October 29, 2004

• Thanks, Jerry! This is great!
• I have no idea who Leonard Cohen is, but I've heard his stuff and it's pretty good.
• I am a huge fan of Leonard Cohen. The recordings of Silent Night and Tennessee Waltz are especially revealing and touching. Note the audience starting to laugh in the beginning thinking that Cohen is singing these songs out of irony, when in fact he sings with complete sincerity, honoring American song craft. Dream concert pairing: Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.
• Leonard Cohen translated and sung "A Wandering Canadian/Un Canadien Errant". That's, like cool.
• I have no idea who Leonard Cohen is Interesting tidbit: he was an ordained Zen Monk at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center for several years, before leaving to make "Ten New Songs". More articles here.
• Lovely post, Jerry.
• The whole web-distribution thing is being debated among artists. The best statement from an artist on the pro-side is by Janis Ian - I have to say I've been convinced by her, not least because it's been try for my life. The other day, I bought my first CD is about 7 years (I'm not much of a music consumer - love it, but get by with a few classical). It was a live CD by Jason Mraz, and I hope to get his albulm soon. But the only reason I had ever heard of him was from someone offering a couple of tracks on a website; I later heard more from his own website. Downloading MP3s also sold a concert ticket for Great Big Sea to me, and will soon sell a CD (as soon as I figure out which of the many good ones to get). I'd had friends who were GBS fans for years, but I never heard the music (I don't listen to the radio at all - don't own one currently).
• The whole web-distribution thing is being debated among artists. The best statement from an artist on the pro-side is by Janis Ian - I have to say I've been convinced by her, not least because it's been try for my life. The other day, I bought my first CD is about 7 years (I'm not much of a music consumer - love it, but get by with a few classical). It was a live CD by Jason Mraz, and I hope to get his albulm soon. But the only reason I had ever heard of him was from someone offering a couple of tracks on a website; I later heard more from his own website. Downloading MP3s also sold a concert ticket for Great Big Sea to me, and will soon sell a CD (as soon as I figure out which of the many good ones to get). I'd had friends who were GBS fans for years, but I never heard the music (I don't listen to the radio at all - don't own one currently).
• Please replace "try" with "true".
• Note the audience... That is what grabs me deeply with these mostly crappy concert recordings, squidranch. I'd never heard him live and he is a joker and as charismatic as I imagine. Much more so, actually. I always thought it was his voice and words and guitar playing that made him iconic. His records. Well, they did it for me. Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits has got to be one of the densest records of the last 50 years. Perfect even by funeral parlour standards. And now, listening to these live recordings it turns out he's won us over with charm. I am used to the much older deep (and I image red-wine-drenched) studio voice of Cohen, the Cohen who shared my 1975 five-year-old soundspace with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Sweet Baby James and Joni singing “Carrie”. Hard to be mellow and be remembered by me back then, but I do remember "Sisters of Mercy". It was the bells and whistles at the end that made it for me as a kid, and the smile on my mother's face. A great song for children, anyway, just like all of Mordecai Richler's books are childrens' books, not just Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang. Everybody should read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz when they are 11 or 12 years old. Montreal, man, it must have been something in the water. And then my mother would play Ob-la-di Ob-la-da and life would go on and we'd boogie all over the place. Rah! Being born in 1970 was excellent musical timing on my part. And so in these 'tapes' here he is, well, himself! and young and high strung and advocating. It's wonderful! I'm 34 and wish I was 64. My two favourite uncles and my grandma went to see Jimi Hendrix here in Ottawa in the spring of 1968, and I've heard the recording. God indeed came to town that night. My hippie uncles of course loved it. My uptight grandmother was absofuckinglutely blown away. A semi-famous filmmaker by that point in her life and married to a Film Maker (there is something to that theory of the woman behind the man. Many in and out of the family think she deserved the Oscar, but Budge accepted it*), she walked out of the theatre and said to no one in particular, "That man is going to be world famous. What he did with those musicians was simply amazing." She walked in not knowing his name and didn't know his name at the end, she just knew great art when she lived it. I digress. I want to talk about Cohen and Dylan here, as squidranch envisions. What a tour, indeed, and not at all impossible now that I think about it. Lately Dylan has been making it his business to play with the best muscians he can find. His current road band has had a floating second guitar the last couple of years (I miss Charlie Sexton but I loved Freddy Koella) and a drummer or two but the almost decade-old combination of Larry Campbell (on guitar, cittern, violin, pedal steel, banjo and/or backing vocals depending on the tune) and Tony Garnier (electric, acoustic and stand-up bass, never sings a note) lets Bob play and do exactly what he wants to do. And that is what he has always done best. Listen... the last the headliners he's toured with were Willie Nelson, Van Morrisson and Joni Mitchell. Right there, in my book, you've got three of the greatest living singers of self-written songs, period. And I know Dylan loves Leonard Cohens songs. I wonder if he’s covered Cohen. It’d likely be here. I could go on...
• *And my grandfather made what I think is the best Oscar acceptance speech ever: "This is an American award for a Canadian film about a Japanese man skiing down a Nepalese mountain...." Take that Michael Moore! So Dylan. Here's a guy who's most highly anticipated record in maybe 25 years ("I've heard it's as good a Blood on the Tracks, man!") - after all the acclaim and great triple-Grammy humdrum (and soy-bomb) madness with Danny Lanois around the amazing-sounding Time Out of Mind (and then the sudden scary guano/heartsack hospital incident: only Bob Dylan could make headlines around the world for goin' down to the river and inhaling batshit dust that then seriously inflamed the delicate sac that holds his heart!) - this highly hyped record, called Love & Theft was released on September 11, 2001. And it had "Mississippi". As great a song as Dylan has ever written, I feel, and it's greater to me now, more than any song and surely more timely. I wonder if at least one (probably left-leaning Canadian) person reading this will remember listening to CBC Radio One on the first Saturday after September 11, 2001, at 1:00pm when Norah Young opened her show "Definitely Not The Opera" without words but simply played Mississippi in its entirety (it's the longest song on the album and the only one that's not somehow a derivitive blues. And it's a hell of a lyric). I just wept and wept. ACid tears of absolute joy and terrible grief. I recognized the song 'cause I'd heard Sheryl Crow sing it. I knew the words and loved the song, and then it just rang out so beautifully and in that tired but melodious 21st-century Dylan voice. You see: I'd been waiting for September 11, 2001 for weeks, waiting for this record and thinking of the joy that particular day would bring, as had been Dylan fans all over the world. That morning I woke up at about 8:30am (EST) and my first thought was, "WoooHooo! Love & Theft!!! Get the coffee and head for Record Runner!!!!" I was united with thousands of people all over the globe. Then about 25 minutes later I heard the world went wrong, [John Lacharity, perky local morning radio voice talking to his just-before-nine market guy in London, UK:] "Well, how are the markets doing this morning? How is the dollar doing?" [Tentative English guy;] "Well, John the dollar, ah... well, we have a report that a small plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. We're not very sure right now..." And so it goes. I 've read and heard tell stories from more than a few Dylan fans who were lined up in Manhatten to buy the new Bob on that too-perfect fall morning. They had been waiting as only a Dylan fan can... September 11, 2001 was the greatest outside shock of my life so far. I had been waiting for "it" for a couple of years and wondering when "it" was going to happen and what "it" was going to be. I felt "it" was coming but I never could have guessed just how dramatic and transformative it would be. But for me September 11, 2001 will albays be first and formost the day Bob Dylan put out my favourite song. I could go on but I keep running out of space so let's all go buy Lenny's new album and hope nothing bad happens. ;-)
• Fine link, Jerry. Thanks. Always enjoy the lyrics to Cohen's songs even more than the music. Would ye have site to the lyrics?
• I always thought Limp Bizkit should do a cover of "Suzanne".
• I can hear it now. Thanks for that. :-|
• Cohen is my idol. Thanks for the link.
• Here are the transcripts Bee.
• I like Cohen's music, but I L-O-V-E women who like Cohen's music. (and they're rare)
• My ex wife loved Leonard Cohen. Actually, although I was already a fan, she gave me my first LC CD. She is from Argentina where LC has a big following. As per usual, our great North American Artists (yes, I know he is Canadian) are often more highly recognized and honored abroad than over here. I'm with you rocket88, she captured my heart. Then we got married and she proceeded to stomp that sucker flat. Lesson learned: good taste does not equal nice person.
• Bees, some more LC lyrics. In the late '80s, Jennifer Warnes did album of Cohen's songs called Famous Blue Raincoat. Still one of my favorites.
• My ex-wife hated Cohen. Interestingly she also didn't like Nick Drake, The Beatles, any jazz, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, and pretty much my entire CD collection. I don't know why I ever married her...
• The 'I'm Your Fan' tribute album was cool too. I particularly liked John Cale's version of Hallelujah, which was featured in the Shrek movie, but for some reason was replaced on the CD Soundtrack with a Rufus Wainright version.
• I L-O-V-E women who like Cohen's music. (and they're rare) But she gives you head on the edge of the bed. While she's hearing his music. In her head. That's the ultimate infidelity. Leonard is a very sexy man. I swear it has to do with the water supply in Montreal.
• If it's got something to do with Montreal, it's going on around the middle of the town, on both sides of Saint-Laurent Blvd.: Richler, Tremblay, Cohen. Today, Montreal's power supply is great, but I can't vouch for it in the 50s and 60s.
• Other famous Montrealers: Caroline Rhea, William Shatner, Gino Vanelli, and Sid & Marty Kroft (of H.R. Puffnstuff fame). Maybe it's not the water (except the Sid & Marty Kroft thing...)
• Thanks for the links, Nickdanger and islander!
• Great posts, Jerry. Thanks. We've seen Leonard Cohen perform a couple of times, and he is quite interactive with his audiences. As a songwriter, I can't honestly think of a better lyricist. I understand why some people can't abide him: even when he's not singing about something obviously troubling, he still sounds a little melancholy, and there are people who require their music to be aural prozac (for whatever reason). I second the appreciation of the Jennifer Warnes recording, too. I was reluctant to hear it (I think most covers are crappy, and this was a theme cover release, eek), but she really did a great job. I still find it eerie to hear these very familiar songs hit my ears with the wrong voice, though.
• CBC's archived clips of Cohen.
• Sorry- they don't seem to work in Firefox for me, just IE.
• Update. About a year ago I was introduced to Leonard's daughter who has a high end antique store on Melrose Blvd. here in LA. She needed someone to cut together a video for her dad's latest release "Look at me Leonard" but didn't have any money for the job. I got her hooked up with a bootleg copy of Final Cut Pro and was able to convert and sync her windows media clips into a form that she could cut herself and in return she loaned me her pickup truck so I could pick up an old 1950's Gaffer's and Statler stove that I scored on eBay for $100. So, somehow Leonard Cohen and my stove are connected. "Cook at me Leonard"
• I'm still pissed off about the Mandarin oranges.
• Squiddy, you're my hero.
• Thanx Capt. I'll cook you up some tea and oranges next time you are in LA, but you just leave my "perfect body" out of the picture, ok?