Just curious as to why 3 of her best songs haven't been officially recorded yet. I Bet she must have had a really good reason back then not to have recorded/released tracks in the likes of "Boulevardiers" "Playing" or "The Leaf Song".

They could easily be fitted onto her first album.


Maybe someone here who reads this is on speaking terms with her in daily life and could incite her to get a move on with it.

cheers,

Ralph

Suzanne had to select a limited number from quite a large number of songs for her first album, I think. That's why potential songs like the boulevardiers, playing (one of the greatest songs of all times, I say), black widow station, the silver lady and the infamous "the marching dream" didn't end up on the first album.

I don't think Suzanne considered the Leaf Song as a song that could end up on the album, though, don't know why.

Suzanne had plans to release an album with old songs, and the first five I mentioned would certainly have been on that one. I read about it in an interview somewhere, but I never figured out what happened to the plan.

These songs are very good, and would make an excellent album in my opinion. I'm sure that everyone on this board is dying for such an album. I doubt it that one of those songs will end up on Suzanne's next album, though it would be totally cool.

Spikeys

Yeah, "playing" is really really special, I listened to the short sample available on this site, alot of noise in it, but after a while it really starts growing on the track, strangly enough.

If she really is planning on putting out an old-song album, I do hope she will record both a plugged and un-plugged version of these aforementioned tracks. Knowing they are already perfect being what they are now, played acoustically, but I'd just like to know what they would sound like with bass and background synths too.


regards,

R

It still baffles me that "The Marching Dream" didn't make it onto SV because of its triptychal relationship to TQATS and Knight moves, plus it was just so BEAUTIFUL.

Of all her other early songs, "The Boulevardiers" is my other main fave. Think about how well it would have worked to put it on SV because of the pic on the back of the liner notes with her standing on the street - it would have helped give the album more of a Greenwich Village sort of feel, which certainly would have been appropriate and reflective of one of the places that most contributed to the beginning of her career and her success.

-M

Ralph, I think there is a recording available of one of "the infinite mind" radio programs with Suzanne, it includes a full recording of Playing with almost no noise. Since it's broadcast I think it's legal to own a copy of it.

I'm fairly sure Suzanne didn't include "The Boulevardiers," "Playing" and "The Leaf Song" simply because they weren't the strongest numbers she had when recording the first album -- two of them were almost a decade old at the time, and perhaps "The Boulevardiers" was just a bit too personal.

As mentioned, "Playing" was recorded for "The Infinite Mind" show #138, first broadcast in October 2000. This version is acoustically cleaner, but a bit more laid-back than her early performances, and is available as a 100% legal CD-R (cassettes are apparently no longer available)through the Lichtenstein Creative Media web store (where you can also listen to the show archives via streaming audio):
http://store.yahoo.com/lcmedia/play.html

"The Marching Dream" almost did make it onto the E.A., and a Steve Addabbo-produced demo/outtake from this period was donated to a December 1988 Fast Folk anniversary release (FF405/406, still available through the Smithsonian/Folkways website).

I have to wonder, though, would "The Marching Dream" have its crazymadfat cult status if had been included on SV to begin with? Would we have taken it for granted as an easy-to-obtain, officially released commodity and not appreciated it like we do in the way we do now and for the reasons that seem to be.

-M

Actually, I just remembered something. Re: your first post, Ralph, actually those 3 songs could not "easily be fitted onto her first album". CDs were not yet really on the market by the time SV came out, though tapes were, and LPs were still a very, very popular choice for the consumer. Only so much could be fit onto an LP - not NEARLY as much as onto a CD, so really those 10 songs Vega put on there were probably about as much as could be put on. I think LPs could only accommodate about 45 minutes' worth of materials, as opposed to CDs 80 minutes' worth. And if you wanted to go insane with a tape, I think I occasionally saw blank tapes @ 120 minutes, but artists would pretty much stick with the approximate 45 minute LP maximum time, because if they were to have put more on a tape, think of all the pissed off LP purchasers you would have.

-M

maybe "the marching dream" was not included because it was thematically too close to " the queen and the soldier" and "knight moves"? however, how "straight lines" could make it onto the album instead of "playing" will be an everlasting mystery to me.

happy new year everyone!

remember me,

philipp

I think "The Maching Dream" was not included, because according to Suzanne it was too personal, but I may be wrong...

Long live "The Marching Dream"!

Happy New Year!
J.C.

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http://www.vega.net
http://setlists.vega.net
http://rustedpipe.vega.net

Did anybody read my last post about LP maximum playing time?! YEESH. Look, apparently she could only select about 45 minutes' worth of stuff from the many, many songs she had done already in her career. Personally, I would have had her throw out "Freeze Tag" and "Small Blue Thing" and insert "The Boulevardiers" and "The Marching Dream". I seriously doubt that the reason that songs like "The Marching Dream" and "The Boulevardiers" didn't make the cut had anything to do with how personal they are - MANY of her songs on her LPs, including that one, are quite personal, either transparently or obliquely. Lots of songs couldn't make the cut, the decision-making process was probably quite difficult, END OF STORY!

-M

hm, maybe the reason is somehow connected to the LP maximum playing time. i wonder why nobody has thought of this before ;o)

however this doesn't explan why "straght lines" is on the album and "the marching dream" is not!

three cheers for the marching dream!!

philipp

I think that I like "The leaf song" and "playing" more than the other rarities, ut don`t know why, really, they seem to hit me at a certain point in myself, maybe giving words to some unspoken feelings in my life, don't know, but well.... I'd really appreciate an album of Old Songs!

> Nothing much (not much) Moni.

Actually an LP can be cut up to 60 minutes (30 per side), so the extra songs could easily have fit.
The limitation album running times was always more of a commercial than technical one anyway -- initially U.S. albums tended to run short at 30-35 minutes, while those in the rest of the world usually pushed closer to the 40-45 minute mark.

"Suzanne Vega" clocks in under 36 minutes, with only ten songs, so squeezing another song or two into the remaining 9-24 minutes of available vinyl time certainly wasn't a technical limitation, but obviously an artistic judgement -- and considering how well the album has held up, it's a bit late to be second-guessing her choices two decades later, isn't it? (But if we're doing that -- why wasn't "Gypsy" included? ;) )

So I stand by my belief that the main reason those earlier songs didn't make the cut on the first LP was because Suzanne just didn't like them quite as much as the ones that did.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Milo & others -- "Straight Lines," "Freeze Tag" and "Small Blue Thing" are all wonderful, amazing songs, and "Small Blue Thing" was the very first Suzanne Vega song I ever heard (and, hence, the entire reason I ever became a fan of hers and joined the Undertow), so to anyone who suggests hopping aboard a time machine and retroactively deleting said songs I reply: Back. Away. From. The. Keyboard.

I agree w/ some of y'all that LP space limitations probably played a role in limiting the album's length. although I've gotten the impression that Suzanne's personal taste runs more toward small, perfect gems than to grandiose, bloviating epics (99.9F and 9OOD, both produced well into the CD era, still run around the half-hour mark). Sure, it might have been technically possible to have made the first album nearly twice as long as it actually is, but would anyone have wanted this, other than all of us future Towies, some of whom were yet to be conceived? Even some folks at her label doubted she would sell even 50,000 copies, so it probably didn't occur to them that the American public was dying to hear an entire hour of acoustic music from an unknown singer-songwriter.

More to the point, that first album *is* a small, perfect gem, one of a handful of such things that exist in the world , and a lot of that has to do with what she chose to put on it and what she chose to leave out.

"Cracking" sounds like it was born to be the first song of the first record, introducing the world to Suzanne's vision ("walk with me, and we will see what we have got" .... uh, what's this with her heart being worn out "at the knees"? ... "wondering where the hell I have been"? ... what the hell's going on here?), even though "Tom's Diner" was the song that she was opening her concerts with. And has anybody ever topped that triple-whammy of TQATS/Knight Moves/Neighborhood Girls at the end of side 2?

I really like "The Boulevardiers" too, but I just don't think it belonged in that company; it has kind of an offhand, inside-joking mood that doesn't seems like it would have fit the mood of that album, and personally I don't think it's up to the same artistic level as the rest. The same goes for, say, "Daniella" and "The Rent Song," as much as I really enjoy those songs and as many traffic laws I would be willing to break rushing to the store to buy them were they to be commercially available. "The Marching Dream" is a masterpiece, but as others here have noted it is a bit close to the theme of TQATS and Knight Moves (Suzanne once said it led to the other two, in fact).

Also, "The Marching Dream" IS commercially available, at least via the Fast Folk compilations sold by Smithsonian Folkways. Same w/ "Black Widow Station" and perhaps some of the others.