How many restaurants can you say birthed the greatest intro sequence to a television show, spawned the digital music revolution and has the most expensive french fries since the Potato Famine? According to Suzanne Vega in the Times, Barnard ’82 and folk singer, Tom’s is more than just a refuge for overpriced appetizers. Apparently, she wrote a song about how great it was that she got half-full cups of coffee and then some British producers really liked it, so they looped it up and made this dance hit (below), which is remarkably different from the original. The original, because it was a single voice singing a capella, was so warm that the creators of the MP3 in the early 2000s 1990s thought that it would make a fantastic test subject. When Vega heard the MP3 version, she decided that she still liked the vinyl better, much to the chagrin of the engineers whose blood, sweat and tears created the music format that would make Napster and all of its subsequent legal troubles possible. Hurrah Morningside Heights!
12 Comments
@achully... i didn’t know either. and the original version was on mtv? a capella? that’s freakin sweet. good post.
@umm... THAT is supposed to be news?
@Anna C I think people knew most of it, the novel part is the story about how the MP3 was born… The rest of it is old news.
@what there are people who didnt know all of this already?
@I didn't at least. Now I do!
@Um. Sara Vega?
Any relation to Suzanne Vega?
@i love the literal images
@wow that was an incredibly convoluted description…
@SlEASy is that hawkmedinejad?
@Sara Vega? Any relation to Lou Bega?
@Justin You are absolutely right! Thanks.
@... mpeg layer 3 (mp3) existed loooooong before the year 2000.