CONCERT REPORTS: Sligo, Ireland, July 31 & August 1, 2010

[FanForLife]

After my experience at the Bob Dylan concert last month I wouldn't recommend Thomond Park for music; more accessible, definitely, but back in the stands the sound was loud but not clear. We couldn't make out a word he was singing, and as he changed the melody of the familiar ones we were really lost.............

Dont blame Thomond Park for that - I heard Dylan in the O2 last year and he was four lines into most songs before we could figure out what he was singing (mumbling and croaking more like) and whatever about some of the obscure stuff, when you don't recognist Just Like a Woman, All Along The Watchtower and Blowing in the Wind there is something radically wrong. His voice is shot and he makes no effort whatsoever to project the sound. It was an awful concert, turned me off Dylan for life but definitly didn't turn me against the O2.

[FanForLife]

Sunday in Sligo.

Chelsea Hotel No2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO04SQwKwAs

enjoy.
A.

Absolute magic. A brilliant recording of a very brilliant performance. Goes straight to my No.1 video. Thank you so much Albert.

[FanForLife]

Some fragments - unfortunately there were a couple of "intervening variables" that made it quite difficult to video, primarily an inconsiderate woman with a mop of unkempt plum coloured hair who continually stood up and waved her arms about, blocking the stage and most of my natural light. For some reason, she seemed to think that this stylised belly dancing, for which she had the figure but not the skill, was appropriate and of benefit to others. It wasn't; it was nothing other then downright inconsiderate. I actually turned the camera off altogether, but turned it back on part of the way through "A Singer Must Die" to capture that unique performance.

Closing Time Lissadell 31st July 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsJ01wfDU24

A Singer Must Die - Lissadell - 31st July 2010 (part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGPwXWj-IRs

The Partisan Lissadell 31st July 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjT-bP6AJ30

Audience and Stage Pre Concert Lissadell 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R6ZoLR4JZM

LC Arrives On Stage and Opening Words Lissadell 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su1U9ow3U6o

LC Reciting Yeats Lissadell 31st July 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlEC-lWdFzg

LC and the "sublime" Webb sisters "If It Be Your Will" Lissadell 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMIEC_bN1s

Born in Chains - Lissadell - 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM-G4RMtZHQ

Famous Blue Raincoat - Lissadell - 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnCnYL0EHU

Anthem - Lissadell 2010 07 31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGcEZqTFsJg

Edited 04.08.2010 - added If It Be Your Will and Born in Chains and Famous Blue Raincoat
Edited 05.08.2010 - added Anthem

[sturgess66]

Thanks FanForLife - just watched your clip of "A Singer Must Die" - *sigh*

More video - I don't think these have been posted here -

Uploaded by "rosskellyoo9" -

"Famous Blue Raincoat" - nice video - possibly from August 1st show? - lovely harmonica by Dino Soldo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIenxBf9Dw4

Uploaded by "thomastyler10air" =

"Leonard Cohen in full swing" - a clip from "The Future" - a capture of Charley & Hattie Webb and their cartwheels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJhtkJqLoq4

Uploaded by "messalina79" -

"Suzanne" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNL71IAqpuE
-and-
"First We Take Manhattan"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQgaF1nFRmA

[JudasPriest]

FanForLife » Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:54 am

TipperaryAnn wrote:

After my experience at the Bob Dylan concert last month I wouldn't recommend Thomond Park for music; more accessible, definitely, but back in the stands the sound was loud but not clear. We couldn't make out a word he was singing, and as he changed the melody of the familiar ones we were really lost.............

Dont blame Thomond Park for that - I heard Dylan in the O2 last year and he was four lines into most songs before we could figure out what he was singing (mumbling and croaking more like) and whatever about some of the obscure stuff, when you don't recognist Just Like a Woman, All Along The Watchtower and Blowing in the Wind there is something radically wrong. His voice is shot and he makes no effort whatsoever to project the sound. It was an awful concert, turned me off Dylan for life but definitly didn't turn me against the O2.

Really liked both Bob O2 gigs myself. Preferred them to Leonard at that venue as it happens. Although everyone I met after the gigs who was seated upstairs didn't like it where as everyone downstairs loved them. That said, I think Thomond Park was a step up again. Terrific stuff.

But back to Leonard in Lissadell, still basking in the glory of it all. Any trace of the whole thing going slightly stale (a feeling I must confess to after the O2 gigs last year) was removed through the wonderful setting, the new songs, the availing of an old song not performed in years and the sheer commitment from Leonard himself and the band. I mean, he's out Springsteened Springsteen at this stage for length alone and that is saying something...

[Kali]

I notice there are no concerts in November......Maybe UK?

[sturgess66]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 49798.html

The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 4, 2010
An Irishman's Diary
FRANK McNALLY


Leonard Cohen at Lissadell House. . . "resistance
was finally wiped out by the old charmer himself".
Photograph: James Connolly

I DROVE to Sligo on Saturday still feeling a little resentful that, after he gave the perfect concert – almost in my back garden – two years ago, Leonard Cohen had not quit while he was ahead. By “quit”, I don’t mean quit the mortal sphere. Retirement would have been enough: ideally to the Mount Baldy Buddhist retreat in California, where he could resume life as a monk, under his Zen name of Jikan, meaning “silence”.

The slightly-cheated feeling persisted through the first few songs at Lissadell, an exact repeat of the playlist from the 2008 Kilmainham shows. Not only had I been suckered into forking out for two (pricey) tickets to see the same concert, I thought, based on a vague notion that this time, WB Yeats and Countess Markievicz might appear on backing vocals. But worse, the experience would now also tarnish the memories of the first occasion, which I could otherwise have treasured for years.

Then Cohen introduced some new songs. Then his backing virtuosos began to weave their magic again. Then the relentless beauty of the music washed over me like the misty rain that accompanied some of it.

And any remaining resistance was finally wiped out by the old charmer himself, whose definitive stage gesture these days is to take his hat off between songs, exposing his grizzled head in humility to an audience that – to his apparent astonishment – loves him.

No doubt the modesty is part showmanship. You can’t perform to adoring crowds night after night without at least suspecting you must be good. But Buddhist monks are probably taught not to dwell on such delusions. And if it is an act, he does it very well.

For a performer long associated with gloom, the surprised boyish smile into which his features resolve themselves so often now is a remarkable thing in itself.

Naturally, he invoked the spirt of Yeats during the latest shows. And I wondered what WB would have made of the performance.

He was a mere 61 when he wrote that “an aged man is but a paltry thing/a tattered coat upon a stick”.

To which, of course, he added the qualification: “Unless soul clap its hands and sing/And louder sing, for every tatter in its mortal dress”.

So he may have been on to something about the power of song, even then. But I suspect that, being a ladies’ man as well as a wordsmith, Yeats – if he was present at Lissadell – might have regretted not living in a slightly later era, when poets could front rock bands, perform into their late 70s, and still have women going weak at their every husky word.

I have suggested before in this paper that Ireland, in its search for an agreed anthem, could do worse than adapt Cohen’s latter-day classic of that name (ie Anthem), with its soaring chorus: “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack/A crack, in everything/Thats how the light gets in”.

Not only has it an uplifting message about accepting – even rejoicing in – the imperfections of life. It also has special resonance in this country, on two levels. Firstly, every new thing we build here, from the Dublin Port Tunnel to the Luas rail-lines, seems to have a crack in it. A tradition now apparently continued by the Aviva Stadium, which, according to one of our letter writers yesterday, has a leaky roof.

Secondly, it captures the spirit of what Yeats called the “indomitable Irishry”. For it’s not just when things are going well that we try to find the crack in them, although begrudgery is an honoured national tradition. But the converse is true too. No matter how gloomy a situation seems, there is a compulsion to find the crack (or the “craic”, if you must) in that too, somewhere.

I was thinking about this in the early hours of Sunday, on the way back from Sligo. It was prompted by the automated toll-booth on the M4, which demanded €4.30 from me instead of the normal €2.90. I wondered if the price went up after midnight. But I was too tired to argue, and had fed the machine €3.50 before it corrected its glitch and raised the barrier (while keeping the change).

By the time I reached the M50, however, when only post-concert euphoria was keeping my eyelids open, it had struck me that the lyrics of Anthem had also been dramatically vindicated in Leonard Cohen’s own life.

After all, it was financial ruin that forced him back on tour to recoup the millions misappropriated by his manager. Out of which catastrophe has emerged a new, wondrous chapter of his career. He seems to have been energised by the road. Not only was he skipping on and off the stage at Lissadell, he now has a new studio album planned, the first in years.

Countless others have also benefited from the fraud. Not his manager, obviously. In what looks like karma, her life has been a litany of disasters since. But for everyone from the “sublime Webb sisters” – elevated out of relative obscurity in England to join Cohens choir of angels – to the many fans who would otherwise never have seen him perform, the ex-manager’s dishonesty has been a gift.

And in some cases, like mine, an education. By the time I was finally home on Sunday morning, I had learned one of Anthem’s lessons. Namely, the futility of holding onto my memories of that perfect evening in Kilmainham two years ago, whose peerlessness, I now realise, was just an earthly illusion, shattered forever by the fact that I saw a concert just as good somewhere else.

[amcgee]

Hi

After every leonard Cohen concert in ireland there always tends to be a comparison with a Bod Dylan concert. And as a few people mentioned the thomand park gig this year where Dylan played. I went to the Bob Dylan concert in the Point last year and i swore that i wouldn't go and see him again, i have seen him 5 times and feal i have paid my dues. He just cant sing anymore and it was 4 or 5 songs in before i could recognise any of the songs. He killed Blowing in the wind at the end of the concert, so much so i left and half wayt through it , it was so bad. In the five times i have seen him, only 2 could be seen as good. None came close to the 3 cohen giggs i saw
Dylan should stick to small arena's as when i saw him in the marque in cork he was very good. But in galway piearse stadium , it was like listenning to a wild cat crying..dreadful.
Cohen's performance in the o2 point was far superiour than Dylans performance, and after the dylan gig i did meet a lot who felt the same

amcgee

[sandraa]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24987246@N ... armstrong/
Cohen and Yeats compare mythologies

[TipperaryAnn]

Sturgess66,
Thank you for posting that excellent piece by Frank McNally, as I haven't got out to buy the paper yet! The Yeats lines he quotes are SO appropriate to Leonard. There was also a lovely, thoughtful review by Eileen Battersby in Monday's "Irish Times" - not sure if that has been posted somewhere already, will search later.

Added Wed. night: Found you had posted E. Battersby's review back on page 5. Might have known you wouldn't miss one, Sturgess ! I have cut out that and Frank's article from the "real" paper, and put them into my Tour 2010 Programme - not cheap at €15, but worth the money I think for that great photo in the centre of leonard and the band in full swing !

[clionamhic]

Sunday in Sligo.

Chelsea Hotel No2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO04SQwKwAs

enjoy.
A.

IrishAl, thanks again for another superb video, and I know what you mean about the shoulders, having videoed just a few myself. The quality is excellent. Your videos are the only thing soothing my broken heart at the moment!

[JudasPriest]

All subjective isn't it re the whole Bob/Leonard debate and with music generally.. I agree Bob was poor in Galway 04 and excellent in Cork 06. I liked last years Bob O2 gigs (I seem to recall a prominent Sunday paper agreeing with me during their annual review by naming it gig of the year-Leonard's I think got a mention further down the list but can't be sure if he made it at all). To me (and I don't mean to cause offence), Bob offers much greater reward than anyone including Leonard. Greater variety, invention, rearrangement (I for one am very fond that new Blowin in the Wind to name but one). And of course, greater risk which I duly acknowledge works both ways. But for every Glaway 04 there's a supreme Point II 05. For every Point 03, there's a Vicar Street 2000. There's nothing quite like it.

But then again, there was nothing quite like Leonard at Lissadell either. Bravo, Len, you've won me completely back. You're my no 2 again. Sorry to Neil, Nick and the boys but get in line....

[Manslady]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 49798.html

The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 4, 2010
An Irishman's Diary
FRANK McNALLY


Leonard Cohen at Lissadell House. . . "resistance
was finally wiped out by the old charmer himself".
Photograph: James Connolly

Lovely article by Frank McNally. Thanks for posting.

@ IrishAl : Thanks for all the great videos - Chelsea Hotel #2 helping me through today ... one day at a time...

[TipperaryAnn]

For a "designated meet-up point" the Garavogue in Sligo was remarkably devoid of Forum members. I looked in / went in several times on Saturday and Sunday; sometimes it was closed, sometimes they were cleaning, and a staff member asked if LC Forum people had been in said she didn't know. We even had lunch there on Saturday, which was pleasant in the sunshine beside the real Garavogue, and saw no sign of Forum members. It looks as if "From 10am on" should have read "Be there at 10am sharp or they'll all be gone" !
Vlastik, I enjoyed our chat at the venue, and also meeting a few other "famous" Forum members there, however briefly, and of course Maarten with his nametags, thanks !

[musicmania]

Does anyone have a full recording of Leonards Yeats quote including his quote from Anthem?