Oh Suzanne!

I was late in this morning meaning that I listened to Woman’s Hour and a small interview with Suzanne Vega who mentioned a story which I was vaguely aware of, namely that Tom’s Diner was used to test the early incarnations of the MP3 format probably because of the a cappella clarity of the song. Well I can add something related from far earlier. When the company I worked for was called GPT, one of the division made payphones, a component of which was an announcement system and in early tests of that they used Tom’s Diner to test to clarity of the recordings. Somewhere I think I dreamt it was my copy of the album that they used but it probably wasn’t. Anyway – beats MP3 testing doesn’t it?