20 albums in 20 days Ten New Songs by Leonard Cohen

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook by my friend Stephen Winfield. No explanations or commentary is expected on Facebook posts. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. 
But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. 20 days has turned into about 6 weeks. 
However, it seems a suitable distraction while self-isolating to write an explanation or comment on the album covers I've posted. My blog seems a suitable place for these. We do live in extraordinary times. I realise that many of the pieces here 

When I was at school a friend came by holding the album Songs of Love and Hate by Leonard Cohen. It must have been in 1975. He thought I'd really like Leonard Cohen. We played it. I didn't like it much and never heard it again. However, at some point in the 1970s, I must have heard other Cohen songs because in 1981 I remember seeing The Best of Leonard Cohen in the record collection in my bedroom at Hatfield Polytechnique. I have absolutely no recollection of buying it or even playing it. Maybe I played it in my sleep because some of the songs from that LP were really familiar to me.

In 2001 I watched the film Shrek with my family. I remember hearing the song Hallelujah - I think they use John Cale to sing it. I remember thinking the song was familiar. A vague memory that I'd heard the song long ago. But I hadn't heard it on The Best of Leonard Cohen. Hallelujah wasn't released till 1984. 

Also in 2001, a friend came round for the evening. He bought with him the cellophane-wrapped new album by Leonard Cohen. He said he thought I'd really like Leonard Cohen's music and wanted to share it with me. We sat opposite each other in our sitting room as I watched him unwrap the CD. I can still hear the cellophane crackling up in his fist.

I fell in love with it immediately. I loved the electronic backing music against Cohen's extraordinary cracked, deep and rich voice. It never occurred to me to buy the CD. But in the months that followed the songs kept slipping into my memory. I couldn't get them out of my mind. Until eventually - maybe a couple of years later, I bought the CD. I think the album is magnificent. I've loved every album Cohen released since then. My friend and I met up on the day of each release. We unwrapped each CD and then just listened.  Old Ideas, Popular Problems, You Want it Darker and Thanks for the Dance. I've been listening to his other albums over the years. Some I love. Others?? I'm not so sure about.

Click here for a recording of one of my favourite songs from 10 New Songs.

Leonard Cohen

'There is a crack in everything

that's how the light gets in.'

and a recent article / interview from the New Yorker

Two Concerts in One Week

First I saw James Taylor at the NIA in Birmingham on Sunday 5 July with two colleagues – escaping from three days of IB training at the NEC, and secondly I saw Leonard Cohen at Brooklands Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge on Saturday 11 July with a friend.

After we had booked the concert for James Taylor I checked him out on youtube – just to get a sense of the man again. I watched him in his twenties clearly uncomfortable and uneasy in front of the camera. His long 1970’s hair was a kind of shield hiding him. But the simple guitar man played beautifully.

And so fast forward 30 years or so to a rainy July evening in Birmingham and the NIA.

It seemed that everything needed was here to make a good evening, a great band, a good singer songwriter with a solid American folk pedigree.

But the evening fell flat as the songs unfolded. I think this was due to a number of problems. Firstly the location, the NIA is a vast soulless place. It was built as a sports arena, I think and it lacked atmosphere and warmth. Secondly the set was a soup of unnecessary colour and light. There were at least four things going on behind the band at any one time.

We thought he was trying to satisfy the needs of the half a dozen audiences he was trying to attract – the traditional folkies, a country audience, a young audience – the children and grandchildren of those first hippy listeners, the oldies – the grown up hippies themselves and those easy listeners who had stumbled across his latest CD.

I’m easily pleased really. I’m a simple consumer.

But the final nail in the coffin of the evening was James Taylor himself. His script that bridged the different songs was slick and polished enough. The one liners were delivered in a quiet unassuming voice. But he lacked raw exciting energy, strutting uncomfortably across the stage. At times he looked like a parody of an aging rock star from the sixties. He was a man going through his well worn performance. He could have done the concert blindfolded - a rock concert by numbers. At times I thought he was boring himself.

Leonard Cohen was different. I spotted an advert for the concert in a discarded Metro on a train back from London. Walking home I popped in to see my friend – a Leonard Cohen fan since the 1960’s. We despaired at the ticket prices; we reassured ourselves that they had sold out. We parted resigned to the fact we wouldn’t be seeing him.

But there we were on Saturday night. Two middle aged men queuing up to watch a 74 year old man hold an audience in the palm of his hands. And he did it for over two hours, with a sublime ease, as if he had been born for the part.

I knew we’d made the right decision to come as the first notes reached us. For Cohen had brought together musicians that produce a rich, tight and accomplished sound. I love the way he has fused beautifully electric and acoustic instruments.

I felt at home here with people that swapped seats with us so that I could sit next to the aisle – more leg room. At home with people that talked easily about the last time they’d been to a Cohen concert, then mentioned Nick Cave and The Boatman’s Call.

And he played everything on our wish list. I wanted to hear The Partisan - it was the absolute highlight of the concert for me – Boogie Street – where Sharon Robinson, Cohen’s co writer, sang a solo and Famous Blue Raincoat – a stunning performance. Of course he did Halleluiah but he must be pretty pissed off with that song by now.

A week earlier we had sat in the soulless National Indoor Arena, sheltering from a rainy July evening, watching an accomplished James Taylor go through his paces. But unlike that concert a week later we were outside under a grey sky that eventually rained down on us. We were captivated, totally enchanted – lost in the labyrinth of his songs and the gracious spell that Leonard Cohen cast.