Dublin tribute reviews & photos

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 6:34 pm

http://www.unison.ie/entertainment/stor ... si=1701691
Unison, Ireland

Everybody knows this is a Cohen tribute to remember
Friday October 6th 2006

SOME may have questioned what a four-hour celebration of the music of Leonard Cohen was doing in the Dublin Theatre Festival. 'Came So Far For Beauty' doesn't have any plot or real drama, the only gesture to a set is its stunning lighting design, and the cast rarely speaks.

Instead, they sing the words of one of the world's greatest songsmiths like they are possessed and it is one more fabulous performance after the next a spellbound audience.

Line-ups don't get much more extraordinary than this.

Nick Cave opens proceedings and is followed by the likes of Lou Reed, The Handsome Family, Antony, Laurie Anderson, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, Jarvis Cocker and Gavin Friday, as they bring the old familiar songs such as 'A Thousand Kisses Deep', 'So Long, Marianne' and 'Stranger Song' to new life.

Everyone puts their own identifiable stamp on their song, with Reed turning his numbers into hard rock riffs, Anderson adding her carnival twist, and The Handsome Family sounding the closest to Cohen himself, but with their Gothic country trademark.

The sacred song of 'Hallelujah' is wasted in a skittishly jokey version performed by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Friday. But Friday redeems himself by dedicating the impossibly timely 'Everybody Knows' to a certain Bertie.

The second half manages to outshine the first, with faster and even more glorious highlights. Musical memories are made when the angular Cocker makes 'I Can't Forget' and 'Chelsea Hotel' his own, Orton rings true with 'Sisters of Mercy' and the evening's consummate backing duo, Christensen and Batalla, take centre stage to bring emotional power to 'Anthem'.

The real star of the night, though, is Antony. Singing as if possessed, his voice soars over 'If It Be Your Will' and the world outside the Point ceases to exist. SOPHIE GORMAN

Came So Far for Beauty

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:39 pm

Review taken from Irish Times, October 6

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:53 pm

Irish Independent (and several other Irish newspapers), October 5
News agency story, obviously prewritten! The editor has mixed Anjani with Julie!

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:07 pm

After-concert meeting with Anjani: she came to say hello to our group!
Below: Anjani with Anne & Henning

Post by **jarkko** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:23 pm

Photo by PAULINE MULLIGAN

Set list - FOUR hours of music!:

1. Avalanche - Nick Cave
2. Seems so long ago, Nancy - Robin Holcomb
3. One of us cannot be wrong - Lou Reed
4. A thousand kisses deep - Handsome Family
5. The guests - Antony
6. Dear Heather - Laurie Anderson
7. In my secret life - Laurie Anderson
8. Who by fire - Gavin Friday
9. Hallelujah - Gavin Friday & Mary Margaret O'Hara
10. Blue Alert - Anjani
11. Dress rehearsal rag - Nick Cave
12. Stranger song - Lou Reed
13. So long, Marianne - Beth Orton
14. Tonight will be fine - Teddy Thompson
15. Death of a ladies' man - Jarvis Cocker & Beth Orton
(Intermission)
16. Because of - Mary Margaret O'Hara
17. The window - Mary Margaret O'Hara
18. I can't forget - Jarvis Cocker
19. Sisters of Mercy - Beth Orton
20. Joan of Arc - Julie Christensen & Lou Reed
21. Closing time - Robin Holcomb
22. Bird on the wire - Perla Batalla
23. Chelsea Hotel - Jarvis Cocker
24. Waiting for the miracle - Teddy & Kami Thompson
25. If it be your will - Antony
26. Famous blue raincoat - Handsome Family
27. Suzanne - Nick Cave & Perla and Julie
28. Never got to love you - Anjani
29. Everybody knows - Gavin Friday
30. You know who I am - Laurie Anderson & Antony
31. Anthem - Perla Batalla & Julie Christensen
32. The future - Teddy Thompson
33. Memories - Jarvis Cocker & cast
34. Winter lady - the ladies

(On Wednesday also: Heart with no companion - Handsome Family

jammymulligan · Post by **jammymulligan** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 11:26 pm

I remember The Captain being sung...

Post by **jarkko** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 12:45 am

You are probably referring to "Heart with no companion" that was sung on Wednesday???

Red Poppy · Post by **Red Poppy** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 1:06 am

Reading the extract above from the Irish Independent you'll know why Irish people with any discernment avoid Independent newspapers and their head honcho Sir Tony "The Bean Baron" O Reilly like the plague.
Food, guest list and misinformation - that sums up Independent papers.
As my school boy friend Mick used to say: "What a pile of shite."

Wybe · Post by **Wybe** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 4:07 pm

As it was already on the Dublin Bus “Hallelujah !”
for “Came so far for beauty”
Be course I think the concert was really great,
except “Hallelujah” and the White Legs in the W I N T E R from Dear Heather,
is not something you should play in the beginning of October.

Anyway we had a wonderful time in Dublin,

Wijbe

big-al · Post by **big-al** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:12 pm

Red Poppy wrote:Reading the extract above from the Irish Independent you'll know why Irish people with any discernment avoid Independent newspapers and their head honcho Sir Tony "The Bean Baron" O Reilly like the plague.
Food, guest list and misinformation - that sums up Independent papers.
As my school boy friend Mick used to say: "What a pile of shite."

that why its the best seller in the country then....?

Peter Crawley I think was at the same concert I was, I would agree with most of his comments, except about Lauire Anderson who was poor and Jarvis Cocker who was one of the brighter lights

Antony deserves special mention for singing like someone hooked on speed, I sure if he kept his hands in his pockets he would have brought a smile to his face very quickly.

Mary Margaret O'Hara was appauling....

Can anyone tell me why that note which i could only describe as the warble from One flew over the cuckoos nest was used on most songs

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ ... e_id=14742

HE CAME down from the mountaintop with the stone tablets after talking to the angels, muses The Edge in the new concert film Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man.

But - despite the popular rumour - messianic Cohen never came down from the metaphorical mountain to make an appearance at this most surreal of tributes, Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty: An Evening of Leonard Cohen Songs at the Point on Wednesday and Thursday.

Maybe the Montreal-born bard was frightened of having his Zen calm ruptured by the presence of Sinn Fein president and music fan Gerry Adams who was in the audience on Wednesday night.

Still, the visionary mensch missed possibly the greatest singing voice in modern culture right now: Antony Hegarty, the fabulously androgynous cherub wearing a Lainey Keogh jumper, redefined masculinity and stole the show. His rereading of Cohen's If It Be Your Will was unforgettable.

The otherwordly singer and the song beamed us off to another universe when the words came soaring out of his mouth: "If it be your will/ If there is a choice/ Let the rivers fill," he sang, as trumpets of angels swooped around him. "Let the hills rejoice/ Let your mercy spill/ On all these burning hearts in hell/ If it be your will/ To make us well."

In reality - and this is not a criticism of any other artist on the stage that night at the Point - Antony stood head and shoulders above everybody else. That didn't stop them trying...

Teddy Thompson was a star in the making - until he decided to sing over a reggae drum 'n' bass. Laurie Anderson was characteristically enigmatic and engrossing, singing with a David Lynch-like effect on her voice. Her fella Lou Reed was, of course, as mad as a bagful of caterwauling Manhattan cats in rubber underwear.

Nick Cave patrolled the stage like an Old Testament preacher - with a moustache. Gavin Friday was inspirational and Beth Orton simply wonderful. Sheffield's answer to WH Auden, Jarvis Cocker, was one of the best things about an overlong and patchy show. The fin de siecle grandeur of his interpretation of Death of a Ladies' Man was bewitching. The former Pulp singer sang with vulnerability of pain and love - all peeling from his stretched larynx like a snake shedding its skin - as he strutted about the stage: "He offered her an orgy in a many mirrored room/ He promised her protection for the issue of her womb/ She moved her body hard against a sharpened metal spoon."

Looking like an alien from from a David Bowie song, Gavin Friday proved he can hold his own with the best of them. He dedicated Everybody Knows to An Taoiseach. The bald boulevardier of post-Brel Irish pop-noir also gave an inspired rendition of Cohen's classic Hallelujah. Unfortunately, Mary Margaret O'Hara was also singing on the song - and she sounded like a slightly unhinged banshee wailing in front of six thousand people.

Beth Orton, on the other hand, was reborn in front of six thousand people.

Bono calls Cohen "our Shelley, our Byron" and when Ms Orton sang So Long, Marianne, you could immediately see the wisdom in what Bono was getting at. Orton carried the song. And us along with it when she did Sisters Of Mercy. Overall, this was a fantastic evening for poor Leonard (or was it a whip round for Leonard in the spirit of Bertie's Manchester hooley?) in the light of his current dour situation with his accountant.

However, the poet laureate of pessimism/the grocer of despair, Mr Cohen would have been surely even more depressed had he been present to hear the damage wrought on some of his famous songs. But enough about Lou Reed and his angry guitar.

Still, most of the evening was unforgettable for the right reasons: great music reinterpreted by great musicians and artists. In the end, all the artists in their own way - even Ms O'Hara - showed why Cohen's songwriting genius is timeless and open to interpretation by the young geniuses of this generation.

As I shuffled out of the Point on Wednesday night Jarvis Cocker's reworking of Death of a Ladies' Man was swirling in my head. It reminded me of the story of how mad genius Phil Spector produced that record in the Seventies in LA. And how at a certain point, Leonard recalled once, "Phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'Leonard, I love you.' I said, 'I hope you do, Phil.'"

We love you, Leonard.

As happy chappy Kurt Cobain sang on Nirvana song Pennyroyal Tea: "Give me Leonard Cohen afterworld/ So I can sigh eternally."

I think the quote from this atricle sums it up for me an overlong and patchy show

Post by **jarkko** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:55 pm

Sunday Business Post (thanks to Pauline Mulligan for the clip!!)

taisce · Post by **taisce** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:08 am

ok, I was SERIOUSLY disappointed with Hallelujah....on wednesday night
I thought it was rubbish

sulis · Post by **sulis** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 3:26 am

Wow, the honesty is wonderful. I went to the UK concert a couple of years ago, and though a few acts were brilliant, notably Teddy Thompson, Handsome Family (though they were even better supporting the Oyster Band), and some other act, I found the atmosphere so dead and unfriendly and a lot of the songs emotionally dead. I love Leonard Cohen songs, but the human wilderness atmosphere was sooooo cold.

Post by **jarkko** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 8:42 am

A photo report with Dick's review has been posted on the Files at:
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/dublin.html

Henning · Post by **Henning** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:26 am

Here are the votes from the German Jury (*** Wonderful, ** Good, * OK, # Bad , ## Horrible):

1. Avalanche - Nick Cave **
2. Seems so long ago, Nancy - Robin Holcomb *
3. One of us cannot be wrong - Lou Reed #
4. A thousand kisses deep - Handsome Family *
5. The guests - Antony **
6. Dear Heather - Laurie Anderson *
7. In my secret life - Laurie Anderson #
8. Who by fire - Gavin Friday #
9. Hallelujah - Gavin Friday & Mary Margaret O'Hara ##
10. Blue Alert - Anjani **
11. Dress rehearsal rag - Nick Cave *
12. Stranger song - Lou Reed **
13. So long, Marianne - Beth Orton ***
14. Tonight will be fine - Teddy Thompson ***
15. Death of a ladies' man - Jarvis Cocker & Beth Orton ***
(Intermission)
16. Because of - Mary Margaret O'Hara #
17. The window - Mary Margaret O'Hara ##
18. I can't forget - Jarvis Cocker *
19. Sisters of Mercy - Beth Orton ***
20. Joan of Arc - Julie Christensen & Lou Reed #
21. Closing time - Robin Holcomb ##
22. Bird on the wire - Perla Batalla ***
23. Chelsea Hotel - Jarvis Cocker #
24. Waiting for the miracle - Teddy & Kami Thompson ****
25. If it be your will - Antony ***
26. Famous blue raincoat - Handsome Family *
27. Suzanne - Nick Cave & Perla and Julie *
28. Never got to love you - Anjani ***
29. Everybody knows - Gavin Friday ##
30. You know who I am - Laurie Anderson & Antony *
31. Anthem - Perla Batalla & Julie Christensen ***
32. The future - Teddy Thompson **
33. Memories - Jarvis Cocker & cast **
34. Winter lady - the ladies ##

Report will follow.