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Leonard Cohen Tour News Is Subject Of Good Clean Wholesome Fun

Filed under: Bagatelles, Leonard Cohen | By DrHGuy | May 13, 2008 at 6:24 am


Leonard Cohen Performing In Halifax


Newspaper Reports of Cohen’s Fredericton and Halifax Concerts

DrHGuy reviews the reviews of Cohen’s concerts at GoodCleanWholesome Fun.1

Check out straw men, real estate metaphors, and other rhetorical devices. Discover the literary distinctions of Fredericton, NB. Be amazed as the Halifax newspapers make Fredericton disappear. All this plus snarky DrHGuy commentary can be had via the magic links below. (As usual, the links in this list go directly to the single item described. All these entries as well as the posts that preceded them and any posts added since this list was compiled can be accessed in a single sequence at GoodCleanWholesome Fun.)



Footnotes


  1. GoodCleanWholesome Fun is the quick-witted, energetic, happy go lucky younger tumblelog sibling of DrHGuy’s jocose but prolix, sometimes abstruse Heck of a Guy blog. For details, see Try Some GoodCleanWholesomeFun ~back~

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More Cat In The Hat - Leonard Cohen In Fredericton

Filed under: Leonard Cohen | By DrHGuy | May 12, 2008 at 8:11 pm



Leonard Cohen In Fredericton (11 May 2008) - Who by Fire




Leonard Cohen In Fredericton (11 May 2008) - In My Secret Life (full song)




Leonard Cohen In Fredericton (11 May 2008) - Everybody knows (short clip)


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The Cat In The Hat Is Back - Leonard Cohen Opens Tour

Filed under: Bagatelles, Leonard Cohen | By DrHGuy | May 12, 2008 at 7:44 pm

Fredericton Best Performance Of Leonard Cohen 2008 World Tour So Far

In addition to these videos, there are photos and an excellent review at LeonardCohenForum. The photos and videos first appeared on Leonard Cohen Fan Pages at Facebook.



Leonard Cohen Talks To Fredericton Audience (11 May 2008)






Leonard Cohen In Fredericton - Dance Me To The End Of Love (11 May 2008)




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Why The 2008 Leonard Cohen World Tour Is Opening In Fredericton

Filed under: Leonard Cohen, Music | By DrHGuy | May 10, 2008 at 10:20 pm


The Playhouse - Fredericton, NB



Leonard Cohen inaugurates his 2008 World Tour tomorrow (11 May 2008) at the Playhouse in Fredericton, NB, a venue which, according to Wikipedia, has a capacity of 709 (469 orchestra seats and 240 balcony seats).


Fredericton Skyline



The city of Fredericton, also according to Wikipedia, is located in eastern Canada (see map below) and, in 2005, had a population of 50,535.


The Question: Why?

In Is It The Leonard Cohen 2008 Tour Or Is It A DrHGuy Parody?, I implied that it was difficult to distinguish between the first stops on the Cohen Tour (which, at that time, included Glace Bay, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton and St. John’s) and a parody of that concert schedule.

Indeed, why would the first concerts take place in a relatively isolated geographic area and in much smaller venues than those scheduled during the rest of the Tour (e.g., Toronto, Dublin, Manchester, Montreal, Oslo, Amsterdam, Rome)?

[Note: Perhaps everyone except me knows the answer to this question, but if so, I can't find an explicit reference to the point. So, for now and until someone points out the documented explanation to me, I'm going to proceed as though it is a mystery.]


Possible Reasons Why Cohen’s Tour Begins In Fredericton

  • Leonard Cohen lost a bet.
  • The tour really is a DrHGuy parody that got way out of hand
  • Cohen’s booking agent is from Fredericton and he wanted to show up the girl who wouldn’t go to prom with him
  • Leonard Cohen’s singing is actually a means of passing coded messages for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. (That his singing turns a profit is a happy surprise to the Service.) Holding concerts in these locations limits the number of outside infiltrators.
  • Cohen scheduled Fredericton and similar tour stops just to mess with DrHGuy’s head.
  • “Fredericton” means “Chicago” in Canadian.
  • According to rumor, at closing time in Fredericton, the women tear their blouses off & and the men they dance on the polka-dots.


DrHGuy’s Best Guess Why The Leonard Cohen Tour Opens In Fredericton

First, it appears significant that the small venues are at the first of the Tour. One also notes that extensive rehearsals by Cohen and his band have been reported.

Given that Cohen is working on a new album with a significant portion of the concert playlist coming from that collection of new work and that at least two of the backup singers (The Webb Sisters) haven’t worked with Cohen before, my bet is that the Cohen Tour opens in Eastern Canada for the same reason a musical comedy opens off-Broadway or in the Poconos - to work out the kinks and polish the performance before moving it to Broadway - or to bigger stadiums.

Fredericton is Leonard Cohen’s off-Broadway.

Unless it’s not.




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Biwa and Osamu Kitajima Debut On Heck of a Guy

Filed under: Anjani Thomas, Music | By DrHGuy | May 9, 2008 at 10:32 pm


Biwa Player



Osamu Kitajima With Backup and Introduction By Anjani

Excerpted from Mutant Sound:

Osamu Kitajima was born and raised in the beach town of Chigasaki, not far from Tokyo. As a young man he studied classical guitar and piano. His first band was the Launchers, led by his cousin, pop idol and actor Yuzo Kayama. The group disbanded in the late 1960s, after which Kitajima began to work on his own. He graduated from the prestigious Keio University in business, and also studied traditional Japanese instruments such as the biwa, koto and taiko drum. His first solo album in 1974, Benzaiten, was a mix of modern pop and traditional Japanese music, and was well received in Japan and later released abroad. It was released in the United States on Antilles, where it received some “underground” radio airplay and sold moderately well. … His most highly acclaimed album was 1986’s The Source, which won rave reviews around the world, including being called a “major masterpiece” by Rolling Stone magazine. Osamu Kitajima also expanded his work to include commercial and soundtrack work. He provided part of the music to the blockbuster mini-series Shogun and contributed to the soundtrack of Sharkey’s Machine. He also seems to be the “go to guy” for Asian themed movies, including the 1986 Pat Morita vehicle Captive Hearts and 1993’s Samurai Cowboy, which starred Hiromi Go. Kitajima has also done work for PBS documentaries on Japan, created the soundtrack to the Chinese/Japanese film Mandala and produced a number of like-minded artists. … Osamu Kitajima is featured on a number of compilations available in the States and Europe, and is generally considered a contemporary of Enigma, Deep Forest, Vangelis and Ottmar Liebert. In addition to his being a recording artist, producer, studio owner and label owner, Kitajima somehow found time to earn a doctorate in music therapy in 2004, and is thus now sometimes referred to as Dr. Osamu Kitajima. Kitajima is married to retired actress Yoko Naito. Their daughter Mai Kitajima married former Hikaru Genji member Mikio Osawa in 1996.



From Anjani,

This video was from our 1989 tour to Japan. Along with Osamu are Hiromitsu Nishikawa on percussion, the late Yoshizawa “Masa” Masakazu-sensei on shakuhachi, Freddie Ravel on keyboards, and me off in the shadows-playing those retro string parts. Osamu is a master biwa player. It’s such an unappreciated instrument and notoriously difficult to play: held upright in the lap and struck with a lacquered pick the size of a shark fin. We had a fantastic time on tour and ate incredibly well.



Osamu Kitajima - From Biwa To Electric Guitar


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The Big Little Golden Rules Of Cohen Concert Comportment

Filed under: Aha! Stuff, Events, Leonard Cohen | By DrHGuy | May 8, 2008 at 8:03 pm

Concert Manners: A Supplement To The Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen



Cohen On Concerts

You definitely go into a concert with a prayer on your lips. There’s no question about that. I think that anything risky that you do, anything that sets you up for the possibility of humiliation like a concert does … you have to lean on something that is a little better than yourself I feel I’m always struggling with the material, whether it’s a concert or a poem or a prayer or a conversation. It’s very rarely that I find I’m in a condition of grace where there’s a kind of flow that is natural. I don’t inhabit that landscape too often. … Well, I mean this in a kind of lighthearted way. When you walk on the stage and 5,000 people have paid good money to hear you, there’s definitely a sense that you can blow it. The possibilities for disgrace are enormous.

-Leonard Cohen1


The DrHGuy Corollary

While the possibilities for disgrace as an audience member may be less than enormous, neither are they trivial.

-DrHGuy


How To Be Leonard Cohen’s Friend2

While this post, like all the The Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen offerings, is specifically addressed to new fans of Leonard Cohen and those unfamiliar with Cohen who may be persuaded to attend one of the concerts in the upcoming Leonard Cohen 2008 World Tour by a Cohenophilic friend, lover, or family member, the principles of concert behavior discussed extend to most performers and audiences.3 In keeping with the underlying premise of the Big Little Golden Book of Leonard Cohen, these concepts of concert behavior are few in number and simple in content:


Big Little Golden Rule of Concert Behavior #1: Play Nice With Others4

While I suspect this lesson may be less necessary for a Leonard Cohen crowd than it would be for, oh, a Stones concert in the 60s,5 it bears repeating that unless one is fortunate enough to constitute the entire audience at a Leonard Cohen performance, one incurs certain responsibilities vis-a-vis other attendees.

These responsibilities can be summarized in a concise albeit awkward declaration: Avoid unnecessary behaviors that interfere with others enjoying the performance.

Or, again as Dad told you, “Don’t be a jerk.”

Examples of proscribed behaviors include

  • Standing throughout the concert directly in front of the folks in wheelchairs.
  • Whacking the guy in front of you with a tire iron or other blunt instrument - unless he has been standing in front of you throughout the concert and you are in a wheelchair.
  • Repeatedly shouting, “Play Freebird,” especially if that is followed by a prolonged pause for laughter that, if there is any organizing force in the cosmos, will never come.
  • Flashing your bare bosom - unless you are a voluptuous, attractive young woman endowed with a pert bosom, and the flashing is done tastefully.
  • Mentioning more than once - regardless of how pseudo-casually you work it into the conversation - that you were at Cohen’s 1974 Manchester Concert, his appearance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, the 1988 Reykjavik Concert, etc unless you first persuade at least two other folks seated within five feet of you to sign a notarized affidavit formally requesting a recitation of your experiences.


Big Little Golden Rule of Concert Behavior #2: Be Attentive To The Performer

This idea goes beyond listening to the songs (although that seemingly obvious axiom is violated in a surprisingly large number of cases) to include adjusting ones behavior in accord with the performance. The steps leading to this principle follow:

  1. A Live Performance Implies A Live Performer. The difference between attending a live performance of a singer-songwriter and listening to a recording of that singer-songwriter is - well, that the music is produced by a living, often sentient creature in the former case and by an inanimate system in the latter.

    Still with me? OK.

  2. Live Performer + Live Audience = Interaction. The fundamental consequence of an audience and a performer being simultaneously present at a live show is the potential for interaction that can significantly enhance or detract from the performance.

  3. Optimal Interaction Is A Moving Target. The optimal interaction between the audience and performer depends on the audience and, especially, the performer. It seems unlikely, for example, that the optimal interaction between James Taylor and his audience is identical to the optimal interaction between Metallica and their audience. Further, the optimal interaction between audience and performer typically shifts during a single performance. An attuned audience reacts differently to Springsteen offering up a near-whispered version of “Devils and Dust” than it does to the same guy belting out “Radio Nowhere” with the E Street Band blaring and still differently than it does to Bruce reaching back for one more iteration of “Thunder Road.” And, special situations within concerts, such as the performer’s first entrance, the finale, the guest star, the encores, … all have implications for crowd responses.

    4. Hey, nobody said enjoying a concert is easy.

    On the other hand, it ain’t rocket science.

  4. The Bullseye Of The Moving Target Is The Performer. Just as a practical matter, setting the tone for the show is more efficaciously accomplished by the person(s) on stage than by, say, the 36,000 members of the audience in the stadium. More to the point, the performer is typically the only person in the house who actually knows where the musical journey is supposed to be headed. There would seem to be certain advantages that would accrue to following the participant who drew the map.



To Be Attentive To The Performer, one must be able to distinguish between a performer and an audience member. Consequently, the Heck of a Guy blog offers …

Clues To Determine If You Are The Performer Or An Audience Member

  • Is your name on the marquee? If so, there is an excellent chance you are the performer. If the name on the marquee is not yours or an alias you recognize, you are probably an audience member.
  • Are you being paid for showing up tonight (probably the performer) or are you paying for showing up tonight (probably an audience member)?
  • Is there a jerk who keeps requesting that you sing “Freebird?” If so, you are the performer. (Unless the jerk is drunk, in which case his requests are of no predictive value.)
  • Do you find yourself declaring that you were born with the gift of a golden voice? You may be Leonard Cohen. Check your schedule. If today is a scheduled concert on your 2008 tour, you are the performer. If you find yourself declaring that you were born in the USA, on the other hand, you are not Leonard Cohen - but may be Bruce Springsteen.


Live Performance Scenarios

For an example of why it’s important to know what the intended effect will be - or to follow someone who does know, check out this excerpt from Ray Charles & The Raelettes at Estival Jazz in Lugano, Switzerland July 1, 1986



Ray Charles - “Out Of Time”



Often the performer will cue the audience about the response desired from them.

I hereby confess to having attended not one but two Peter, Paul, and Mary concerts (with a gap of twenty years between those performances).



In the first of these encounters, Peter Yarrow prefaced their rendition of “Puff The Magic Dragon,” with

When we begin “Puff The Magic Dragon,” a little voice in the back of your head will say “Sing. Sing.”

Please don’t. [my paraphrasing]

Subtle, eh?



In contradistinction to the example involvilng Ray Charles, other performers at other concerts invite fans to sing along, praising the results regardless of the skill level exhibited. This excerpt is from the Carole King Living Room Tour CD




Carole King - Medley from Living Room Tour CD



Other artists, including the Artist Currently Known as Prince, are more critical and may coach the crowd, beseeching them to improve.


Prince - Las Vegas Concert


Still others all but demand the crowd’s participation, as does Madonna in this excerpt from the ominously named fantasy, “Everybody Is A Star.”



Madonna - London Concert (September 26, 1993)


But How About Leonard Cohen?



As we know, Leonard Cohen is one complex dude. Consequently, it will come as no surprise that one has to stay on ones intellectual toes because there is the sarcastic but ultimately forgiving Leonard Cohen, who would prefer not to compete with self-congratulatory applause from the audience triggered by their recognition of the song he has started.

Leonard Cohen in concert #1 (from Bird On A Wire Documentary)


And there is also the Leonard Cohen who encourages his concert friends to take part in Hootenanny rituals. Kleeble reports in leonardcohenforum that “my most vivid memory of those days is standing on my seat, singing and clapping along to “You Are My Sunshire” at Manchester (Free Trade Hall I think) in 1974.”

Leonard Cohen in concert #2



And that, friends, is why one has to Be Attentive To The Performer.

And finally, …

Big Little Golden Rule of Concert Behavior #3: Use Restroom Before The Concert


A Closing Thought On Concert Behavior

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.”

- John Lennon



Footnotes


  1. From An Interview with Leonard Cohen by Robert Sward. A Side. Montreal, Quebec - 1984 ~back~
  2. Leonard Cohen has routinely addressed members of his concert audiences as “friends.” At the end of his final song, for example, he often utters a benediction, bidding the crowd farewell with something along the lines of “Good Night, Friends.” He rarely refers to his “fans” or the “audience.” ~back~
  3. ”Most,” in this case, includes those performers who aspire to a positive connection with their audiences. The notion of “optimal interaction between performer and audience,” one of the keys to to proper concert behavior, collides with catastrophic cognitive dissonance when applied to those performers (certain punk bands and performance artists come to mind) whose preferred connection to their audience appears to be mutual antipathy. ~back~
  4. ”Play nice with others” is how your mother put it; if your father taught you this principle, he phrased it, “Don’t be a jerk.” ~back~
  5. That would be a Stones concert during the 1960s, not a concert when the Stones are in their 60s ~back~

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A Musical Mystery - Elvis Wonders About You

Filed under: Bagatelles, Music | By DrHGuy | May 6, 2008 at 6:40 pm


A Slip, A Clue, or a Plea for Help From Elvis Presley?


Elvis Presley, 1970


Listen to this 30 second clip from the opening of “The Wonder of You,” performed by Elvis Presley on closing night (23 Feb 1970) of his show at the International Hotel Las Vegas. Pay special attention to the lyrics following, “You give me … .”


Elvis Presley - The Wonder Of You
International Hotel Las Vegas Closing Night: 23 Feb 1970


My contention is that Elvis is clearly singing, “You give me hope and constipation.”

This phrase takes on a certain poignancy with the realization that on August 16, 1977, Presley was found on the floor of his bathroom, after apparently having been on the toilet, and was officially pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital.1

So, was this just a careless error - or was it the consequence of Elvis so intently wondering about why he was suddenly constipated - a crucial element in a plot by person or persons unknown to kill him - that this concern slipped into the lyrics?

Or, was it a clue Presley consciously left in hopes of pointing to his murderer?

While an anti-Elvis conspiracy theory may sound unlikely, is there any better explanation for Elvis meeting Nixon later that same year to ask for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge and an appointment as a “Federal Agent at Large.”2


Elvis Presley Meets With President Nixon, 1970


Footnotes


  1. See Wikipedia ~back~
  2. See Wikipedia ~back~