What a lovely oddity this is.
A song that Suzanne Vega wrote about eating Breakfast one morning was sampled illicitly by UK artists DNA and came in for Record Company grief, before Suzanne stepped in and released it as a joint single.
What followed soon after is this collection of found and presented (none solicited) versions of Tom’s Diner selected and released by Ms Vega as an album dedicated to one song (with a new DNA collab as a bonus) – something that I have only come across once before (a compilation dedicated to Louie Louie) and would be interested to find any others.
So how can an album where twelve of the thirteen songs are the same one be interesting and captivating throughout its duration? Thankfully, it’s by being generally merciless with the source material with varying degrees of success.
Where Tom’s Diner lends itself so well to such re-interpertation is the beat behind the song – anyone can do almost anything to this, and any listener’s first thought would be “ah, it’s Tom’s Diner“. It’s an easygoing song, but the structure is relentless thanks to the chorusless breathy delivery and stream of consciousness lyrics, so it’s a perfect choice for taking bits and replacing others to change the sound and the meaning but retain the spirit.
It starts off nicely enough with Rusted Pipe, a collaboration between the two parties who set this chain of events off – Suzanne Vega and DNA – before Suzanne chips in with an unaccompanied vocal of her song. Then it gets a bit eclectic. We have versions in German Peter Behrens with Dep De Dö Dep) and Swedish (Mats Höger with Tages Kafé), a Reggae rendition from Michigan & Smiley, and even a thinly-disguised REM (playing a live show at London’s Borderline as Bingo Hand Job) chip in with a strange improvised singalong with Billy Bragg before everyone descends into giggles.
It’s not without social comment, either – rapper Nikki D brings Daddy’s Little Little Girl to the party with the tale of teenage pregnancy, and album highlight Waiting at the Border puts Beth Watson in the character of a soldier during Operation Desert Storm alongside samples from George Bush with lyrics that are sadly still valid almost 20 years later:
And I’m trying not to think about
The price of Desert Storm
Though I know that we will win here
There’ll be many people dead
And to break up the ‘der der der der’ a bit, there’s the playful Jeannie’s Diner, replacing the now-familiar beat with the similar theme from 1960s high-concept sitcom and Hagman vehicle I Dream of Jeannie, which also forms the basis of a lyrical description of the show, including a quick mention of TV censorship at the time and the revelation that it was sorta like Bewitched.
In short, it’s a mad little album that would drive you utterly insane if you listened to it every week for a year. But it’s a fun record to have about and to dip into. And now I can put it back away into its little corner for another year or so.
Related posts:
- Mid-Afternoon Compilation Saturday – This is Psychedelia
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- Mid-afternoon Compilation Saturday!
- Mid-Afternoon Compilation Saturday – Fifteen Minutes: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground
- Mid-Afternoon Compilation Saturday: Summer’s Kiss – A Tribute to the Afghan Whigs
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