SOUNDTRACK: SUZANNE VEGA-Tiny Desk Concert #336 (February 10, 2014).
Suzanne Vega is practically a one hit wonder except that she has released a half-dozen great albums that are full of wonderful songs. I stopped listening to her some time in the mid 90’s, so I missed her 2000s comeback, but this four-song show from 2014 has her two most famous songs and two songs from her then about t o be released album Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles.
As the Concert opens, she asks “for real?” and the hits the Tiny Desk gong (with quite a flourish).
Then she launches into “Luka.” She plays acoustic guitar and sings. Her voice sounds pretty much exactly as it did twenty years ago. In part, sure, it’s because her singing voice is practically a whisper, but it’s amazing how good she sounds. She has a second guitarist, Gerry Leonard, with her (on electric guitar) who plays a great sounding solo in the middle of the song.
The first new song is “Crack in the Wall.” She says that it describes when a crack appears allowing you to see into the spiritual world. In this version (I don’t know the studio version), it sounds a lot like an old song–stripped down and simple, with Vega’s interesting gentle acoustic guitar chords and voice. There’s also a cool echoed electric guitar solo.
For “I Never Wear White” she takes off the acoustic guitar. It’s just her singing and Leonard playing. And his guitar his rough and distorted. It is pretty shocking for a Vega song, but it works really well with her voice. I really like this song a lot.
She ends with “Tom’s Diner.” She was going to say the one and only, but says they’ve done so many different versions of it. So this is their latest. She sings parts a capella but the guitar plays some wonderful washes of sounds (looped) with different parts layered. He also plays a percussive sound that makes the song kind of danceable. And when she mentions the bells of the cathedral, Gerry plays some cool harmonic notes that are echoed and sound like clock chimes. It’s very cool.
Vega’s speaking voice sound a little like Hillary Clinton’s (especially during the thank yous at the end). But it’s nice that her singing voice still sounds the same and that 2014 album seems like it might be interesting.
[READ: July 6, 2016] “High Maintenance”
The May 16, 2016 issue of the New Yorker had a series called “Univent This” in which six authors imagine something that they could make go away. Since I knew many of them, I decided to write about them all. I have to wonder how much these writers had to think about their answers, or if they’d imagined this all along.
I’ve never read Mary Karr, I only know her peripherally as connected with David Foster Wallace. This may not have been the best introduction to her, although since she mostly writes memoirs, maybe this is the perfect introduction.
Mary Karr would like to uninvent high heels. And while she does speak of this with some humor, the entire article just reeks of vanity and foolishness. (The fact that she even mentions she can still squeeze into a size 4 should tell you all you need to know about this essay). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 