The first note - how you found LC and how it affected you

Iubita · Post by **Iubita** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:35 am

Hi Tom,
thanks a lot for your very nice words and wishes...
it's very interesting for me that my words are very close to my image...this means that I am expressing myself in full

...I love it...
about Cohen's event on May 17...sorry, but I can not bring any light over it...I didn't get the chance to listen or look it...
hopefully, someone else can tell us more about...
Tom, I am leaving the Forum, because it's too late...almost 2.30 night time....
thanks again and Good Night...

Iubita

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:51 am

I'm posting Nancy's own report on her Cohen night (check the Other Gatherings section).
Jarkko

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 10:08 am

Great, Jarkko, and many thanks...

Tom

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 4:19 pm

Great, Jarkko. This'll be fun......thanks!

mdidier · Post by **mdidier** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:08 am

It was a pleasure to re-read all of the wonderful comments in this thread about everyone's great Leonard Cohen Epiphany that especially the newcomers have experienced and the heartfelt responses by the initiated..... Am beginning to understand what "Beautiful Losers" really means....
I had posted elsewhere my discovery of LC in conjunction with the 4/4/03 re-run of his 1988 Austin City Limits broadcast and since then I must have watched about 50 times the 45 minutes I recorded .... An equal number of listening sessions have transpired since I got The Essential LC CD set, and am still absorbing the myriad emotions that his songs evoke. I have never replayed music so many times in such a short period since I fell in love with opera at a young age: happy or sad, giddy or full of self-pity, LC songs lift me as did/does Canio's aria "vesti la giubba", put on your smile, the show must go on... everybody knows, that's the way it goes...
Comparisons are dangerously unfair, but I can't help but harken back to the writings of JP Sartre and Albert Camus, especially the latter's "The Stranger" or even Becket's Waiting for Godot...... as absurd as "...from the top of Calvary to the beach of Malibu". I don't know if there is a connection, but it sure feels like it.

I can't make sense out of this either: happened to land on the TRIO channel with a Marianne Faithfull performance at West54th.... never had any liking for her music but I stopped and listened; sure enough she performs Tower of Song... Leonard's tentacles are numerous and ever present, I suspect.

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 12:33 pm

Hi mdidier ~

I enjoyed reading your account

. I've listened to Turandot [and other Puccini operas in the same way you're speaking of, with the same kind of emotional responses]. It does seem odd to compare, yet somehow you can. Bigger and grander than life, all-inclusive, and resonating all the way through you with great themes......yet still finding all the whispering parts of ourselves. And still more, the aspect that simply has no words.

Very interesting linkings you've made with Sartre, Camus, and Beckett ~ all of which I'm certain Leonard has read. And isn't that the way it goes with "just happening upon" Marianne Faithfull, not even really liking her work, but listening all the same, only to find out the reason why was Tower of Song. I love it

. I'd be interested to know how you liked her rendition.

~ Lizzytysh

Shoe · Post by **Shoe** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:37 pm

Hi All!

I think I first heared the name Leonard Cohen in the NIRVANA song PENNYROYAL TEA when Kurt sings:

"GIVE ME A LEONARD COHEN AFTERWORLD
SO I CAN SIGH ETERNALY"

That was a while ago. My Mam had liked LC in her youth and I made a Mental note to listen to him properly at some point...

...Later on at university in Wales I came across a copy of SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN on origional scratchy vinyl for around £5! After the first few bars of SUZZANE I was of course hooked,

and the rest is history...

Has anyone else got into LC through the NIRVANA reference?

mdidier · Post by **mdidier** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 10:59 pm

Hello Elizabeth:

about Marianne F: well, let's say I liked her John Lennon "Working Class Man" much better.

How about that icy princess Turandot? all a fellow needs to so is solve her three riddles, and as LC might say, by morning that broad will be mine! (al alba vincero!)... sorry Giacomo.

So far I like:
Music: Take This Waltz, Joan of Arc
Lyrics: The Anthem, Dance me to the End of Love, Bird on a Wire
Now if I could figure out what they all mean?...

Marcel

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 4:20 am

Hi marcel ~

How funny re: Turandot and LC ~ "by morning that broad will be mine!"

If anyone, then surely Leonard

. Did Marianne do any of her own material, or did she never do any of her own? It is kind of hard to imagine her doing Tower of Song, but hey.

That's a good way to break down your favourites.....music and lyrics. Will your favourites change on the morrow

? The challenge remains.....the meaning. How do you feel about Ten New Songs? The lush melodies and instrumentation of them?

~ Elizabeth

mdidier · Post by **mdidier** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 7:41 am

sorry about the long silence, Lizzy:

Marianne Faithfull: I don't know her songs, so I can 't say.... she sang John Lennon and LC songs among others.... Vagabond Ways is her composition? Someday I'll Get Over You....Incarceration Of A Flower Child.....don't know

I wonder if LC knew about Turandot when he wrote Joan of Arc? both cold and lonesome heroines.... "why I'm fire and I love your solitude, I love your pride".... Calaf in Turandot and LC in his JofA convert the "icy heroine" with their "fire"...... well, similar anyway. Or, was he aware of Joe Green's (Giuseppe Verdi) opera of Joan of Arc?

Ten New Songs: he word "mellow" comes to mind.... judging by the 4 songs on the Essential set, lyrics and music. The 'tension' seems to be gone from the earlier songs.

...now some reading of LC prose before more musical exploration...

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 8:25 am

Hi Marcel -

I think we're on the safe side to assume that Leonard knew both Puccini's Turandot and Giovanna d'Arco by "Joe Fortunino Francesco Green" when he wrote "Joan of Arc". Though this opera is not among Verdi's best known works, Leonard will have been familiar with it. Even if he didn't know the opus before, LC must have done some research on this "heroine", when preparing the "Songs of Love and Hate" material, with all the Jeanne d'Arc references in it.

There's some truth in your remark about the "Ten New Songs"... "Mellow", "made gentle by age or experience", or "well aged and pleasingly mild" like a precious old wine. But still, beneath the mellow surface, I always felt the presence of "the cross, the nails"... Maybe Sharon's part in the process of creation was mainly to soften the "old bitter blue", and make him attain a kind of maturity he had longed for for a long, long time...

Tom

John the Shorts · Post by **John the Shorts** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 11:23 pm

Tom

Maybe it's not so much that LC has been made "Gentle by Age" but rather that he has "Grown Old and Bitter"

Another possibility is that Leonard has come to terms with life by the time of TNS, after all as you grow older the first brain cells to go are the ones that cause anxiety.

JTS

greta · Post by **greta** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 3:08 pm

How I found LC....
The first song i ever heard from LC was Dance Me To The End Of Love.. It was on the radio a few years ago... I immediately liked the song but i wasn't able to track the artist and so i didn't think much more of it...
This year my friend gave me a mixed cd for my birthday present. The song I liked best was LC's Waiting For A Miracle. Again, I liked very much but i took no action really... Then just a week my mom said that she was listening a CD by LC and that she really loved it.. I have downloaded many songs from the internet for me and i decided to download some for her too. I searched for LC. I listened to his songs and i was immediately bewitched. His great voice, his exellent lyrics, his simple melodies....
LC's music is not probably not the music of my generation, but i love it and i can't stop listening to it now...
(And my birthday present to my mom is....LC's CD

)

George.Wright · Post by **George.Wright** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 3:50 pm

Greta, LC's music will transcend generations, but only for those with the ear to hear and the heart to enjoy.
Georges

Rhodes · Post by **Rhodes** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 12:06 pm

I think that I had heard vaguely of Leonard Cohen before I met an old a friend of mine in late 1984, but I didn't know his music at all. We sat up talking all night. It was great to catch up on things, as we hadn't seen one another for a couple of years. I think I fell in love with her (in a 'pure' non-sexual way) that night. She recommended a couple of books to me, as well as Leonard Cohen's music. I bought one of the books and loved it. I then bought the other book she recommended, and that too was excellent. It was only when I was browsing in a record shop that I saw Leonard Cohen's greatest hits or best of album (the one with Take This Longing, Avalanche, Chelsea Hotel, and so on) and remembered my friend mentioning him. The record was cheap, and I fancied a spot of retail therapy, so I bought it.

Wow! I find it very difficult to explain what it is about the music I love so much. It is certainly a combination of his voice, the simple yet enchanting melodies and the lyrics, but the total is somehow very much more than the sum of its parts. I was entranced and remain so to this day.

I got married (in Canada) in 1997. My wife, who is Canadian, isn't a fan of LC, but we had "If It Be Your Will" as our first dance. I think that the Canadians were bemused, and the English amused, but it seemed perfect to me, and the song reminds me of the happiest day of my life.

Sorry if that's a bit long!