Suzanne Vega - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, UK 1989
This is from the big annual Glastonbury Festival, though perhaps it wasn't so big back in the 1980s. As I write this in 2025, Vega has performed at this festival a surprising number of times. Seven times in all so far: 1989, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2022. However, the only BBC recording I can find from her is this 1989. That's also surprising, since the BBC didn't broadcast many sets back then, and has broadcast more and more as time has gone on. So if anyone has any of her other Glastonbury sets, please pass them on so I can post those too.
I read an interview with Vega many years after this concert in which she was asked: "What is the closest you've come to death?" She responded, "A death threat at Glastonbury Festival in 1989. The police told me not to go on, but I said I had to because I was headlining. So I wore a bullet-proof vest. It seemed unlikely that I would be assassinated, but it was shocking and very stressful." Given that, I give her kudos for putting on a remarkably poised performance here.
Vega was probably close to the peak of her popularity around this time. Her 1988 album "Solitude Standing" did especially well in the the British charts, making it to Number Two there, compared to Number 11 in the U.S.
This concert is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent.
This album is 44 minutes long.
01 talk
02 Solitude Standing
03 talk
04 Small Blue Thing
05 Cracking
06 talk
07 Freeze Tag
08 Left of Center
09 The Queen and the Soldier
10 talk
11 Pilgrimage
12 talk
13 Men in a War
14 talk
15 Luka
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