention (in alphabetical order): "All Tomorrow's Parties"; "Beginning to See the Light"; "I'm Sticking With You"; "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"; "Prominent Men"; "Rock and Roll"; "Run Run Run"; "Sheltered Life"; "Sunday Morning"; "There She Goes Again"; "White Light/White Heat"

10 (tie).  "Oh Gin"

Probably the second greatest song in rock history about gin (the first, hands down, is "Cold Gin" by KISS), "Oh Gin" is kind of a poppy little number about how gin is a motherfucker ("Oh gin / How could you treat me this way?").  Having not had gin since March 1998 as a result of some vomit-induced taste aversion, I can relate.  Of course, the song's narrator is concerned that gin went away.  I'm okay without gin in my life.

 

10 (tie).  "Black Angel's Death Song"

I included this one in last week's post with my Ultimate Halloween Playlist.  As I said in that post, I assume this song is what a bad acid trip would have sounded like in Victorian England.  It's a very weird and eerie song, but that's why I like it.

 

9.  "Pale Blue Eyes"

This one is a slower, acoustic song.  It's a lot crisper than most VU songs, and it's about a lovelorn guy chasing a married woman.  That guy's name, by that way, was Lou Reed.  The woman actually had hazel eyes, which is to be expected because people with hazel eyes are better than everyone else.

 

8.  "Femme Fatale"

This is a distorted, strange song sung by Nico, as you might expect when a German chanteuse is handling lead vocals, but I can't help but like it.

7.  "Stephanie Says"

"The people all call her Alaska."  Which is weird because her name is Stephanie.  This was featured in The Royal Tenenbaums.  Wes Anderson never fails to make good use of music.

6.  "I'll Be Your Mirror"

This is another Nico-sung song.  It's a sweet, poppy song, in which the singer is telling the subject to appreciate his/her inner beauty.  This one was on my wedding cocktail hour mix.

5.  "Sister Ray"

This is a 17-minute improvised garage rock jam that somehow works, probably because it is high-energy the entire time.  Reed based the lyrics around a story he wrote.  He described it as follows:  "I like to think of 'Sister Ray' as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear."  The fact that the line "too busy sucking on my ding dong" is repeated at several points in the song has always struck me as kind of funny.  This one was not on my wedding cocktail hour mix.

4.  "I'm Waiting For the Man"

If there's a better song about coping dope, I'm not sure I've heard it.

3.  "The Gift"

This is a strange song because it's basically a short story with background music.  I've always thought it would make a great short film.  John Cale tells the story of Waldo Jeffers, a neurotic collegian separated by several states from his girlfriend, Marsha, during the summer.  Unable to afford to a proper method of transportation to see Marsha, Waldo decides to mail himself to her, having no idea that she's a cheating whore.  It turns out mailing himself in such a secure manner was a bad idea because Marsha and her friend couldn't get the package open in a traditional manner.  I'll let you listen to hear what happens next, but it's not pretty.  One of my favorite VU lines is from this song:  "Daytime fantasies of sexual abandon permeated his thoughts."  I don't know why, but that line has always stuck with me.  Probably because I'm a dude, and that pretty much describes every male every day.

2.  "Heroin"

This has been on my running mix since 1998 (when my running mix was actually on a cassette tape labeled "Pyscho").  Having never done heroin, I can only assume that the song is meant to simulate the experience, going back and forth between slow, droning parts and frantic, up-tempo parts with what sounds like a wall of psychotic violas.

1.  "Sweet Jane"

It was really a toss-up between "Heroin" and "Sweet Jane," and 10-15 years ago, I probably would have gone with "Heroin.  I still need "Heroin" in my life (the song –- calm down, Jester), but now, it doesn't get any better than "Sweet Jane" for me.  It's catchy and it rocks at the same time.  I love how loose Reed is on the lead vocals.  It sounds like he's having fun, adding "oohs" and "just watch me now" to verses.  On top of that, there is great imagery and some great lines in the song, from wondering why Jack is wearing a corset to a stern warning on how not to be a parent ("And there's even some evil mothers / Who'll tell you that everything is just dirt.").