This makes me sad. "Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes ou...

Hi folks, Does anyone know where I can get hold of either a transcript of the Q&A that Mssrs Cohen and Glass did before the UK premiere of 'Book Of Longing', at the Barbican in '07, or a full video recording of it? There is a 5-part video of it on youtube, posted by 'videodharma', but I think th...

A question for those who've attended Salzburg or the other 2010 concerts so far - it seems as though the setlists aren't significantly different this year (apart from the presence of a couple of new songs), but I'm curious to know whether Mr C's between-song patter has changed at all, or whether he'...

This is going to be a long ramble, I'm afraid... It is Cohen-related, eventually, but I'll have to ask you to bear with me for a couple of paragraphs first... Last night I went to hear Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, the Chief Rabbi of Britain, speaking about 'Defining a Moral Compass for the Twenty-First Cen...

It's always a delight to find such profound lyrical analysis going on on these pages. But in the interests of 'close reading', I must point out to the learned Geoffrey that Mr Cohen is describing the places were his lips , rather than other parts of his anatomy, have been. Perhaps he's bemoaning not...

Blimey, that's powerful strange stuff... I was thinking about including Scott Walker's 'My Death'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfvFa8KexRw , but it's really not miserable enough.

Thanks for your suggestions so far, folks. Here are a few further links I found to some of the songs mentioned so far. Nick Drake: Black-Eyed Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDnDxvVjBic Peter Hammill: House With No Door http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNVJx6u7ags Thanks John E for bringing this on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRHJiqfwnac&feature=PlayList&p=8B6A60E19C49AD96&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12 This is one of the most passionate and compelling Cohen covers I’ve ever heard, so I thought I’d stick the link up here, and add a couple of words about the perfor...

At the risk of confirming the stereotype of Cohen fans as glum, gloomy miserablists, I've got a question for y'all - what's the most utterly miserable, depressing, wrist-slittingly pessimistic song of despair that you know? 'Dress Rehearsal Rag' would be a contender, I reckon, but as this is the 'Ot...

Suzanne. I never saw the appeal of this song, either lyrically or musically,

From an article in the Asia Times online: "In geo-political chess, India cannot bring itself to abandon diplomatic snobbery but, with the UN's consent, will apparently sacrifice the blood of its pawn soldiers. Leonard Cohen was right. The wizard of the world has indeed overturned the order of t...

The 'baffled king' made a lot more sense to me when i finally got the double-meaning. The first verse of the VP version of 'Hallelujah' is full of references to sound and music hearing. It starts with the words "I heard..." (recalling the way many early Buddhist scriptures begin, "Thu...

Thanks for a fascinating post, Lazariuk. I'm embarrassed to say I know next to nothing about either Maimonides or Hillel (and not a great deal about the Judaic traditions in general), but your reading of the 'I heard of a saint who had loved You' verse is very compelling. What do you make of the nex...

Cheers. It's not my creation, though - 'Johnny Seven Moons' is actually a character in the very fine novels of Mr Jim Dodge, which I commend to one and all.

I read somewhere that in the monastery on Mount Baldy, at the end of their fiercely rigorous ' sesshins' (intensive meditation retreats), they hold a ceremony where they recite the Buddhist precepts solemnly in Japanese - until they get to the one about no alcohol, they they break out the sake and s...