putting the j in jjosh

So NYT has this music blog where people like Andrew Bird and Peter Holsapple write about songwriting and being a musician. Pretty neat. I got there from waxy, who links to a fun and well-written entry by Suzanne Vega about writing "Tom’s Diner", being remixed, and having her voice be the test audio for the invention of the mp3(!). Cool stuff. My favorite bit is where she writes about all the remixes of Tom’s Diner she’s received over the years, and when she put out a compilation of some of her favorites:

"However, it was a logistical nightmare to administrate. I had to go back to all the people who had taken the song without permission, and ask their permission . . . to use their version of my song! This is the main reason we have not put out “Tom’s Albums” 2 and 3, which we certainly could, as now we are up to almost 30 remixes including (really good) ones from Danger Mouse and Tupac." 

Tupac?!

That’s got Billboard #1 written all over it.

UPDATE

Hmmm, well the track was apparently released last year — youtube embed below — and I need to revise my predictions of #1 greatness. Vega is a little off when she calls it a remix — it’s more like a re-interpretation. The youtube comments on the various postings of this track are all over the map, with some fans saying it’s the "best soft pac ever" and others doubting it’s even him. It’s apparently a new(ish) track that showed up on The Best Of 2Pac Part 2: Life, a double CD set retrospective that came out last December (that allmusic calls "of poor quality", "hastily or indifferently assembled" and "another in a long line of posthumous cash-ins apparently overseen by 2Pac’s mother"). Sounds kind of weak to me.