Images may be subject to copyright
On this day, 29 June 2004, American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall.
In 2003, the 21-song greatest hits compilation Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega was released. (The UK version of Retrospective included an eight-song bonus CD as well as a DVD containing 12 songs). In the same year she was invited by Grammy Award-winning jazz guitarist Bill Frisell to play at the Century of Song concerts at the famed Ruhrtriennale in Germany.
When Vega first emerged on the New York folk scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s, no one really knew what to make of her. Certainly, she wasn’t a folk artist in the traditional sense, or, perhaps more specifically, she wasn’t going to be restrained by the traditional definition of what a folk artist is supposed to be.
As Lenny Kaye writes of her early days in the liner notes to Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega, “she listens to Lou Reed as well as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen segueing Woody Guthrie, the Police, the Smiths. She is a modern girl, living in her present tense, playing a music that seems to venerate old-timey tradition. She thinks of herself as a ‘solitary troubadour,’ and wants to be on her own, to be able to ‘pick up my guitar, and get on a bus, and go anywhere, and play by myself”.
Suzanne Vega’s self-titled debut, released in 1985, spawned a surprise hit in the UK with “Marlene in the Wall”; in fact, Vega performed the song at the Prince’s Trust 10th Anniversary Party.
Setlist
99.9 F°
Marlene on the Wall
Caramel
When Heroes Go Down
Gypsy
(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May
Penitent
Solitaire
Left of Center
Undertow
The Queen and the Soldier
Behind Blue Eyes
(The Who cover)
Pilgrimage
Solitude Standing
Blood Makes Noise
In Liverpool
Luka
Tom's Diner
Encore:
Small Blue Thing
Rosemary
