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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 02:24:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert King
To: undertow@serv1.law.emory.edu
Subject: A decade of Suzanne!

Greetings from the land of Opal (though, never fear, I am unscathed, despite my abrupt need to use an air-sick bag in a bumpy helicopter).

This is sort of outdated by now, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to note that it's been officially 10 years, and I guess a month or two, since _Suzanne Vega_ hit the stores. I just want to take the chance to congratulate Suzanne on her first decade as a recorded entity -- and, certainly, wish her luck in the many, many subsequent decades that are sure to follow.

I guess it's the classic question (not to Suzanne, to everyone else): do you remember where you were when you first heard her? For me it was a few minutes after midnight, September 25, 1985 -- my 20th birthday -- standing in my dorm room on the third floor of Beam Hall at Penn State when "Small Blue Thing" came out over the airwaves from WPSU. I remember it like I'm still standing there. The world was blue-green for some reason. I think a fan was going. I'm not going to claim that the cosmos stopped or anything but I think _I_ did; I'd read about Suzanne a few weeks earlier and was asking myself "Is this it? Is this her? I have to get this."

The next day a coworker at the student newspaper played a compilation tape that included "Marlene on the Wall," which I didn't like quite as much but kept me interested.

A few days later I went hunting through record stores looking for it. I finally found one that had one copy. Back then LPs were still a big deal (I wish I'd bought it in vinyl but I had no way to play it) and the few cassettes this one store sold were locked behind glass; as the clerk unlocked the case to retrieve the tape she said "We've had a lot of people asking for this one." I took it home, listened to it, didn't get everything the first time but knew I'd found something wonderful, something that maybe I'd been looking for a long time without knowing what for.

That whole year, certainly that whole semester, was colored by that album; it's the soundtrack I hear when I think back to that time. (It helped that it was only one of three albums I bought that entire year, being cash-poor as I was). For instance, the next spring I really, really fell in love for the first time (yes, call me a late bloomer) and wrote in my diary: "I want to love a young woman who I don't understand. Your highness, your ways are very strange."

My enthusiasm was far from universally shared, however. I tried to explain to my roommate what Suzanne sounded like; the only thing I could come up with, "urban folk," drew this look of bemused compassion from him, sort of like "God, it must be terrible to be such a dork." One friend of mine used to discount any musical opinion I held by saying, "Yeah, but _you_ like Suzanne Vega." (This from a guy who thought Dream Academy was the next Pink Floyd.) If you're thinking that I really needed some new friends -- yeah, that's the conclusion I reached too.

One remarkable thing about that album is that it became one of my favorites of all time the minute I heard it, and that it still is 10 years later. That's rare; most of my favorite albums are ones that took a while to grow on me (like, say, anything by R.E.M.). Others that immediately appealed to me faded after time, either because my tastes changed or because their appeal was all on the surface; that's certainly not true of _SV_.

It also might be the only album that I still listen to regularly after so many years just for the enjoyment of it. (In contrast, it's been a while since I listened to, say, the White Album in its entirety. It's an all-time masterpiece, of course, by any objective standard more pivotal to musical history than Suzanne's debut, probably, but these days it's not usually what I'm in the mood for). I'm still not tired of it; I'm still discovering new things. My latest trick is to listen to it and _99.9F_ back to back and notice how similar they are.

Am I babbling? Yes. I just wanted to thank Suzanne for the last decade, or at least the role she's played in it. (I won't hold her accountable for Newt Gingrich, never fear.)

Most exciting of all -- the news she's heading back into the studio! Yes! I can hardly wait.

-- Bob, no longer elusive, just incoherent

P.S. I think I've been missing out on messages too. I didn't get anything for a couple of weeks, then this latest feud jumps out from nowhere. All I can say to the combatants -- shouldna lept in front o' the bairn, lad!

>I guess it's the classic question (not to Suzanne, to everyone else): do
>you remember where you were when you first heard her?

I'm embarrassed to say, but for me it was studying for finals in 1986 with *MTV* playing as background noise. I was taking a break when "Marlene on the Wall" came on. The first few seconds of the song sent me scrambling for a pen so that I could write down the artist at the end of the video -- that kind of immediate reaction had never happened to me before. I soon had her LP and listened to the album I don't know how many times on my walkman (surely hundreds) over the next few years.

The _Suzanne Vega_ album is still my favorite because (to me) the songs seem entwined with a sad, detached abstraction -- a feeling like there's something bigger behind the lyrics that language just can't express.

>Most exciting of all -- the news she's heading back into the studio! Yes!
>I can hardly wait.

Great news!

__________________________________________________________________
// Eric J. Richards //\
// richards@teleport.com PGP: finger -l richards@teleport.com //\/
\\_______________________________________________________________\\/

Hello everyone,

There was a thread along these lines awhile back; sounds like a candidate for archiving! Someone in rec.music.rem is accumulating a similar list for R.E.M, and it's really fascinating to read - quite a variety of experiences.

I think I posted this sometime back, but here it is again:

Around summer 1986, I was listening to a Sunday night program on the radio in Austin, TX. The incomparable dj, Jody Denberg, always featured an eclectic mix of 'critic's choice' stuff - indie, 'alternative' (before it was called that, etc.). Towards the end of the program, he closed with quieter, acoustic-based material. Driving home near midnight, I happened to catch 'Small Blue Thing' - needless to say, I was blown away. I think what came through was the *intensity* of the music and lyrics through both *repetition* and *sparseness* of arrangement - something that Suzanne does very well on a consistent basis! I think 'detached abstraction' is a good way to put it, but it's more than that.

Well, of course I went out and got the album, and since then, have seen her twice in concert (missed the 1985 show at the Cactus Cafe - capacity only around 100-150...damn...), bought everything I can get my hands on, etc.

Looking forward to the new material, and the new 'old' material,

-Rob
rwalters@lafayette.unocal.com