Tom's Diner
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"Tom's Diner" is a pop song written in 1981 by American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. It was originally recorded by Vega as the first track on her album Solitude Standing in 1987. The vocal was used as the basis for an album compiled Tom's Album with, among others, The DNA Disciples, After One, Bingo Hand Job a/k/a R.E.M.. The "Tom's Diner" of the song is a restaurant in New York City, which was later fictionalized as Monk's in Seinfeld.
The writing of the song
The song is written as a simple first person vignette of a man stopping at an unnamed diner for a cup of coffee. He notes the newspaper he is reading, and the women who come and go in the diner, outside in the rain. The ringing of bells at a nearby cathedral cause him to reminisce on an unnamed companion with whom he had picnicked previously. Finishing his coffee, he hurries from the diner to catch a train.
Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if "he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and
\"Tom's Diner Day\": The date of the composition
An article on Suzanne Vega's [official website] uses clues in the song to determine the exact date that Vega wrote it.
Vega herself said that she wrote the song sometime in 1982; Brian Rose has said that it was written sometime between mid-1981 and mid-1982. The lyrics of the song refer to a rainy morning, when she was at the diner on the corner, reading in her newspaper of "a story of an actor / who had died while he was drinking", and afterwards "turning to the horoscope / and looking for the funnies". Only two newspapers in New York City carried comic strips, or "funnies", in 1981 and 1982, and only one, the New York Post, featured a front-page story of the death of William Holden (star of Sunset Blvd.), whose body was discovered on November 16, 1981. He had died from a fall at his apartment, suffered after drinking excessively. The story in the Post concerning Holden's death was not carried until two days later on November 18, which is taken to be the exact date of the composition.
On that day in New York, however, the weather was not rainy, but overcast. Vega has acknowledged this by admitting that "Tom's Diner" featured a "composite of events", and that the rain was from a morning she remembered being in the diner during the spring of 1982, after the initial events of the song.
Original recording
Vega originally conceived "Tom's Diner" as a piece for voice and solo piano, but since she couldn't play piano, she decided to record it a cappella. Her recording of the song is extremely sparse - no vocal effects are used except her singing voice - and clocks in at slightly over two minutes long. It was not a major hit; the song "Luka", which follows it on the album, was released as a successful single.
Somewhat surprisingly, in order to confront stage fright, Suzanne Vega opened her appearance at the Prince's Trust Concert on June 20, 1986, with "Tom's Diner", intending to walk off stage afterwards if it wasn't well-received. It was, and she performed a full and equally well-received set.
The DNA remix
In 1990, two secretive British record producers remixed "Tom's Diner" without Suzanne Vega's permission, grafting her vocals onto an infectious dance beat from Soul II Soul, and turning her simple ad-libbed outro - "Doo doo doo doo, doo da-doo doo" - into the song's driving hook. They took the name "DNA", later calling themselves The DNA Disciples to distinguish themselves from no wave band DNA, and released their work on a limited basis for distribution to clubs as "Oh Suzanne", by "DNA featuring Suzanne Vega". Vega's record company of the time, A&M, decided to buy the single and release it themselves rather than taking DNA to court for copyright infringement after consultation with Vega, who liked the interpretation, and DNA, who conducted the whole deal through intermediaries in order to hide their true identities. The remix became a much larger hit than Vega had with the song originally, and spawned a number of rap, dance, and rock remixes and remakes from artists such as Peter Behrens and "Bingo Hand Job", a whimsical one-time collaboration between Billy Bragg and R.E.M. It was also sampled in songs by Public Enemy and Lil Kim, among other rap acts.
In 1991, Vega, noting the huge number of remakes of the song, released Tom's Album, a compilation of different versions of the song, spanning a variety of musical genres. The album also featured another DNA remix of one of her songs, "Rusted Pipe".
The \"Mother of the MP3\"
An article in Business 2.0 magazine revealed that "Tom's Diner" was also used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the audio compression scheme known as MP3 at what is now the Fraunhofer Society. He recalled:
- I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm...somewhere down the corridor, a radio was playing "Tom's Diner". I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice. [Suzanne Vega Fun Facts (official website)]
Samples
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[Tom's Diner] ([file info])
- Problems playing the files? See .
External links
- [Tom's Diner Lyrics]
- Tom's Diner: Live at The Royal Albert Hall, November 18, 1986 (2m 10s)
- * [Windows Media Player]
- * [Real Player]
- [Tom's Diner Live Performance December, 2002] Suzanne Vega Documentary
- [Tom's Diner Day]
- [On the DNA Remix (from the UK's Record Mirror, 1990)]
- [Tom's Diner and the cathedral]
- [Suzanne Vega: Fun Facts: TV: The "Tom's Diner"/"Seinfeld" connection...]
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