Aug 28, 2013

RhoDeo 1334 Aetix

Hello, as the warmongers in Washington and London scream attack and try to influence the neutrals without a schred of evidence, without a plan and shrugging off the unforseen consequences. Common sense is once more on standby. Lets reittarate, because the media once more show their lack of independent journalism, Assad is winning against the rebels he has absolutely no need to use poison gas. On the other hand a naive remark by Obama about a red line gave the dark forces all they need to once more use their favorite tool, a false flag operation, the US & UK as well as Israel are well known for using these tactics. Clearly something had to be done to prevent Assad from winning his war against the rebels. For me Washington and London 's posture in this is almost proof that they are behind the nervegas attack that killed 400 Syrians, and who knows the start of World War 3.  Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent. (from Washington Post) haven't seen her on the news, omitting such shows us how corrupted the media are, or maybe how fearful they are to go up against Washington Warmongers. Even when the fact that a large majority of Brits is against any involvement, the tory nazis completely ignore the public, that the uninformed and extremely gullible US public love attack attack, kill kill as if its a videogame shouldn't come as a surprise. It's crunching time for Obama, alas he clearly ain't no Dr Luther King, he doesn't have real convictions he's just another black opportunist.

As we continue the females in the eighties today, today's artist was the first major figure in the bumper crop of female singer/songwriters who rose to prominence during the late '80s and '90s. Her hushed, restrained folk-pop and highly literate lyrics  laid the initial musical groundwork for what later became their trademark sound.  And now   ......N'Joy

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Suzanne Vega was the first major figure in the bumper crop of female singer/songwriters who rose to prominence during the late '80s and '90s. Her hushed, restrained folk-pop and highly literate lyrics (inspired chiefly by Leonard Cohen, as well as Lou Reed and Bob Dylan) laid the initial musical groundwork for what later became the trademark sound of Lilith Fair (a tour on which she was a regular). Moreover, her left-field hit single "Luka" helped convince record companies that folk-styled singer/songwriters were not a thing of the past after all, paving the way for breakthroughs by Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked, Shawn Colvin, Edie Brickell, the Indigo Girls, Sinéad O'Connor, and a host of others on through the '90s. Vega's early commercial success helped open doors for a wealth of talent, and even if she couldn't sustain the level of popularity she reached in 1987 with "Luka" and the platinum Solitude Standing, she maintained a strong and dedicated cult following. Her association with -- and marriage to -- experimental producer Mitchell Froom during the '90s resulted in two intriguing but uneven albums; however, following their painful divorce, Vega returned in 2001 with her first album in five years, Songs in Red and Gray, which was greeted with her strongest reviews in a decade.


Suzanne Vega was born July 11, 1959, in Santa Monica, California; her parents divorced shortly thereafter, and after her mother (a jazz guitarist) remarried to Puerto Rican novelist Ed Vega, the family moved to Manhattan. A shy and quiet child, Suzanne nonetheless learned to take care of herself growing up in the tough neighborhoods of Spanish Harlem. Her parents often sang folk songs around the house, and when she began playing the guitar at age 11, she found herself attracted to the poetry of singer/songwriter music (Dylan, Cohen), and found a refuge from New York's chaos in traditional folk (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez). At age 14, she made her first attempts at writing songs; however, when she attended the High School for the Performing Arts as a teenager, it was to study dance, not music. She subsequently enrolled at Barnard College as a literature major, and during this time, she began playing at coffeehouses and folk festivals on the West Side and near Columbia University; she soon moved up to the Lower East Side/Greenwich Village folk clubs, including the famed Folk City club where Bob Dylan started out. In 1979, Vega attended a Lou Reed concert, and the effect was a revelation: here was an artist chronicling the harsh urban world Vega knew, with the detail and literacy of a folk artist. Vega discovered a new voice and sense of possibility for her original material, and her writing grew rapidly.

Vega graduated from college in 1982 and held down several low-level day jobs while quickly becoming the Greenwich Village folk scene's brightest hope. Record companies were reluctant to take a chance on a singer/songwriter steeped in folk music, however, since they saw little chance of any commercial returns. After three years of rejections, Vega and her managers Ron Fierstein and Steve Addabbo finally convinced A&M (which had turned her down twice) to give her a shot, and she signed a contract in 1983. Former Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye was brought in to co-produce the debut with Addabbo and lend it a smoother, more contemporary flavor.


Titled simply Suzanne Vega, it was released in 1985 to much critical applause. Thanks in part to the single "Marlene on the Wall," the album was a genuine hit in Britain, where it eventually went platinum; while it didn't duplicate that success in America, the album's sales of 200,000 strong still came as a shock to A&M (and Vega). For the 1987 follow-up, Vega overcame writer's block to craft an eclectic batch of new material, as well as drawing upon a backlog of songs that hadn't fit the debut. Again produced by Kaye and Addabbo, Solitude Standing was Vega's finest achievement; the richness and variety of its compositions were complemented by the lusher full-band arrangements and more accessible (albeit less folky) production. The album's lead single, "Luka," was a haunting first-person account of child abuse, whose terse (and fictional) lyrics struck a chord with American radio listeners. As a result, the album was an instant hit on both sides of the Atlantic; it debuted at number two in the U.K. and went gold within three months in the U.S., peaking at number 11 and eventually going platinum. "Luka" hit number three on the American pop charts -- unheard of for a singer/songwriter in the '80s prior to Vega -- and was nominated for three Grammys. As record companies rushed to fill a market niche they hadn't known existed (and uncovering some major talents in the process), Vega spent almost a year on the road touring in support of the record; exhausted, she returned to New York to take some time off, and also tracked down her biological father for the first time.

When the time came to record her third album in 1989, Vega decided to co-produce it herself with her keyboardist/boyfriend Anton Sanko (longtime bassist Michael Visceglia also had input). Vega began to experiment with her lyrics, pushing beyond the narrative story-songs that dominated her first two records, and had minimalist composer Philip Glass contribute a string arrangement. The result, Days of Open Hand, was released in 1990, yet didn't produce another hit single and was somewhat lost in the shuffle of new female singer/songwriters; though it did sell respectably, reviews were somewhat mixed. Even though the album didn't recapture Vega's 1987 popularity, she was still -- indirectly -- involved in one of 1990's most bizarre hit singles. Two British dance producers working under the alias DNA took the a cappella Solitude Standing track "Tom's Diner" and set it to an electronic dance beat, releasing the result as a bootleg single called "Oh Suzanne." When A&M discovered the piracy, Vega decided to allow the single's official release under its original title, and it became a substantial hit in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. The following year, Vega gathered a number of other unsolicited versions of the song and compiled them as Tom's Album.

 Intrigued by the success of "Tom's Diner," Vega began looking for ways to open up her musical approach. She hooked up with producer Mitchell Froom, best known for his work on latter-day albums by Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, and Crowded House. Froom applied his trademark approach -- dissonant arrangements, clanging percussion -- to Vega's new 1992 album, and while 99.9 F° didn't reinvent her as a dance artist (as some expected), the synth-centered sound of the record was unlike any of her previous work. Froom and Vega began dating several months after the record's completion, and they wound up marrying; their daughter, Ruby, was born in 1994, and Vega naturally took some time off from music. She returned in 1996 with Nine Objects of Desire, again with Froom in the producer's chair, though his approach was somewhat less radical this time out; in terms of Vega's subject matter, there was a newfound physical sensuality borne of her marriage and childbirth experiences.

All was not well for long, however; Froom began seeing Ally McBeal singer Vonda Shepard, and he and Vega split up in August 1998. In 1999, Vega released the best-of retrospective Tried and True, taking stock of her past career (she had also split with longtime manager Ron Fierstein); she also published her first book, The Passionate Eye, a collection of poems, lyrics, essays, journalistic pieces, and the like. Vega began playing shows with bassist Michael Visceglia again, and worked on material addressing the breakup of her marriage. Songs in Red and Gray was released in the fall of 2001 and marked a return to the more direct sound of Suzanne Vega and Solitude Standing; it also garnered her best reviews since those records. Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega arrived in 2003, followed by the Live at Montreux 2004 DVD/CD in 2006 and the all-new Beauty & Crime in 2007. In 2010, Vega released Close Up, Vol. 1 and Close Up, Vol. 2 -- the first half of a proposed four-volume collection of re-recorded versions of songs from her catalog, all featuring stripped-down, unadorned arrangements that highlight the lyrics and melodies -- and followed the first two installments of the series with Close Up, Vol. 3 in 2011. The final release in the sequence, Close-Up, Vol. 4: Songs of Family, appeared a year later in 2012.

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Though early comparisons were made to Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega's true antecedents were Janis Ian and Leonard Cohen. Like Ian, she sings with a precise, frequently half-spoken phrasing that gives her lyrics an intensity that seems to suggest an unsteady control consciously held over emotional chaos. Like Cohen, Vega observes the world in poetic metaphor, her cold urban landscapes reflecting a troubled sense of love and loss. The key track is "Small Blue Thing," in which the singer pictures herself as an object "Like a marble/or an eye," "made of china/made of glass," "lost inside your pocket," and "turning in your hand." The sharply picked acoustic guitar and other isolated musical elements echo the closely observed scenes -- everything seems to be in tight close-up and sharp focus. Often, the singer seems to be using the songs to measure an emotional distance; sometimes, as in "Marlene on the Wall," she observes her own actions from a remove. In "Freeze Tag," she tells a companion, "I will be Dietrich/and you can be Dean"; in "Marlene," a poster of the aloof movie star "watches from the wall," observing the singer's succession of lovers, and she tries to emulate her heroine's persona, telling the current one, "Even if I am in love with you/all this to say, what's it to you?" The ten songs on Suzanne Vega constitute the self-analysis of a young woman who desires possession without offering commitment; no wonder that, upon its release, it was taken to heart by young women across the country and in Europe.



Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega  (flac 195mb)

01 Cracking 2:52
02 Freeze Tag 2:36
03 Marlene On The Wall 3:40
04 Small Blue Thing 3:56
05 Straight Lines 3:51
06 Undertow 3:28
07 Some Journey 3:41
08 The Queen And The Soldier 4:51
09 Knight Moves 3:37
10 Neighborhood Girls 3:21

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The songs on Solitude Standing, Suzanne Vega's second album, had years listed beside them on the lyric sheet, so you could see that some of them dated back to 1978. But that bold admission heralded the album's triumph -- its diversity was what made it so good. Partially, that was because the old songs were the equal of anything on the first album -- tunes like the a cappella slice-of-life "Tom's Diner" and the warmly romantic "Gypsy" simply wouldn't have fit thematically on the debut. On Solitude Standing, however, they became part of an album of story songs set in a variety of musical contexts; many had band arrangements, and in fact, members of Vega's touring band often were credited as co-writers. Additionally, Vega had developed more as a singer without losing the focused intonation that had made her debut -- one of many compelling elements which helped make "Luka," a character song about domestic abuse, a fluke hit.



Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing  (flac 281mb)

01 Tom's Diner 2:09
02 Luka 3:51
03 Ironbound / Fancy Poultry 6:19
04 In The Eye 4:15
05 Night Vision 2:48
06 Solitude Standing 4:49
07 Calypso 4:14
08 Language 3:56
09 Gypsy 4:04
10 Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song) 5:13
11 Tom's Diner (Reprise) 2:39
12 Tom's Diner (Dance mix) 5:28

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Suzanne Vega is a beautiful example of an artist excelling despite her limitations. While the singer-songwriter doesn't have much of a voice, she has no problem being incredibly expressive. Subtlety is the quality that defines Days of Open Hand, an album every bit as compelling as the superb Solitude Standing. Vega doesn't need to shout or preach in order to get her points across. On "Men in a War," the folk-pop-rock explorer examines the plight of disabled veterans without expressing the type of anger that Bruce Cockburn would when addressing such a subject. Restrained and understated, treasures like "Those Whole Girls (Run in Grace)," "Rusted Pipe" and "Room Off the Street" and the unsettling "Institution Green" show that for all their delicacy, Vega's songs can be quite meaty and give listeners a great deal to think about.



Suzanne Vega - Days Of Open Hand (flac 248mb)

01 Tired Of Sleeping 4:22
02 Men In A War 4:47
03 Rusted Pipe 4:16
04 Book Of Dreams 3:22
05 Institution Green 6:15
06 Those Whole Girls (Run In Grace) 3:09
07 Room Off The Street 3:00
08 Big Space 3:48
09 Predictions 4:59
10 Fifty-Fifty Chance 2:36
11 Pilgrimage 5:10

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is there a chance to re-up suzanne vega S/T

Thanks