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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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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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Happy Birthday, Judy Collins - and Thanks

Filed under: Leonard Cohen, Music | By DrHGuy | May 1, 2008 at 7:40 am



Judith Marjorie Collins, Born May 1, 1939 in Seattle, Washington

Initially a classical pianist whose public debut at 13 was a performance of Mozart’s “Concerto for Two Pianos,” Judy Collins became part of the core of the folk movement, forsaking the piano for the guitar although her real instrument was her flawless soprano voice. In 1961, Judy Collins released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at the age of 22. Her renditions of songs like “Send in the Clowns,” “Both Sides Now,” and “Amazing Grace” have become so ingrained in the consciousness of at least my cohort that she has been called “the voice of the century.”

Judy Collins Plays Well With Others

In addition to singing her own compositions, Judy Collins has habitually produced versions of songs by an impressively eclectic group of musicians that respected the original and were masterpieces in their own right. Her takes on Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” were more widely played than were the original pieces. And, while she no doubt increased the audience for already established singer-songwriters like Dylan and Seeger, she was largely responsible for introducing other musicians, such as Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, to the public at large.

Judy Collins is an especially important figure for Leonard Cohen fans because of her role in inaugurating his career as a singer. In a 1992 interview,1 Cohen describes how Collins came to be the first to record his song, “Suzanne,” in 1966.

[Cohen:] A friend of mine introduced me to Judy Collins. I went to her house and sang her a couple of songs that didn’t interest her and she said to me “Come back if you have something I might like.” A few months later after having finished “Suzanne”, I called her from Montreal and sang it to her on the phone. She wanted to sing it right away. Mary Martin, who became my manager, called John Hammond, who knew Judy Collins’ record company. He took me to lunch near the Chelsea Hotel and asked me to sing a few tunes. He said “You got it!”, I could start to record a record. It was a very good time for songwriters/singers. Record companies were looking. They were very lenient with the voice… Me, I sang a bit worse than the others but that wasn’t an obstacle. Much later, after the Newport festival, I said to my lawyer, “Listen Marty, I can’t sing, I know now that I can’t sing.” He responded “But none of you can sing! When I want to hear singers I go to the Metropolitan opera.” (laughs)

[Interviewer:] During your famous first appearance on stage, you still had never recorded, you left the stage right in the middle of “Suzanne”.

[Cohen:] It was a concert for a New York radio station. Judy Collins asked me to come on stage and sing. There was a big temperature difference between the stage, where it was cold, and back stage where it was warm. I had that fine Spanish guitar that went completely out of tune. I remember my panic as I was trying to tune it. Finally I left the stage (laughs)… I tuned it and I went back on.


__________________________


[This section, consisting of the next four paragraphs, was added 13 May 2008:]

A week or two after publishing this post, I received an email from an “anonymous fan of Judy Collins,” politely pointing out that Judy Collins tells the story differently. Her version, which she has consistently reported since the time of her songbook in 1969 (a memory confirmed by Jac Holzman in Follow the Music), is that Cohen sang a couple of songs and she (Collins) then recorded Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag almost immediately rather than instructing Cohen to come back when he had something she might like.

In addition, this fan noted that Collins “also recorded dozens of Cohen’s songs and is his biggest, if that is possible, fan.”

While I initially felt the differences between the stories was of modest significance, I now think adding the Judy Collins version to the original post is worthwhile because the implications of the fact that the incident is remembered differently are themselves interesting, and this is, after all, a post celebrating Judy’s birthday.

On the other hand, I am at fault for not elaborating on the extensive support that Judy Collins provided for Cohen, especially when he was making the transition from poet to singer. My only defense - and it’s inadequate - is that most regular readers of my posts are Cohen fans who know about the role Judy played in his career. I do occasionally forget that not everyone who, for example, finds one of my entries via Google, is aware of such background. I should know better.

__________________________


Thanks, Judy, for your own grand performances
- and for giving Leonard a hand


__________________________



Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen - That’s No Way to Say Goodbye2




Judy Collins - Someday Soon3




Footnotes


  1. Throat Culture magazine, 1992. The interview was translated by Sophie Miller from its original publication in the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. The interview was conducted by Christian Fevret. I accessed the interview and the information about the original source on 01 May 2008 at Speaking Cohen ~back~
  2. Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, taped in 1976 for the PBS program “Soundstage.” ~back~
  3. Judy Collins singing “Someday Soon” by Ian Tyson on The Smothers Brothers Show in 1969. ~back~

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The Undisappearing Of Jarkko Arjatsalo

Filed under: Leonard Cohen | By DrHGuy | April 29, 2008 at 8:37 am

The Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen:1 Correction Of Jarkko Omission



Editor’s Note: I just noticed that a section introducing Jarkko Arjatsalo somehow dissipated between the final draft of Field Guide To The Current Life Of Leonard Cohen and the posting of that first installment of The Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen. My apologies to both readers and Jarkko himself for the error. The following content will be added to the original post.


Jarkko Arjatsalo, Webmaster - and De Facto Chief Curator, Head Archivist, Documentary Photographer, Fan Club President, Social Chairman, High Priest, Ringmaster, and Prime Minister Of Cohenatia



Leonard Cohen with webmaster Jarkko Arjatsalo
(Los Angeles, June 1999)2

In 1995, Jarkko Arjatsalo, an accountant from Finland, began leonardcohenfiles.com, a web site devoted to (duh) Leonard Cohen.3 In 1997, Leonard Cohen, then residing at a Zen monastery (more about that in a later chapter), contacted Jarkko about his unauthorized site - to offer to contribute unpublished poems, notebooks used to compose his songs, a passport from his student days, personal anecdotes, that kind of stuff. That affiliation has persisted and appears stronger than ever. Leonard Cohen, for example, chose to officially announce his 2008 tour first at leonardcohenfiles.

While leonardcohenfiles is most often described as an “encyclopedia” of Cohen information, a more apt analogy would be to the Smithsonian Institute with a plethora of displays of widely varying but consistently fascinating content. Leonardcohenfiles now offers more than 800 indexed pages of material about Cohen and its 2.000.000th visitor landed on the site over a year ago.





Less heralded but of growing importance are Jarkko’s additional roles, such as propagating other Cohen-dedicated web sites, whether as primary originator (e.g., leonardcohenforum.com) or as a facilitator for other members of the Leonard Cohen Web Ring. He has also been a prime mover in organizing meetings, conferences, and events celebrating Cohen’s work and serves as a communications network for Cohen fans.


__________________________________


For an introduction to Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen, see Publication of Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen Impends.

The most recent post from the Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen,Leonard Cohen - Boy Wonder.

The Jarkko material will be added to Field Guide To The Current Life Of Leonard Cohen.



Footnotes


  1. The Big Little Golden Book Of Leonard Cohen is a simple, easy to understand introduction to Leonard Cohen for anyone who has recently tuned in to his music and for fans who may have listened to the songs for some time and now have want to learn something about the singer-songwriter who produced them. The goal of this series of posts is to avoid both (1) overwhelming readers with details and tangents, however interesting those channels might be, and (2) omitting fundamental elements of Cohen’s life. ~back~
  2. Photo and caption from - of course -