Heck Of A Guy

Leonard Cohen, Anjani Thomas, and Blue Alert Makes Three

Although Kitty Empire’s CD of the Week column in The Observer featuring Anjani’s Blue Alert album, Songs for small-hours lovers, was published April 29th, 2007, I only now happened onto it, which is a shame, because the review is not only well written and on point, but it also speaks to a key issue about this CD in particular and Anjani’s performances in general that is routinely ignored or, worse, thoughtlessly dismissed.

After an introduction to Anjani and the obligatory recital of the events that led to the album,¹ Ms Empire gets it exactly right when she calls Blue Alert a “minimalist jewel of a record” and a “classic small-hours album.”

And, I’m taken by her characterization of the songs themselves:

But, it is the last line that is, if not sui generis, certainly atypical among reviews of Anjani’s work; it also happens to be precisely correct in concluding

It’s [the music is] often sad, but by shaking off the melodic restrictions of those lugubrious vocals, Anjani has arguably done more for her man than any previous muse or collaborator. [Emphasis mine]

The Impending Fearsome Soliloquy

Somewhere deep within the recesses of my archipallium, a diatribe has been brewing, becoming progressively more savage and less forgiving each time I read a review of Blue Alert that points out something on the lines of “being Leonard Cohen’s girlfriend is a pretty sweet deal” or “Being Leonard Cohen’s girlfriend brings certain advantages.”

I purposely selected those two quotes because the articles from which they are extracted laud the album and specify, indirectly in the case of the first quote and literally in second, that Anjani is “more than just a famous man’s girlfriend,” which at least indicates that the writers mean well although the end result smacks of a left-handed compliment.

Other, more negative critiques are easy enough to find,² but the point I want to emphasize is that declaring that “Anjani is not just Leonard Cohen’s girlfriend”³ is not only insufficient but, until there are articles headlined, “Leonard Cohen is not just Anjani’s boyfriend,” implicitly diminishing.

Kitty Empire’s simple observation that “Anjani has arguably done more for her man than any previous muse or collaborator,” is invaluable because it sets up the proposition that Leonard Cohen profits from Anjani’s contribution to the collaboration rather than Anjani being only the lucky beneficiary of the connection.⁴

I am assiduously reorganizing and revising my afore mentioned diatribe in hopes of developing it into a coherent, constructive post showcasing a vocabulary and tone that won’t prompt an admonitory phone call from my mother.⁵ Until then, I can share only this small, condensed portion of my argument that I rendered sufficiently venom-free to post as a comment to a commendatory review of Blue Alert at Every week i spend too much on music and make a CD tower:

Anjani and Anjani Thomas: An Aside On Names
Anjani and Anjani Thomas are, for the purposes of the Heck of a Guy blog, synonymous names, both of which refer to the exotically lovely, dulcet-voiced singer best known for her Blue Alert CD and her long-term relationship with Leonard Cohen. I include this clarification on posts about Anjani-Anjani Thomas in part for the purpose of what the folks at Wikipedia call disambiguation (i.e., to positively identify for the reader and remove any doubts the reader might have about which Anjani of all the possible Anjanis is being discussed) and in part to aid and abet the search engines. While a rose is, famously, a rose is a rose, a “tea rose,” for example, is not exactly the same as a “rose” - especially to a search engine. Searches that include “Anjani” as part of the search terms may not produce the same results as the same search terms other with “Anjani Thomas” substituted for “Anjani.” Should any other Anjani, say one who has not produced a CD called “Blue Alert” or one who has not been associated with Leonard Cohen for the decade, I promise to do my best to make that identification clear as well.

Footnotes

1. This is the same gestational process that 90% of the hacks writing about Blue Alert have described, including one DrHGuy, whose prose in his July 2006 post, Music Recommendation That Will Make You Want To Kiss Me, indicates that this was, even then, old news:

   The tipping point for making this album, according to Anjani, came after she finished a vocal of one of Cohen’s songs; then, “Leonard said to me, ‘Now, could you sing it like you’re devastated on a shore with nothing left to give?” (I guess she didn’t know that Lenny is always saying stuff like that, just goofing around) Anjani goes on that “All my tools went out the window, I actually was devastated at that point. Then the vocal just came out.”

   Well, thank goodness she was devastated. The official Amazon blurb tells the rest of the story
   After finding a few lines of Cohen’s handwritten lyrics lying on his desk one day (specifically “there’s perfume burning in the air/bits of beauty everywhere”), Anjani was not just drawn to them, the words inspired her to write a song in their honor “‘Blue Alert”). After hearing the result, the Order of Canada-winning poet was so impressed that he eventually allowed her the chance to cull through both his published and unpublished works for additional lyrics.

   Whatever.

   It is a great musicological and human interest story but perhaps the hot-shot reviewers should at least acknowledge that it’s one known to fans already and perhaps even consider treating it in a manner that precludes its deflection of attention from a central focus on the music itself. They could, oh I don’t know, maybe make it a footnote - metaphorically, of course. ↩

2. There is, one hopes, an especially nasty bit of hell set aside for those buffoons on blogs and online music sections of print periodicals who made the presence of Leonard Cohen the litmus test of a successful Anjani performance. Some even issued “warnings” that Cohen would be absent at one performance or another. (Just to clarify, I’m as greedy as the next guy so if you are planning an Anjani concert as a surprise gift for my impending birthday, I definitely want Leonard Cohen to attend as well - and I’d also like Springsteen to show up with the E Street Band. Don’t forget Simon & Garfunkel, Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, The Mountain Goats, Prince, Dylan, and, of course, Various Artists. That should cover the first show; I’ll get back to you about the midnight appearance and the matinée. Hoping Leonard Cohen shows up is one thing; valuing an Anjani performance only as a way to sneak into a Leonard Cohen concert is something quite different - and despicable.) ↩
3. At one point, I chose domain names for blogs I considered spinning off from Heck of a Guy that would be dedicated to posts about Leonard Cohen and Anjani. The Leonard Cohen domain was to have been “cohenthusiast.com” and the Anjani domain was to have been “notjustleonardcohensgirlfriend.com” ↩
4. Leonard Cohen, by the way, seems to be one of the few individuals who recognize this side of the equation. ↩
5. Mom still doesn’t go online but she has plenty of friends who do, including some who would rat me out to her in a moment. ↩

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