It DON'T matter - how it all went wrong

[Snow (retired)]

I wonder if I've got a really rare collector's item amongst my old vinyl LPs. I have a copy of 'Death of a Ladies' Man' with lyrics to the title song that do not make too much sense. Inside the cover I read:

"And all his virtues burning
in the smokey Halocost"

What is a 'halocost'? I am acquainted with the word 'smoky', but the definition of 'smokey' eludes me. It is used in a song called 'The Smokey Life' too. Anyone know what it means?

I carried on studying the lyrics and read:

"Now the master of this landscape
he was standing at the view
with a sparrow of St. Francis
that he was preaching to."

What does 'standing at the view' mean? I did a search on Google but nobody else seems ever to have used such a mysterious expression. And why does this sentence finish so badly - on a preposition? Wouldn't it be more correct to write: '. . with a sparrow of St. Francis to which he was preaching'?

After this I folded the sleeve quietly together again and put it back on the shelf. Looking down at my beautiful Siamese cat I said: "Suki, that LP cover has loads of mistakes on it." Then she looked up at me and I could read in her eyes: "That don't make it junk!" I corrected her telepathic communication by saying: "That DOESN'T make it junk!" That's when I wondered if it could be a valuable collector's item.

[tomsakic]

My copy says "Holocaust".

I always thought he was standing at the look-out point, something like he was standing in someone's sight. But that's just my bad English, probably.

[Tchocolatl]

Snow, it seems that you don't know about a "typo" and about the craft of song making. You seems to be a sharp specialist of mistakes, Eh! This is how life goes, specialists are bad in anything else other the very field t of their main occupation. Bof.

Here for you, I have faith.

http://www.m-w.com/

http://www.dicts.info/di2.php?dict=english_idioms

This said, I pity you and I'll let go some information out of sheer compassion : Halocost, means "I allow you to deal this album at any cost" in bad English.

[ForYourSmile]

For curiosity - I have a lot of free time - I see in the folder of my Spanish vinyl CBS of 1977 and I read Halocost . How I have never fixed on this important detail! Alberto Manzano does not seem to be very careful in his book Canciones, in the English lyrics appears Halocost again and he translates it for Holocaust.

I cannot stand these mistakes ; our culture is in danger. Of course Phil Spector's bugs.

(I have saved the disc in my strongbox far from my street cat Gem that once spoilt a copy of Beautiful Losers.)

[jarkko]

My copy of Jennifer Warnes's FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT was released by Sonet Musik in Stockholm, Sweden. Jennifer's name is written WARNERS on the back of the CD (and Warnes elsewhere)... So it happens...

[Snow (retired)]

Jarkko wrote:
>My copy of Jennifer Warnes's FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT was released by Sonet Musik in Stockholm, Sweden. Jennifer's name is written WARNERS on the back of the CD (and Warnes elsewhere)... So it happens...


Well, what about the word 'smokey' - which I can't find in my dictionary, even though Leonard's song is called 'The Smokey Life'? On your lyrics page you inconsistently spell smoky with an 'e' in the title, yet without an 'e' in the actual lyrics. The song was also on the 'Field Commander Cohen' album. Leonard knows how to spell 'smoky' - he uses it in both Beautiful Losers and Favourite Game, so I don't think it's his fault. When his record company are going to give out an album of his songs isn't a copy of the album's sleeve sent to him for approval? It's only a little error, but it sticks out like a sore thumb to the educated eye - and it will be horrible if Leonard becomes a laughing stock amongst his literary friends - and goes down in history as a man who couldn't spell 'smoky'.

Apart from that, I'm glad to see we are on speaking terms again, Jarkko.

g

[lizzytysh]

When The Smoke Gets In Your Eyes it's easy to make spelling errors.
There are probably more on that album than any other.
That's how it all went wrong ~ it DON'T matter.


~ Lizzy

[Snow (retired)]

lizzytysh wrote:
>When The Smoke Gets In Your Eyes it's easy to make spelling errors.
There are probably more on that album than any other. That's how it all went wrong ~ it DON'T matter.


Well, Leonard is a Virgo, don't forget - and if there's any starsign in the zodiac that's preoccupied with trivialities then it's Virgos. They are obsessed with tiny little details; a pathological fixation. Not only that, glaring spelling mistakes on an album give it an overall amateurish character. Only last week Mirek said to me that his English is worse than mine - and if he's a foreign Leonard Cohen fan seeking guidance from his idol's work then no wonder!

g

[Snow (retired)]

Tchocolatl wrote:
>specialists are bad in anything else other the very field of their main occupation.


Over breakfast my father once told me: "Geoffrey, a woman is only good for one thing . . ." Then, while spreading marmalade on his toast and nodding towards my mother, he added: ". . . and some of them aren't even any good at that!"

[lizzytysh]

Dear lower-case g ~

As a former copy editor/proofreader, I can certainly relate. They jump off the page at me, too ~ well, when they're in a context that 'matters' in that regard. Here, with non-native English speakers, who cares? All I care about is the message. In the chatroom, I don't care, either. Same reason. Still, because the 'climate' there is to correct them, I find myself doing the same . However, materials coming out in final, published form, for distribution, with things like that ~ whole different matter . Leonard would ~ NO doubt ~ NOT have approved it. It's very apparent it never passed his eyes. But none of that left me room for teasing . What's a girl to do ?

I think "Smokey" is much more visually pleasing than "Smoky," which, visually, is just too abrupt. When you're talking about "On Top of Old Smoky," it's fine; however, when you're talking about "The Smokey Life," you want something more sensual and drawn out ~ the e in Smokey complementing the e in Life so very nicely.

~ Lizzy

[Tchocolatl]

Aha! I see. As the father as the son, he? I could have live very well without knowing all the tiny details of you family life. What the eck to me if your father was a misogynist and your mother bad at typewriting?

You must be Virgo ascendent Virgo with all the planets in Virgo? By the way.

The sore thumb is a kind of consolation out of all this.

[Snow (retired)]

lizzytysh wrote:
>Leonard would NO doubt NOT have approved it. It's very apparent it never passed his eyes.

Yes, but how can one explain the sentence ending on a preposition? (see first post). That must have passed his eyes.
g


She said she'd like to bathe in milk, he said, "All right, sweetheart,"
and when he'd finished work one night he loaded up his cart.
He said, "D'you want it pasturised, 'cos pasturised is best."
She says, "Ernie, I'll be happy if it comes up to my chest."

[Benny Hill: 'Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West']

[lizzytysh]

Yes, but how can one explain the sentence ending on a preposition? (see first post). That must have passed his eyes.
g

No doubt, it also did NOT pass his eyes, either. Or, perhaps, he really did sing just that.

Sometimes, good grammar just has to bite the dust in the interest of rhyme and art. Perhaps, that Life was just getting too him and nicotine-caking his brain cells. If he had the chance, he might become a scalpel sleuth and steal into the storage areas to slice out the offending sentence, to replace it with one of pure poetry with perpetrating preposition properly placed. One just never knows, does one. I believe this one needs to be submitted to the Catholic Catechism classes as still one more mystery.

~ Lizzy

[Tchocolatl]

It is "like father, like son" actually, thanks to Lz, which, I supposed, sent me a pM by telepathy - or to who ever did it (my technic is not as accurate as I would like it to be). I'm sure it did not harm the siamese I hope its master is not in bed with a fever and hitch all over.

This said....

***

(...)
The Smokey Life is practiced
Everywhere

So set your restless heart at ease
Take a lesson from these Autumn leaves
They waste no time waiting for the snow
Don't argue now you'll be late
There is nothing to investigate

It's light enough, light enough
To let it go
Light enough to let it go
(....)

[tomsakic]

He's Virgo, you're right Snow, and his "Virgo" obsessions are best represented in Death of a Lady's Man (the book). - Remember the Bird on A Wire - Bird on THE Wire affair (we talked about that here); I think it's the best example. LC is the only one persistent in writing "the" in title (and covers and his label is not). Except they wrote Bird On A Wire on the back cover of The Essential, but that was again Sony's guilt.

I think The Smokey Life is printed with this spelling in all CDs, and it's Leonard's authorisation. But I thought it's just spelling difference between Canada-UK and US (like, cookie/cookey - the last one is printed in 2000' Canadian edition of The Favourite Game, and the first one in 2003' US edition of The Favorite Game).

About his aprovement, you're right Snow, but the labels for vinyl LPs were reprinted in each countries again, by different company/distributor. It's different today with CDs, when LC makes it himself and send it via email to Sony. Example: vinyl LPs in Yugoslavia (from "Suzy" - Columbia's distributor closed when CD era came) didn't have the lyrics, sheets inside (mostly), and actually - the covers are pretty bad - they simply reprinted UK or French covers, labeling stickers above the original label markers before reprinting. (So, i.e. the sleeves are in pretty bad resolution, muddy, and you see that label's name was pasted - using piece of printed paper - on UK labels' name and similar things).