PRESALE TO ANTWERP (over now)

[drsing]

Hope this picture helps a little bit, it's a screenshot from the Belgian website where the Antwerp tickets are/were sold.
Note the 6 ("vertical") blocks on the floor, nr 1 is on the left.

[marianne.s]

The left side is close to the Webb-Sisters...

[tomsakic]

http://www.examiner.com/x-11729-Leonard ... e-Flanders

Cohen returns to Europe, Flanders
May 28, 2009
by Joe McClellan

After two sold out dates in Boston and one in the dramatic canyon of Redrocks in Colorado, Leonard Cohen will be wrapping up his roundly successful tour of the United States. After a month long respite, Europe will be next to indirectly benefit from the unfortunate financial woes that forced him out of retirement. The septuagenarian genius will first perform two shows in Köln, Germany, on July 1 &2, and will perform on the United State’s Independence Day in Antwerp, Belgium. A lot has changed since Cohen’s previous show in Antwerp, which was covered in the 1981 film by Harry Rasky, the Song of Leonard Cohen.

The companion book to that film, written in retrospect and published in 2001, provides a transcript of a tense and awkward night in Antwerp, with Rasky describing Belgium in a very unfavorable light:

Belgium, which is a country, much like a green lawn which has been saturated by chemicals to drown the weeds and all other independent living matter. Every blade in its place. None would dare to be different. Belgium is to countries what Robert Goulet is to music… Belgium is, of course, now the center of the new homogenized Europe where the new bland Euro is the currency and politicians are selected to be indistinguishable, erasing all signs of rationality… Gone are the quaint terrible wars the kept Europe constantly off balance.

The rationality of Rasky’s commentary aside, his reminiscences clearly recall a very different Europe in the late 1970’s. Never a bastion of musical invention, Flanders in 1979 was more open to the flamboyant sounds of Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg, and especially the exciting Wagnerian rock and soul being produced by American Phil Spector since the late 1960’s. Given these tastes, Cohen may have teased the Flemish too much for his own good by collaborating with Spector on his anomalous 1977 album Death of a Ladies’ Man. The crowd that night, expecting a Spectoresque “wall of sound” were let down by the more typical folksy Cohen, and presented him with wooden faces and flaccid applause. It was enough to get under the skin of the famously mellow Cohen who growled, “They’ll be punished severely. I’m not going to let them get away with this. This is the best music that has been played in Belgium, what’s the, when was the last Belgian composer?” Following the show, the Song of Leonard Cohen documents an awkward and exasperating interview with a Belgian journalist, and shows Cohen as a famous, yet still not entirely understood artist with many more doors yet to open.

The upcoming Antwerp show promises to be far less taxing for the now legendary bard. Having easily conquered France and the UK, their Teutonic neighbors soon cracked the coed of his soulful poetry, and now there is virtually no pocket, Flemish or otherwise, left in this world that is not prepared to honor his monumental oeuvre on this twilight tour.

[Leisha]

Boo hoo, why the negativity about Belgium?


Rubens,Van Dyck, Memling, Dirk Bouts, Rogier van der Weyden, Van Eyck, Magritte, Ensor,
Victor Horta - art nouveau
The Smurfs, Tintin, Lucky Luke
The Dardenne brothers (filmmakers)
The saxophone
Toots Thielemans, Jacques Brel - ok we don't have a great track record for music though there are great bands around.

All came from Belgium.

It's not like we don't have culture over here... (plus we have chocolate, beer and frites).
Also - well this is my experience/opinion anyway - Brussels as the capital of Europe has not much to do with the rest of the country... I mean most people couldn't care less. There are great areas in Brussels but the "European neighbourhood" is a separate thing IMO.
A bit stupid to think that because Brussels is made the head of the EU, it means all Belgians are bland and indistinguishable and don't want/dare to be different...

Hehe sorry but I just had to respond. Belgians are in my experience quite understated, calm people and yeah I have noticed at concerts that "we" are often holding back a bit which may throw artists off. It has irritated me too at times.
And of course everyone's entitled to their opinion. But that article (well, the quote) was a bit harsh

[Maarten]

I'm planning a meetup before (and after) the Antwerp concert: please have a look here:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15488

Maarten