On This Day 05/06/1987 Suzanne Vega

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On this day, 5 June 1987, American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall. Vega had just released her second studio album Solitude Standing.

The album proved to be most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Vega's, being certified Platinum in the US and reaching number 11 on the Billboard 200, number 2 in the UK albums chart.

"Tom's Diner" was included twice on the album; the acappella version was the first track, and the instrumental version was the last track. In 1990, a remixed version of the song featuring DNA reached number five in the US. The song was later used to test prototype MP3 compression software.

The album garnered critical and commercial success, selling over one million copies in the U.S. It includes the international hit single "Luka", which is written about, and from the point of view of, an abused child. (Not until many years later did Vega reveal the song dealt with the abuse she herself had suffered from her stepfather.

While continuing a focus on Vega's acoustic guitar, the music of her second album is more strongly pop-oriented and features fuller arrangements. Following the success of the album, in 1989 Vega almost became the first female artist to headline the Glastonbury Festival. Female fronted UK band "All About Eve" headlined on Friday night due to a short notice headline switch. Vega performed her set whilst wearing a bulletproof vest, her band having received death threats from an obsessed fan ahead of the festival.

Setlist

Tom's Diner

Straight Lines

Small Blue Thing

Cracking

Ironbound / Fancy Poultry

Luka

In the Eye

The Queen and the Soldier

Gypsy

Calypso

Undertow

Solitude Standing

Language

Left of Center

Neighborhood Girls

Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song)

Marlene on the Wall

Night Vision

On This Day 29/06/2004 Suzanne Vega

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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