My Top 1000 Songs #373: Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Doug Yule fans, rejoice! Yes, the last song on the Velvet Underground's final (proper) album, 1970's relatively radio-friendly Loaded, is still a Lou Reed composition, but Yule takes lead on vocals & guitar, and if there's an argument that he deserves as much credit as Reed's foil as the man he replaced, John Cale, this song is it. (Indeed, as far as I can tell, Lou himself never included the song in his live repertoire after going solo, which seems a damn shame.)

The song is an apt way to bid farewell to the band's four-LP run, a pastoral, Americana-fueled, extended coda that's dark, yearning, and cinematic, a viable alternate to the Stones' Sticky Fingers-close-out "Moonlight Mile" as a finale to the 1960s. It also serves as a helpful explanation of how one can love both the Velvets' sprawling, drugged-out "Sister Ray" and the Grateful Dead's sprawling, drugged-out "Dark Star," an expansive jam band-ready ramble that's been given respectful treatment by bands like Phish and My Morning Jacket.

Phish, live 2013:

My Morning Jacket, live 2012:

MMJ again, this time joined by Neil Young, Elvis Costello, and more:

Black Crowes' cover:

A band called Sugar Lime Blue I found on YouTube:

David friggin' Johansen!