The Art of Longevity Season 3, Episode 1: Suzanne Vega
12/17/21 • 41 min
When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special:
“I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we’d make it about New York songs. It seemed to go down really well. I heard the elevator boys talking about it after the show so I knew it must be good”.
Who knows if the Carlisle Hotel elevator boys knew who she was before those shows, but there can be no doubt about Suzanne Vega’s mastery of the craft of songwriting, and of performance, something that comes together perfectly for Suzanne’s current project “An Evening of New York Songs & Stories”. The show comes complete with Suzanne the songwriter but also the raconteur and the ‘show-woman’ (complete with top hat) - something she never expected to become when she was starting out in music at the beginning of the 80s. After all, as a child, she hated being looked at.
My chat with Suzanne starts with the concept of storytelling through song - but also between the songs, and why that’s so rare on the music scene these days. We explore the early years of course, and the various lives of some of her greatest songs, like ‘Tom’s Diner’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’.
I wanted to know if she still felt that a song should be an essentially sad thing and I had to ask her about one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard and a personal obsession for 35 years - her song Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, from the 1987 classic album Solitude Standing.
I was excited to hear about the prospect of a new album of brand new Suzanne Vega songs in 2023 and she is to begin the European leg of the New York Songs & Stories tour early in 2022 (pandemic permitting) - whatever you do don’t miss it.
In a world in which music is in great abundance, what Suzanne Vega does is as rare as things can get. Hats off to you Suzanne!
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special:
“I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we’d make it about New York songs. It seemed to go down really well. I heard the elevator boys talking about it after the show so I knew it must be good”.
Who knows if the Carlisle Hotel elevator boys knew who she was before those shows, but there can be no doubt about Suzanne Vega’s mastery of the craft of songwriting, and of performance, something that comes together perfectly for Suzanne’s current project “An Evening of New York Songs & Stories”. The show comes complete with Suzanne the songwriter but also the raconteur and the ‘show-woman’ (complete with top hat) - something she never expected to become when she was starting out in music at the beginning of the 80s. After all, as a child, she hated being looked at.
My chat with Suzanne starts with the concept of storytelling through song - but also between the songs, and why that’s so rare on the music scene these days. We explore the early years of course, and the various lives of some of her greatest songs, like ‘Tom’s Diner’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’.
I wanted to know if she still felt that a song should be an essentially sad thing and I had to ask her about one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard and a personal obsession for 35 years - her song Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, from the 1987 classic album Solitude Standing.
I was excited to hear about the prospect of a new album of brand new Suzanne Vega songs in 2023 and she is to begin the European leg of the New York Songs & Stories tour early in 2022 (pandemic permitting) - whatever you do don’t miss it.
In a world in which music is in great abundance, what Suzanne Vega does is as rare as things can get. Hats off to you Suzanne!
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Previous Episode
The Art of Longevity Season 2, Episode 6: Portico Quartet
Discovering a band all to yourself is the best type of music discovery there is. One day in the mid 2000s as my wife and I wandered along London’s South Bank, we were stopped in our tracks by music the likes of which we’d never heard before - jazzy, rhythmic, with a haunting steel drum but also with an element of ‘indie’. There, were four very young men (then in their late teens) busking with a confident authority - more a private performance than a busk, and with quite an audience too.
That band was Portico Quartet and we were just two of many thousands of early adopter fans from those early South Bank busks outside The National Gallery. We bought a copy of the band's very first, self-pressed four-track CD for £5, one of 10,000 sold I recently discovered. When I spoke with Duncan Bellamy (drums and the hang steel drum) and Jack Wylie (sax) for The Art of Longevity, Jack told me:
"We'd go off to buy big stacks of blank CDs at Maplins, and we bought this burner machine that could do eight at a time. I think we managed to do 200-250 a day. As a student, it meant we could make a living without working in a bar. It was great fun”.
I put it to Duncan and Jack that they would have to achieve 10 million streams to make the equivalent revenues now (20 million if splitting revenues 50:50 with a record label). Who’d have thought that, as part of establishing an early following as an instrumental band, you could create your own perfectly viable business model as well? For the Portico Quartet, those early years of ‘struggle’ were more like an exercise in building a cottage industry.
From those early days, the Portico Quartet’s rise was as meteoric as it gets for an instrumental band. In 2008 came the Mercury Music Prize nomination for their full debut album ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and one year later the band signed to Real World Records, the independent label owned by Peter Gabriel. That came with a huge leap in the maturity of their sound (2009’s Isla) and a full stop to the days of busking. As a fan, observing the band’s musical development has been a truly remarkable experience but don't take my word for it, listen to Duncan and Jack's take on things...
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Next Episode
The Art of Longevity Season 3, Episode 2: Feeder
1 RecommendationsWhen it comes to longevity, Feeder keeps coming back around, and the guitar-rock scene is all the better for it. It was back in January 2001 that “Buck Rogers” reached number five on the UK chart (the song remains a radio standard even in its 21st year). Grant Nicholas originally wrote the song to impress producer Gil Norton in the hope he would be persuaded to work with Feeder. Buck Rogers contains a big guitar riff and stream-of-consciousness lyrics about being jealous of his rival’s brand new Jaguar (with a CD player) and whatever else came into his drunken head. Including drinking cider from a lemon.
Having a bona fide top five hit was never going to put Grant Nicholas under any pressure to repeat the trick. Songs just pour out of him and while not all of them are as catchy as Buck Rogers, Nicolas knows his way around a melody and a soaring, anthemic chorus as well as any songwriter in the business. When we spoke on The Art Of Longevity I asked Grant how come he hasn’t often been asked to write for others (he has only a little, and I hesitate to suggest he could do more, not wishing to worry Feeder fans we’ll lead him astray). It remains an option, always.
Feeder may not be fashionable but they have made it through the music industry mangle - achieving chart success, playing arenas and having made a bunch of very good albums (with Comfort in Sound a genuine rock classic). These days it’s all about the joy of new songs and playing to the fans. Nicholas and his co-founder member/bassist Taka Hirose soldier on as Feeder through thick and thin, yet they operate with an enthusiasm and energy befitting of any up & coming rock band blossoming for the first time. Where a lot of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, Feeder stayed on the bus, and it turned out to be a magic bus!
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
The Art of Longevity - The Art of Longevity Season 3, Episode 1: Suzanne Vega
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to The Art of longevity. I'm your host, Keith Jopling. Brown, the son of suede once said that all successful artists have navigated for career stages. The struggle, the stratospheric rise to the top, crashed to the bottom of a renaissance. For the art of longevity, we talked to artists who spent decades in the music industry and discover what the journey has been like for them, and how they experience each of Brett's four s
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