leonardcohenforum.com

This is all VERY much appreciated - thank you Bea and everyone else!

Yes, thank you from me, too, to everyone who's brought this grand event to us in so many different ways.

http://www.elimparcial.es/cultura/arran ... 93230.html

http://www.2space.net/news/article/387186-1319220607/

THE 2011 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARDS LAUREATES

Leonard Cohen
Riccardo Muti
Haile Gebrselassie
Bill Drayton
Howard Gardner
Joseph Altman
Arturo Álvarez-Buylla
Giacomo Rizzolatti
The Royal Society
The Heroes of Fukushima

Sir Paul Nurse and Julie Maxton, President and Executive Director of The Royal Society collect the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.

The Japanese delegation of "Fukushima heroes" who collect the Prince of Concordia Award 2011: Shinji Iwakuma, Masami Watanabe, Toyohiko Tomioka, Kenji Kato, Yoshitsugu Oigawa.

I just posted an enhanced-English video of Leonard Cohen's Prince of Asturias Awards Speech along with a direct transcript of the talk at my Heck Of A Guy site.

Without incredible contributions by fans who follow the site (the Spanish Cohen Brigade and Coco Éclair, both credited in the post), the video and transcript would not have been possible.

The videos that were available earlier suffered from the Spanish overdubbing, which sometimes obscures Cohen’s own words. In this enhanced-English version, however, all but the first 2-3 minutes of the talk play from an audio tape of Cohen's words with no overdubbing which I spliced into the original video. While that portion of the tape contains ambient noise and some volume and pitch fluctuations, it is significantly easier to understand.

The previous transcription included posted here and at my own site is a Spanish translation of Leonard Cohen’s speech originally published in El Pais and re-translated by Google back into English. It is, consequently imperfect. On the other hand, it was then the best transcript available. The transcript in this post is a complete (it begins just after the Cohen’s opening salutations to those in the audience), direct transcription of Leonard Cohen’s words. I provided a modicum of editing based on my own knowledge of Cohen’s phrases used in telling the anecdotes in the past and, of course, on the English-only tape of the speech not available to the transcriber.

The post is available at http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/10/24/leona ... ish-video/

You are so brilliantly invaluable to us, Allan! Thank you, once again .


~ Lizzy

Thank you so much for this transcript--Leonard's humility and gratitude are an example to us all.

Leonard has a way of expressing gratitude that is unlike any I’ve ever heard.

Thank you to everyone involved in bringing this here for us to appreciate.

Thanks for the transcript, Coco, and to you Allan. You're the only source of LC informations online nowadays. It's all translated and published at http://www.leonardcohencroatia.com/arhi ... e-asturias and http://www.leonardcohencroatia.com/arhi ... e-asturias while the photos are from your Facebook page.

From the TV news yesterday, talking about the Conde guitar makers and LC speech, from 55:30 to 56:40 :

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/tele ... 1/1231954/

This is Conde guitar luthier web, in the front page LC speech is quoted and they thak him for it.

http://www.condehermanos.com/es/

Reportaje de "Informe Semanal", Sábado 22 de octubre, "Premios Príncipes de Asturias 2011"

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/info ... 1/1230627/

It just keeps getting better.

I just posted a newly available video of Leonard Cohen's 21 Oct 2011 "How I Got My Song" speech given at the Prince Of Asturias Awards ceremony with higher quality audio and no overdubbing whatsoever.

http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/10/25/upgra ... erdubbing/

ah Allan,
I love your persistence This is absolute perfection
..........Good things do indeed come to those who wait.
Bev

Thanks so much for this wonderful video of Leonard's great speech. It was good to see Queen Sofia listening to this, as I know that she's a long time admirer of Leonard's work. In the late 1980s she was a customer at a London bookstore where I worked. One day, when I was serving her, I was wearing my black "I'm Your Man" sweatshirt. The Queen pointed at it enthusiastically, as she brought it to the attention of her sister, Princess Irene of Greece.

All good things, John E

John Etherington wrote:Thanks so much for this wonderful video of Leonard's great speech. It was good to see Queen Sofia listening to this, as I know that she's a long time admirer of Leonard's work. In the late 1980s she was a customer at a London bookstore where I worked. One day, when I was serving her, I was wearing my black "I'm Your Man" sweatshirt. The Queen pointed at it enthusiastically, as she brought it to the attention of her sister, Princess Irene of Greece.

All good things, John E

Thank you John, I loved my Queen, but now even more!
I was sitting in front of her at the theatre, I could see her smiling many times during Mr Cohen speech.