Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,Henryp
Date: 07 Oct 04 - 06:16 PM

Judy Collins is one of the great interpreters of songs. Her new album Judy Collins sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy is a collection of Cohen songs, three newly recorded and ten re-mastered. I met the man from my record shop as he was walking to work and ordered it there and then!

She has also recorded a number of songs by Dylan over the years. In 1993 she released Judy Collins Sings Dylan: Just Like A Woman, an album of newly recorded Dylan songs. You'd have to go a long way to find something more beguiling than Dark Eyes.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Oct 04 - 12:12 AM

"Dark Eyes" is a wonderful song. I've personally sung it a few hundred times. "Shooting Star" is another little beauty of a song, not to mention "Born In Time". (those are all somewhat lesser known Dylan songs)

Then there's "Love Minus Zero" and "Farewell Angelina" which are both so beautiful and ethereal that they really defy classification in any genre. (more Dylan songs)

Subject: Leonard Cohen's music
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 06:39 AM

Leonard Cohen's music is not depressing - it is melancholic. Melancholy can actually be quite uplifting. I also find that I like people who like Leonard Cohen. My fave is 'Songs of Love and Hate' , and look forward to the release of 'Dear Heather' on Oct 25th.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 08:42 AM

What I would say to those who don't like him is. Try not be repulsed by the initial delivery. Its a bit like those people who say they don't like all modern art. There is substance there and it repays the attention you give it.

If you decide to skip the delights of LC, fair enough. But they are there.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 09:09 AM

Yeah. Initial delivery can be off-putting all right. I have never gotten past Tom Waites' initial delivery, for example, and I understand he is a great songwriter, according to many people who certainly ought to know.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Helen
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 06:02 PM

Little Hawk,

Just a couple of comments about what you said.

You said: "People who can't stand either Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan always sound to me like they have fixated on one or two details about the man in question...and completely failed to comprehend anything else about him whatsoever."

I think you have made an assumption that people like me have dismissed the whole of LC's ability based on my musical discretion, i.e. the power of making choices or judgements based on my own musical preferences.

As I said in '02 "I can stand listening to Cohen's songs and Bob Dylan's songs *only when someone else sings them*. But not when they sing them themselves."

I appreciate his lyrics, his poetic ability, his humour, etc but my major focus of choice/discretion in choosing what I want to listen to is the music, above the lyrics. I can listen to the crappiest, most sexist, most non-PC garbage if I like the music. Sorry! That is true. Most of the time I don't hear the lyrics at all. I don't focus on the words I focus on the music.

Put yourself in my shoes. If you only heard LC's voice & melody and did not associate them with the words would you like listening to him?

I have started listening to the ABC Classic-FM station in Oz in the last year or so because I am so starved for music. The stuff that I used to hear on the alternative youth radio station has become unlistenable in the main, because of the *music*. I listen to the alternative station because it doesn't have the msuical equivalent of Hollywood crap-pap and they are not afraid to have open discussion - musically and in interviews and news coverage - on all sorts of controversial issues, and this is the national, government run station. (Thank God for Oz freedom of speech!)   But lately I don't even define some of the stuff they have been playing as music because it could have been generated by a musical vending machine which gives you 10 seconds of music and then plays the same thing repeatedly for 3 minutes.

Don't get me wrong. I listen to every sort of music - folk, rock, heavy metal, swing, jazz, blues, CW, world music, classical, you name it, and my favourite favourite favourite album (apart from the Complete Sacred Choral Works of Vivaldi, 6 CD set) is a techno-percussion electronic CD called Leftism by a couple of geniuses calling themselves Leftfield.

So, I evaluate my musical choices based on music and not words. As I also said in '02, I have a theory "that the people who love Leonard Cohen & Bob Dylan relate to the words and don't care so much about the music, and the people who can't stand LC & BD relate to the music and don't care as much about the words."

So, as I also said before, in my opinion it is live and let live. You like LC, I don't. I am learning more about why some people love his stuff, but I don't love it.

Helen

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 06:37 PM

Ah. I see. I focus tremendously on lyrics (simply can't ignore them or not notice them). There's a lot of great music out there that I do not listen to by choice, because it's accompanied by lyrics I cannot relate to...or that I don't like in the least. So naturally I am drawn to Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. I do like their music too, but it's the lyrics that really hook me, backed BY the music which adds a lot to them.

I agree with you that a great deal of the modern music barely deserves the name...and I'd have to say that about most of the lyrics I hear on the radio too.

What I was saying, actually, is this: the initial "sound" of a performer can turn a person off to the point that they never bother listening long enough to find out if there's anything else there that they might like. That was how Bob Dylan affected me until I was about 20, but I loved hearing Joan Baez sing his songs from a much earlier age. I thought they were the best songs she did by far. Eventually I got to like the way Dylan sounded, and it happened quite suddenly...in one day, in fact. That was actually the first time I deliberately sat down and listened to him with real attention.

The same thing might happen sometime with Tom Waites if I were to give him a proper chance...or it might not...who knows? My present reaction to Tom Waites is based on my response to only one thing: the sound of his voice. It sounds awful to me. I know that his songs are very highly regarded by a great many fine performers, so there must be something there that I'm missing.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Helen
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 07:11 PM

LH,

I bought a CD called Red, Hot & Blue many years ago - a compilation of a range of modern singers & musicians performing Cole Porter songs. I worked in a public library at the time and used to play it in the library because I chose music which wasn't too loud for the public. I loved every track on the CD except the Tom Waits, which I used to suffer through. Finally one day it clicked with me and I loved his version of the song. Now it is one of my favourite tracks on the album. I bought a recent album of his - ostensibly as a present for hubby - but actually because I wanted it for me too. The one with the song called Alice on it.

We took the tape away with us in Tasmania last year and listened as we drove around. I like it a lot. He is one of the very few singer/songwriters whose lyrics I actually "hear" and whose music and words go together well for me, in my head.

I've seen him acting in a couple of - very far out - movies, too. An interesting bloke.

Helen

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 04 - 08:24 PM

Hmmm, yeah, there is obviously a great deal more to Tom Waits than I have yet been willing to perceive. Maybe he will "click" with me at some point too.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,Charlie Lewis
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 02:19 PM

Grab wrote: "the cheesy Casio organs and crappy drum machines started creeping in"

Hmmm, i always thought it was a Yamaha PS-6100 he made "I'm Your Man" on.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 08:40 PM

I focus on the lyrics and the music as one. I find when i'm writing, that if i do the lyrics first, then the tune just comes with them, and vice versa. I think they have to go together, if you see what i mean, i think they have to match. And to my mind Cohens (and DYlans) tunes match their words, and i think their voices do too. Same goes for Waits.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:50 PM

The only differences I can see between Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen is Cohen is a much better musician and he writes extremely well.

Don "Not a Dylan fan" Meixner

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Terry K
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 04:47 AM

I don't see how you can even compare Dylan and Cohen. After all, Cohen is only a fairly ordinary genius.

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 12:08 AM

I don't know how anyone can compare musicians at all. Especially those who review music professionally, I mean how lazy is that? Any fool who comes along strumming a guitar is automatically the next Dylan... which is unfair to both the artist in question and the reader. Why not just judge people on their own merits?

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: voyager
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 02:25 PM

What I like about Lenny (From the I'm Your Man/Tower of Song) lyric -

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
Tower of Song

is his understated modesty and his basso profundo attempts on songs
like this.

voyager

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: frogprince
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 02:46 PM

Did anyone else like his theme in "McCabe and Mrs.Miller" as well as I did? Something about, "like he was giving up the holy game of poker"...

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Leadfingers
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 06:10 PM

I think you've ALL got it wrong - Cohen was writing COMIC songs all the time !!!
I Lit a Thin Green Candle to make you jealous of me
But the room just fillied up with Mosquitos , they'd heard my body was free

One of the best Comedy songs ever written !!!

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 07:28 PM

He sounds too much like Marthe Srewart for my taste!

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,username
Date: 28 Oct 04 - 12:51 AM

I just bought his brand new album "dear heather" and i really love it. Thankfully, except for the first song, the production is a lot better than "10 new songs". And there are some live intruments again. Listen to "the faith", he recorded this song with the same band he recorded his album 'recent songs" with. There is no doubt that it is one of his most beautiful songs ever.

This album is more poetry than most of hsi albums of late. Are these poems or songs? That's one of the great things cohen has acheived in his career, being able to bring poetry to the masses, making it seem less formal.

Because Of

Because of a few songs
Wherein I spoke of their mystery,
Women have been
Exceptionally kind
to my old age.
They make a secret place
In their busy lives
And they take me there.
They become naked
In their different ways
and they say,
"Look at me, Leonard
Look at me one last time."
Then they bend over the bed
And cover me up
Like a baby that is shivering.


Undertow

I set out one night
When the tide was low
There were signs in the sky
But I did not know
I'd be caught in the grip
Of the undertow
Ditched on a beach
Where the sea hates to go
With a child in my arms
And a chill in my soul
And my heart the shape
Of a begging bowl


Dear Heather

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white
From the winter



To A Teacher
Hurt once and for all into silence.
A long pain ending without a song to prove it.
Who could stand beside you so close to Eden,
When you glinted in every eye the held-high
razor, shivering every ram and son?
And now the silent loony bin, where
The shadows live in the rafters like
Day-weary bats,
Until the turning mind, a radar signal,
lures them to exaggerate
Mountain-size on the white stone wall
Your tiny limp.
How can I leave you in such a house?
Are there no more saints and wizards
to praise their ways with pupils,
No more evil to stun with the slap
of a wet red tongue?
Did you confuse the Messiah in a mirror
and rest because he had finally come?
Let me cry Help beside you, Teacher.
I have entered under this dark roof
As fearlessly as an honoured son
Enters his father's house.


these are poems set to music for sure. The last one is actually a poem from his 1961 book of poetry called 'the spice-box of earth"

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,lpaf
Date: 02 Nov 04 - 10:58 AM

Any thoughts on the song "Dear Heather"?

lpaf

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 02 Nov 04 - 11:56 AM

The song is weird, thank God for the remote control so I can zap past it.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Nov 04 - 12:21 PM

Dylan and Cohen both have a grand sense of humour, I think.

They write songs very differently, though. Cohen can take years to write a specific lyric, till he gets it just the way he wants it. Dylan writes fast, by intuition. I tend to prefer the Dylan approach. The stuff that comes fast (for me) is by far the best. The stuff that doesn't never comes up to the same standard, because it's too mentally contrived.

Cohen's way obviously works fine for him, and Dylan's way works fine for Dylan.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Cluin
Date: 02 Nov 04 - 06:15 PM

...Leonard Cohen's music!


Isn't that phrase an oxymoron?

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 03:34 AM

I'm not sure about this, but my sister says back when she was in college, listening to Leonard Cohen was as good as a litmus test - if you could listen without wanting to slit your wrists, you were probably ok mental-health-wise, but if you couldn't get through a whole record without wanting to sob uncontrollably, you were possibly dangerously depressed and needed to see the counselor.

I'm listening to Leonard Cohen right now - Ten New Songs, which came out in 2001 - and I'm feeling okay, so I must not be too depressed. There have been a few times, though, when I put it on and had to take it off because I started to feel unbearably sad. Strange.

But I think his voice is incredibly sexy, in a seedy, smoky, strangely seductive kind of way. Makes my skin shiver.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 05:03 AM

I like Leonard Cohen's music a lot (and Jeff Buckley's, and Tim Buckley's). I particularly like the way he puts a Jewish spin on the Christian stories that are so central to 20th-century western society. And I love his bizarre sense of humour:

A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes
Were smoking out along the open road

in the 1960s when heroism was so popular, and his hommage to Cavafy in Alexandra Leaving, on Ten New Songs:

Exquisite music, Alexandra laughing
Go softly to the window, drink it in

But Helen, you're going to leave that man if he doesn't learn to treat you with respect. You have to train him. Anyone who walks in and takes off a CD that someone else has put on, but expects that person to listen to the CDs of his taste is not living in balance.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 06:27 AM

I love ending a gig night by singing...

"Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening
and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night
And my very close companion
gets me stoned and gets me laughing
she's a hundred but she's wearing something tight"

A-hahahahahaha!

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Grab
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 08:59 AM

How well-timed. I've had the mother of all colds the last week. Straight for the throat, phlegm, coughing, the lot. My vocal range dropped nearly a full octave down the scale, and finally I could sing Leonard Cohen songs in the original key, with the full-on LC croak sound! Excellent! :-)

But I'm getting better now, so by next week I'll have to dig out the capo again...

Graham.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Helen
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 04:21 PM

Thanks, JTT. I am gradually re-training him, I think - after some full-on battles. In almost every other aspect he does respect me and my preferences but he has this blind spot about music. I do admit that I like some pretty far out stuff, like Tim Buckley & Jeff Buckley, and the whole gamut of musical taste from classical to electronica, but there are few of my CD's that he will sit through unless he liked the music before he met me.

I just bought a Gryphon double album and I put it on because a couple of the tracks reminded me of Frank Zappa but hubby went out into his shed away from the music before we got to those tracks. I'll have to put the specific tracks on and say "does this remind you of Zappa?" and he'll probably listen.

I did turn him around about my favourite electronica album called Leftism, by Leftfield - I mean it is my absolute favourite album and it is electronica. It's percussion rhythms with an amazing polyphonic complexity but very listenable on the surface, i.e. not dry, theoretical music (as the Aussies say, not disappearing up their own a-holes :-)    ) but very passionate and, well, listenable. I bought the album because of the song by Johnny Rotten/John Lydon called Open Up, but then very quickly got drawn into the African-inspired rhythms being produced electronically. The first 20 or so times that I played it he walked out of the room, and then afterwards, when I explained about the percussion stuff he started to stay in the room, and I have actually heard him talk about it - a little bit - to other people.

Strange anomaly.

Anyway, I have tried to listen to Cohen, and I still stick to my previous statement that with Dylan & Cohen, I don't mind them if sung by someone else, but I find both of them grating and annoying - from a musical standpoint.

Helen

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: number 6
Date: 08 Dec 04 - 06:17 PM

I questioned his sincerety, truthfulness in his earlier works. But as time went on he has matured, he has connected with his craft with pure honesty and delivers his artistry without inhibition or concealment. He is a great Canadian deserving of his accolades.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,Bluesmike
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 02:18 AM

Sorry Helen and Jazzy Jack but I must have missed your last 20 albums- silly oversight

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 02:20 AM

I don't mind his voice (I'm a big Dylan fan and I can take his), I think he's a great songwriter also. It's just that sometimes he's just... so... damn... depressing...

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Helen
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 06:35 AM

I'm sorry too, Bluesmike.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 06:09 AM

Anyone see the 1/2 hour TV documentary last week on artists who have covered Leonard Cohen's work? I enjoyed it - any footage of the man himself is a rare treat.

I remember seeing and enjoying a film called 'Bird on a Wire' in 1976/7, which covered some LC live concerts. I've struggled in vain to get a copy of it - anyone know a source of this (or any other) LC material on video/DVD?

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Ella who is Sooze
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 07:19 AM

I was going to do a post called... Why I don't particularly like Leonard Cohen's music...

but I couldn't be bothered...

Anyway - the reason I don't like him is... for quite a few years ,as I grew up, I had to listen to people trying to sing the Suzanne song at me - (my name is Suzanne). In the crappiness of the jokes, and the link! But it nearly drove me bananas.... sooooo droney! Such a rubbishio song

there... that's that off my chest... soapbox removed, personal rant over...

Ella who is sooze

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 08:18 AM

Sometimes he's the perfect thing for a mix tape!

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 01 Apr 05 - 08:34 AM

You're right, Ella--"Suzanne" can indeed take you way, way down--but it's sure a good target for parodies.

Some of his other songs are better. As for his voice--uh, well, no comment.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Apr 05 - 08:50 AM

How about songs 'about' Leonard Cohen:

Check out: Leonard Cohen's Day Job
by Austin Lounge Lizards

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Ron Davies
Date: 01 Apr 05 - 08:55 AM

Thanks, Robo--sounds very promising. Austin Lounge Lizards are great, especially live.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 11:20 AM

What's Leonard up to these days?

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,PeteG
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 11:53 AM

Guest
Try here for info on the great man
Pete

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 04:13 PM

I agree with Littlehawk .Leonard's album The Future is quite amazing!! As good as anything he has done in the past..
This was also he man who gave the english speaking world that great anti nazi song The Partisan.Now I know he did not write it but the choice of that song for inclusion on his first album was brilliant!
And he does have a great sense of irony and dark humour!
Come to Wales, Leonard, and you will hve a great welcome in the hillsides!
Ifor

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 04:45 PM

"The Partisan" was on Leonard's (Songs From A Room) second album, not his first.

There were a number of other versions that preceded his by about 25 years.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 05:23 PM

Yes,but it was still leonard's version of the Partisan that intorduced the song to a mass,young audience.
ifor

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Bee
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 06:29 PM

I still love ya, Leonard!

But I really want to learn Leonard Cohen Ain't Never Gonna Bring My Groceries In by Nancy White, if I ever find the lyrics.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: bobad
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 06:36 PM

Leonard is a poet, be not too hard on him.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 27 Feb 07 - 10:08 PM

Reading through this thread and coming up against so many wonderful song titles, I truly - as a fan of some 40 years -- can't understand why anyone wouldn't like him. I suppose I can get that his voice can be difficult to appreciate (but I like it) but his lyrics.......

Great line in The Tower of Song - 'I ache in the places where I used to play.......' - such a good line. Whoever referenced the background music in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, if memory serves me right many of the songs on his first album were in that movie -- they made it special.....

He's my hero. One of my Christmas gifts from my husband was a dvd of a tribute concert to Leonard Cohen performed by various Canadian artists -- highly recommended. And surely k. d. lang deserves a mention for her marvellous version of Hallelujah on her Hymns of the North cd?

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,William Pint
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 12:33 AM

Leonard Cohen can say more in fewer words than anyone I've ever heard.

I saw him 'live' many years ago and it still stands as one of the very best concerts I've ever had the good fortune to attend. He played a set with his band, a solo set and then came back for another set with his band.

His humor was marvelous and most often at his own expense - poking fun at his reputation as "the grocer of despair" and as a poet "these hands ... rising up like lotuses from the mud of my sleeves." All with perfect deadpan delivery and the most marvelous twinkle in his eye. After two or three standing ovations he quietly remarked that "if you have someone waiting for you, go ahead and leave, but, we'll stay here and play for you as long as we can." He did -- and played many more songs until the auditorium staff put up the house lights to end the evening. Later, I heard that he went to a restaurant afterwards and played and sang late into the night with the fans who spotted him there.

As depressing as some might find him - I always found his songs comforting whenever I was feeling down. Here was a person who understood my condition and could look deep to find beauty in those dark places.

As for his vocal style -- give me one Leonard Cohen with a gravel voice who sings from the heart and means what he sings and keep your thousands of pretty voices who sing with nothing at all.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: Metchosin
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 03:42 AM

Amen William Pint, you said it all.

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 05:03 AM

I see there are a couple of LC DVDs due for release on March 19 - "I'm your man" and "Under review" - I look forward to that

http://www.play.com/Search.aspx?searchtype=r2alldvd&searchstring=leonard+cohen&page=search&pa=search

Subject: RE: Why I love Leonard Cohen's music!
From: GUEST,PeteG
Date: 28 Feb 07 - 05:04 AM

whoops - didn't intend to remain anon