First three albums re-released today

[John Etherington]

Hi Tom.
You've made some good suggestions, here. The cynic in me can only suspect that Sony are keeping the holy grail for a future box-set (which, of course, none of us will be able to resist). I'd be very interested to know if Leonard did record "Priests". I've always loved the Judy Collins version.
All the best, John E

[liverpoolken]

I ordered the 3 'new' albums on-line a couple of weeks ago with HMV here in the UK at the bargain price of £8:99 each with free posting

To date I have only received the New Songs album.

Apparently Songs From A Room and Songs Of Love and Hate are temporary out of stock in the HMV online shop.

I was in the city centre yesterday and checked out the HMV store and noticed that all three albums were on the shelves and selling at £12:99 each.

It's no big deal for me as I'm in no particular rush with a shed load of Dylan's latest tour still waiting to be listened to.

However I thought I would post up just in case anybody else was thinking of ordering through the HMV website and wanted the albums pronto.

Ta Ken

[osmachar]

FYI: Fopp are selling them for £10.00 each.

[liverpoolken]

FYI: Fopp are selling them for £10.00 each.

Osmachar

Unfortunately we don't have a Fopp store here in Liverpool.

The nearest one is in Manchester.

I know a lot of Liverpudlians who travel the 30 miles to Manchester just to shop at Fopp.

Our only discount record store 'Music Zone' closed down a few months back, so we are now at the mercy of Virgin and HMV here in Liverpool.

Ta Ken

[osmachar]

I think you can order online though as well.

[forged alloy]

Recieved my Amazon package yesterday with all three albums plus Blue Alert.

[dick]

My local store called today and my 3 reissues have arrived. The packages alone or worth the price. Pics, notes, etc. Feel like I'm collecting LC all over again... and with the same joy.

Sound great so far too.

Glad I got Blue Alert at Joe's, cause my store still didn't get delivery on my order....

[blonde madonna]

(sorry, we hear nothing but screaming in the background and she is unable to coherantly post)

(we think she is calming down)

All this argy bargy about who gets to see live performances, way over here people I can't even get a few studio albums.

[dick]

I wish it were better for you madonna!

honest!!

hugs
dick

[hydriot]

That songbook was released before the second album came out, or something like that - we tried to find out was it planned for the second album, because it was reported that it was recorded, printed in the songbook in 1969, but never released.

Yes: the copyright notice for the songbook is 1969, and Priests is the penultimate song in the book, between Lady Midnight and The Butcher. But intriguingly, while the copyrights of the individual songs vary from 1966 (Suzanne) to 1969, Priests is labelled copyright 1967,1969, suggesting it was one of his earlier compositions. The implication is that it failed to make the cut for both Songs of LC and Songs from a Room, which is rather sad.

Of course, in the sixties there weren't that many of us visiting Greece, and perhaps the record producers felt that listeners wouldn't understand what he was singing about. Those beautiful roadside shrines, always with a wick burning in a pool of oil, and a bottle of water waiting for the thirsty traveller, are as far as I know unique to Greece, a country where the word for 'stranger' and 'guest' is the same.

[blonde madonna]

I am still waiting on the CDs but at least I can read the reviews:
From Harp Magazine http://www.harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_ ... le_id=5467

It was December 1967 when Songs of Leonard Cohen was released, sounding a bleak, brittle note in the year that had seen the psychedelic excesses of the “Summer of Love.” But it was an oddly soothing record as well, the world-weary sentiments wedded to gentle melodies, spare arrangements, and Cohen’s own gravitas-laced voice steadily luring you in. The album’s lead-off track, the melancholy “Suzanne,” was already known to the public through Judy Collins’ version, the first of over a thousand covers of Cohen’s work. But none of them have matched Cohen’s haunting delivery, a key reason why his work still resonates with such power.
Every generation, it seems, has tried to claim Cohen for it’s own, and his music’s been plugged into everything from Werner Herzog’s Fata Morgana to Natural Born Killers (John Cale’s cover of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” even made it into Shrek). And understandably so; if you simply listen to the songs again, without any visual distractions and keeping thoughts of this being Important and Influential Music at bay, you can’t help but be impressed by their conciseness, and the attention to detail, the way the use of a children’s choir or a mouth harp at a key point sends a shiver up your spine. Cohen’s first three albums also form an unintentional trilogy, a dark-darker-darkest progression, as if you start out in a small room and end up locked in a closet.
Cohen devotees will be pleased that each album features previously unreleased bonus tracks. Leonard Cohen and Room were originally slated to be produced by other people (John Hammond and David Crosby, respectively), and the bonus tracks offer clues as to how differently each album might have turned out. On the Leonard Cohen bonus tracks (“Store Room” and “Blessed is the Memory”), Cohen’s voice isn’t nearly as stark, and the prominent drums on “Store Room” lighten the mood considerably. The same is true of the Crosby-produced takes of “Bird on a Wire” and “You Know Who I Am” on Room, which aren’t as mordant as the final versions, while Love and Hate has an early version of “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” Cohen still working the kinks out. Forty years on, each album stands as a quintessential example of the credo “less is more.”
By Gillian G. Gaar

[lizzytysh]

Hi Madonna ~

Thanks for this review. This writer ends each paragraph with insightful commentary:

The album’s lead-off track, the melancholy “Suzanne,” was already known to the public through Judy Collins’ version, the first of over a thousand covers of Cohen’s work. But none of them have matched Cohen’s haunting delivery, a key reason why his work still resonates with such power.

. . . if you simply listen to the songs again, without any visual distractions and keeping thoughts of this being Important and Influential Music at bay, you can’t help but be impressed by their conciseness, and the attention to detail, the way the use of a children’s choir or a mouth harp at a key point sends a shiver up your spine. Cohen’s first three albums also form an unintentional trilogy, a dark-darker-darkest progression, as if you start out in a small room and end up locked in a closet.

I had never considered this analogy... of small room to locked in a closet... and will surely listen to it from this perspective when I get it.

Forty years on, each album stands as a quintessential example of the credo “less is more.”

Every generation, it seems, has tried to claim Cohen for it’s own, and his music’s been plugged into everything from . . .

I LOVE seeing this summation statement in print ... and may our planet survive long enough for it to continue forever. Please rent "An Inconvenient Truth."


~ Lizzy

[Davido]

There is a long and favourable review of the 3 re-issued albums in the UK music mag. 'MOJO' (no.163).The reviewer is Sylvie Simmons who also wrote the extensive info booklet that accompanied the 2003 release of the double album 'Mojo presents..An Introduction To Leonard Cohen'.
In the same issue there is also an excellent review of 'Blue Alert' and a short (though not as favourable) review of the recent dvd 'Leonard Cohen Under Review 1934-1977).'

[blonde madonna]

Thanks Davido
My local library gets Mojo so I'll look it up.

[kokenpere]

Hi John:

I'm fairly certain that the original cardboard sleeve for "Songs Of Leonard Cohen" listed 'Priests' as one of the songs on the album. The title was deleted from the sleeve with subsequent printings and I had thought that someone at Columbia Records made a "mistake". I was in retail record sales at the time. (December 1967) I would look on both sides of the vinyl for 'Priests' and look again at the sleeve and lyric sheet for it and would come up empty. Bottom line: it seems a pretty safe bet that Sony/Columbia/BMG/Legacy has that as a future bonus track.

kokenpere