Have you heard Dear Heather?

[Jonnie Falafel]

Well I read your review and wondered if it was really so strange to be preoccupied with thoughts of mortality at 70 years of age? Is it really so odd that one's artistry might reflect the fact that this might really be the last offering - the end? I'd also like to invite you to tell us at what point Cohen & Dylan were either rivals or collaborators (unless you count a very background vocal on Don't Go Home With Your Hard-on ?

I've noted elsewhere on this forum that this album succeeds where I least expected it to in the spoken word pieces Villanelle, Because of and To A Teacher, being exquisite to these ears at least. The songs that satisfy on the page like The Letters & There For You fail largely because of Sharon Robinson's soporific and awfully unoriginal melodies. Does anyone else here mentally go off into, "I'm turning ticks/I'm getting fixed/I'm back on Boogie Street" when listening to the letters. Leonard, please ditch Sharon Robinson!!

Finally,I can't agree that Ten New Songs was "lazily titled" so much as accurately titled! Actually I think that title is a joke just as much as Dear Heather as the title track of the new CD is a joke. Far from being dour I think our man continues to display warm good humour. Long may it last.

[lightning]

Colin Cooper is seriously sanpaku. Three whites of his eyes show. That means a tendency to violence, to murder or be murdered.

[3Cees]

I think you missed the point I was making on the mortality issue. I have no problem with him addressing his own mortality, or even that of his friends, but he seems to focus on the latter a little too much perhaps. Im some way, all of Cohen's records have been about him. Him in relation to othe rpeople, elements of society, history, faith etc, but a decent dose of him, too. All except Dear Heather.

Dylan's appearance on "Don't Go Home..." does render them collaborators, more specifically, as I said "one-time" collaborators, no? It's reported in Down The Highway, a Bob Dylan biography, that Cohen's position as somebody writing "serious" "folk" music with an edge of Judaism meant that Dylan (at least in the early years) cared little for Len, because he felt threatened by him. Of course, you and I know they did completely different things, but I think that and the media's approach to Dylan and Cohen's relationship is my grounding for the "rivals" comment.

I do agree with you in thinking Cohen has a sense of humour, and that he displays it more often than some would care to admit. Maybe Ten New Songs is a humorous title. Maybe it's just not a very good one. Maybe it reflects how inspired Leonard was feeling when he made the record. Maybe. I haven't read a single word until now claiming that Dear Heather is humorous. The title track is playful, perhaps, but this is not a funny record. Not even close.

[3Cees]

Lightning... what does that even mean? Sounds cool, anyway.

[Tchocolatl]

Finally what (again) 3-Cees. Finally someone is backing your opinion, here? Fine. I am happy for you. Noboby can say you are not understanding what you are talking about, well, not me. And I think that every truth is worth saying. And (again) I like the way you came with your opinion, honest, reflected, respectful.

For me, I continue to think that having 70 and the sucessful career we all know, he could afford to experiment, now, with this huge creative original talent he has. And Experimentation can not be what you ask. It just can not. I do not listen to Suzanne, Ey! That's no Way to say good-Bye, The Guests, Famous Blue Raincoat the same way I'm listening to In My Secret Life or The Undertow. I would be a non-sense.

You see I would have prefer Old Ideas as the title for Dear Heather. According to Polish Sony Site (thanks to Tom Sakic for the info) he was persuaded to change for DH. Please. Please let him create and experiment in peace. Let him has his freedom to do whatever he wants.

Sharon Robinson wanted to do TNS with "real music" and background singer(s) other than herself, probably because she had the same opinion as yours. And probably fans would have like it better, also. And she should not have been pointed as the "Yono Ono" of LC. This is not fair.

And now, what do you find unfair? That people may quietly listen to DH and like and not you?

I keep seing it at experimental poetry more than everything else, and I enjoy.

I do not like DoaLM and I am spleeping very well at night.

[Jonnie Falafel]

Or maybe it's the opposite problem, that because of his age we view his musings through that particular prism ..... just as any sort of reasonable view of Sylvia Plath's work has been distorted by her suicide or the fact that femisnists claimed her as a cause.

On the point of collaboration I didn't realise you were being quite so literal with your use of "one time". It's usually used to mean something like 'in the past'. However, you gotta admit that even in the sense you meant it, it's a pretty minor collaboration.

As for Down The Highway - it's such a travesty of biography, I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it. Both Dylan & Cohen have said at different points that their relationship is one of mutual respect. They've certainly enjoyed a few cordial meetings. One such, in Paris in 1989 was described by Cohen and concerned a conversation about their different approaches to songwriting. They were congratulating eachother on particular songs with Dylan claiming that a Cohen favourite (I & I) took him about 15 minutes to write and Cohen complained about the years he often spent labouring over certain songs.

But of course you are right - to describe them as "rivals" is a hoary old lazy journalistc cliche which just means that they happened to be riding the same wave at a crucial point in history.

[Jonnie Falafel]

Hi Tchoc! - I'm sure our musings and meanderings matter not a jot to Leonard. He's the artist I have to agree. As Dylan once wrote in one of his truly great songs, "Let the bird sing/Let the bird fly".... love ~ jonnie

[Charles]

I'm all for musical experimentation. But bad production is bad production. As I said I blame LC, even though I don't care for the Robinson partnership. I even might have changed my mind about his collaborations if there had been some real musical arrangements on these last albums. I think perhaps there is no one around him who wants to say to him, "this doesn't sound good." Maybe because he is old. No one wants to hurt an old artist's feelings, especially one they love and work for. If he were younger, say fifty, perhaps his associates would say, "this mix is terrible" or "let's get a good studio band" or "what were you thinking!"

[Tchocolatl]

If I remember well they were put as rivals by the industry. Like horses. Which one will win the race this year. Look at them running. On which horse will you bet? Very interesting... I do not think that both of them run into this.

Lazy Album Title?

Ten New Songs was not very different than Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, in this regard.

And to be related to the long chain of people, of which you are a link is a way to be related to others.

We really not see all this from the same point of view. Interesting contrast, though.

[Tchocolatl]

Charles, I did not see your message. I understand you. I do not know what to say to you. Because the "weird sounds" once I was accustom to it, where OK with me. I like the atmosphere. I do not know how to put it better than Joe Way did : for me it is like in painting. New technology brings new forms of painting that were truly awful for critics and experts. But was just new forms of art. I am conscious that I may be wrong. But this is what I am thinking and I like Dear Heather like others liked a Van Gogh (you know his "technic" (which technic, this is not a technic), my dear was so aaaaAAAaawful, this was not the way good/real painters are doing). Who are remembering these critics now? The talent of Van Gogh is still so powerful than one can not kill a grand child of him (poor guy) without having him mentioned.

I am really counscious that I may be completely wrong. But in this case, why so many people are truly like to hear it?

Nonetheless I think that eveybody should say wathever he/she thinks, but not in any forms. You did it very well to me (and who I am, anyway wink:) Who knows, in his search of easthetic, he could do something out of all his surrending.

See you people! Have a nice day!

[Tchocolatl]

Jonnie, I am not so sure. Nobody likes to be bullied around. I mean a desagreable truth to hear is something we all have to deal with, but lack of respect is another thing. Well I do not want to preach, however! love, Jonnie!

[3Cees]

See, you've come round ro my way of thinking. Sure, you still like the album, great. But now we've picked apart every insignificant detail of the words (as I'm sure you did with the positive reviews, too), grudgingly I get some respect for my view. When I first posted on this forum, people were sidelining all of te negative reviews of the record ad claiming the critics can't have "understood" the record. Oh, please.

Everyone's a critic.

[Tchocolatl]

3-Cees, I agreed with you on this "understanding thing" in my first message. And with the necessity to put things straight and clear. No need to grudge and no need to repeat. Or did you miss the point the first time (OK now, I am nagging. A little. Just a teasing)

I still think that this technic matter... Van Gogh was accused of not knowing how to handle a brush and to be me messy with the way he was applying colors. Critics and experts were understanding what he was doing in the way they were use understand painting of their time (they were not stupid bimbos).

I still think that I could have completely wrong. But I still like it, and I still like TNS.

What can I say? Have a nice day, and please keep posting, it is always a pleasure to read you.

[3Cees]

Hey, agreed. I don't have anything against people liking it, in a way I'm jealous. What Leonard does at the moment isn't doing anything for me, and I'm gutted because I fear he won't do much else. Like you, I'm totally enamoured with the man, the myth and everything in-between.

On another note entirely, I read on another thread in the forums about Cohen playing at a possible Bob Dylan birthday gig in Bombay with Clapton and Neil Young next year (I mean, does that sound nuts or what?). Even more incredible, I'm going to be in India at the time.

[ForYourSmile]

It’s absolutely an LC’s album, more than never coherent, sincere, without concession. (If we eliminate the bonus track, only a memory.) The one who wishes a brilliant studio’s work must look for another disc . The lovers of Cohen we have enough listening to this music, alone, with the switched off light and tears in the eyes. Oh... The Faith.

I knew first the lyrics, now the union with the music seems to me to be perfect. Like always with LC, the more I listen to it the more likes.

Kristoferson said to want to end with Bird On The Wire. Lizzy, for my funeral I would not choose Villanelle ..., of DH probably Morning Glory or Go No More A-Roving. Villanelle For Our Time has a marked rhyme (Villanelle), with LC's deep voice it sounds to very solemnly. In my opinion, this poem has a political content that ... I don’t understand .

I listened in the radio someone who defined DH as a "brilliant farewell". Probably it sounds to decline at many moments, well, I hope that Leonard is saying goodbye of us in a lot of time.

An admirer of Cohen said to me that he hated Dear Heather (the song). It amuses to me, isn’t it exciting?

(That lucky you are 3Cees.)