4, I remember that video! It was ironically hilarious!
Vickie,
Happy to hear your reactions to the I’m Your Man album! I didn’t want to influence you by first saying my favourite song from that album but it is also Take This Waltz and I still get shivers when it’s played! I think the line, “And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss”...definitely has something to do with it also plus the fact that it was played at all the concerts I went to on the last world tour. Leonard wrote this song and melody based on a poem called Little Viennese Waltz by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca who was a major influence in his early life of poetry.
Here’s what he had to say about it during his I’m Your Man 1988 tour: “I was 15 years old and I was wandering through the bookstores of Montreal and I fell upon one of his books, and I opened it, and my eyes saw these lines, ‘I want to pass through the Arches of Elvira, to see your thighs and begin weeping’. I thought, this is where I want to be ... I read along, ‘Green, how I want you green’. I turned another page; ‘The morning threw fistfuls of ants in your face’. I turned another page, ‘Her thighs slipped away like schools of silver minnows’. I knew that I had come home. So it is with a great sense of gratitude that I am able to repay my debt to Federico Garcia, at least a corner, a fragment, a crumb, a hair, an electron of my debt by dedicating this song, this translation of his great poem Little Viennese Waltz, Take This Waltz. I named my daughter Lorca, so you can see this is not a casual figure in my life”.
Tower Of Song has had quite a few humorous variations to it over the years in the last world tour. The very last one he ever did in Sydney 2013 is hilarious! LC’s droll sense of humour at its finest! It’s on the last live album, Can’t Forget – A Souvenir Of The Grand Tour 2015 so you’ll have to wait until then! I was friendly with one of the tour’s Australian film camera crew and every time Leonard would sing, “I was born with the gift of a golden voice”.... every night without fail, he would turn around to me from his camera (I was always in or near the front row) and roll his eyes in reaction to the audience’s (including mine) response!
About Jazz Police – This song was performed at approx. 12 concerts in 1988 in Canada and the USA but I think the only visual of it is Austin City Limits. If your satellite connection is not stable for the whole show, here it is singularly and you could watch the other songs individually from YouTube as well. The usual Star Trek theme song is here but he scats in this song at the concerts and not on the album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaMYMWg6rE
Here’s an explanatory excerpt from The LC Files about it:
One of the frequently asked questions about the song considers its beginning. How or where did Cohen get the idea for the song? In an interview in Musician Cohen gives the story. It began during the making of the record Recent Songs when he worked with the fusion group Passenger. Often the band would sneak bits of jazz riffs into the songs, which Cohen admitted he had to watch out for. Between Cohen and the band grew an understanding that if he caught them playing jazz riffs (augmented fifths or sevenths is the example he gives) he would call them on it. Initially he was himself the jazz police! The intent was to then take the idea of a 'jazz police' and let it run on into some type of fruition, be it absurdity or full expression. It took 9 years (1979-1988) for the song to develop and be recorded; a testament to Cohen's well know practice of working and reworking pieces of poetry and songs in time consuming detail.
Songs from the life of LC isn’t on a DVD as far as I know but most of them can be individually watched on YouTube one at a time if your satellite internet won’t let you watch the complete link.
For some reason I had a feeling you would like Red River Valley so here’s an audio version of it by LC at the Birmingham soundcheck 1979 ....Yeehaw!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p98246laTNQ
As well as Red River Valley there are a couple more ‘cowboy’ songs I think you might like - Streets of Laredo and I Ride An Old Paint in the links below. I couldn’t find them individually so hope this is OK. It’s an audio compilation album by Dr H Guy called The Other Songs of LC vol1 & vol2 (those two songs are on vol2). You can download it and another compilation album he put together, Another Other Songs of LC from his site here -
http://cohencentric.com/2010/01/25/now- ... hen-album/
http://cohencentric.com/2010/05/20/pres ... hen-album/
or watch all The Other Songs of LC here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPPQJrr-0s
I’ll stop now before I really get carried away!
Ha I know most of it is not at all new to you! But I am listening to "I'm Your Man" for the first time on my way to work, so we will both have something 'new' to hear today!
It's so funny when you finally realize what was actually said.
