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Tom Jones sings Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower Of Song’
06.03.2012
03:17 pm
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Tom Jones performs Leonard Cohen’s “Tower Of Song’ on the Jools Holland show - May 11, 2012.

Jones may not quite get the humor in the lyrics, but there’s no denying the man IS a tower of song. A monumental voice. And the guy is still built like a brick shithouse.

“Tower Of Song” appears on Jones’ new album Spirit In The Room which comes out on June 5 in the United Kingdom. This is the second new album release I’ve wanted to purchase that hasn’t been made available in the USA other than on expensive imports. The other is Richard Hawley’s Standing At The Edge Of The Sky. You can’t even buy em as MP3s. And Spotify won’t let you listen to Hawley’s album if you live in the USA. What’s with that? This is bad business for the artists and encourages illegal downloading. The music industry just doesn’t learn. The death wish continues. The only place to hear some of these new albums is on YouTube…and that may not last for much longer.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.03.2012
03:17 pm
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Ardour in the court: Screw with Leonard Cohen and he’ll smother you in prose
04.20.2012
02:48 pm
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Leonard Cohen’s former manager and lover Kelley Lynch was sentenced on April 17 to 18 months in prison for breaching restraining orders by sending scores of nasty e-mails and making harassing phone calls to Cohen. Lynch had a history of predatory behavior in her dealings with Cohen. In 2005 she was found guilty of stealing millions of dollars from Cohen and was ordered by a judge to pay the singer $9.5 million.

At the sentencing, Cohen read a statement that only confirms his standing as a world-class poet, Buddhist and a man with an incredible sense of style:

It gives me no pleasure to see my onetime friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the service of darkness, deceit and revenge, [But] I want to thank the defendant Ms. Kelley Lynch for insisting on a jury trial, thus exposing to the light of day her massive depletion of my retirement savings and yearly earnings, and allowing the court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing… It is my prayer that Ms Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion. That a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform.”

Yes, Cohen briefly turned a courtroom into a Tower Of Song.

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don’t let a woman kill you not in the tower of song

 
This seems like a good time to enjoy this concert footage from Leonard’s 2008/09 world tour.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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04.20.2012
02:48 pm
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Elevate your soul and listen to Nina Simone singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’
03.04.2012
04:10 am
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Oh what a lovely and unique take on the Leonard Cohen classic.

Nina Simone takes “Suzanne” into new and glorious places, pulling emotions from the song that only the high priestess of soul could summon forth.

Rome 1969
 

 
Thanks Eric Guyot

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.04.2012
04:10 am
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7 Classic Tracks
02.18.2012
05:30 pm
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Age may weary and death may claim, but the ears will not condemn this fine selection of essential listening from Blondie, Joe Strummer, Ian Dury, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen taken from Later with Jools Holland.

01. Blondie - “Heart of Glass” from 1998
02. Joe Strummer - “London Calling” from 2000
03. Ian Dury - “Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” from 1998
04. Sonic Youth- “Sacred Trickster” from 2009
05. David Bowie - “Ashes to Ashes” from 1999
06. Johnny Cash - “Folsom Prison Blues” from 1994
07. Leonard Cohen - “Dance me to the End of Love” from 1993
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.18.2012
05:30 pm
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‘Leonard Cohen consoles Nick Cave’
02.15.2012
12:39 am
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Australian artist Ben Smith’s “The Influence. Leonard Cohen consoles Nick Cave” depicts, with both wit and affection, the two melancholic bards as guru and student, father and son, ventriloquist and dummy, sharing the blood of Jesus and the fruit of knowledge.

Visit Smith’s website for more tantalizingly cool paintings.

Via Cherrybombed.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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02.15.2012
12:39 am
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Lovely documentary on Leonard Cohen’s time spent at Mount Baldy Zen Center
01.30.2012
07:02 pm
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For five years starting in 1994 Leonard Cohen lived at the Mount Baldy Zen Center 40 miles east of Los Angeles. There he studied with and assisted Zen Master Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi. 

In the Spring of 1996, French artist Armelle Brusq filmed this documentary of Cohen going through his daily routine at Mt. Baldy.

Cohen’s cabin with his Technics KN 3000 synthesizer and computers are shown, and he sings his new song “A Thousand Kisses Deep.” He also recites three unpublished poems, two telling about Roshi (one titled Roshi at 89). The third was titled “Too Old.”

The camera also visits the office of Stranger Management: Cohen demonstrates his archives (lots of boxes full of notebooks, he shows a poster of his first book Let Us Compare Mythologies and a painting made by Suzanne, the mother of his children). Later a studio session is going on, he is working with Raffi Hakopian (violin) and Leanne Ungar (his sound engineer). Afterwards Cohen and Brusq dine at Canter’s.

In this documentary Cohen tells about his life, his memories, why he lives at the Zen Center. He suggests that some kind of a circle has been closed and now he can do something else.

Cohen will release his 12th studio album, Old Ideas, tomorrow. Its current rank on Amazon is #1. Clearly, Cohen’s second coming is just a continuation of a long and venerable path by one of music’s wisest elders.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.30.2012
07:02 pm
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An hour of Leonard Cohen performing live in Austin in 1988
01.27.2012
05:03 am
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Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is being released next Tuesday. The critical reception has been ecstatic. Which thrills me because I have loved Cohen from the moment I heard “Suzanne” when I was 15 years old. He’s been a massive influence on my own music. My debt to him is deep.

Here’s something to hold you Cohen fans over until Old Ideas release: a brilliant performance by Mr. Cohen on Austin City Limits from 1988.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.27.2012
05:03 am
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Leonard Cohen’s rarely seen musical ‘I Am A Hotel’
01.19.2012
10:48 pm
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I Am a Hotel is a rather odd (occasionally kitsch) musical written by Leonard Cohen which was broadcast on Canadian TV in 1983. The plot is composed of a series of five vignettes dealing with love, sex and longing. Each story is based on a Cohen song.

The action takes place in the King Edward Hotel in Toronto. Cohen portrays a character known simply as The Resident, a Greek chorus of one.

Co-written by Mark Shekter and directed by Allan F. Nicholls.

Scenes:

   1. The Guests - the characters enter via the lobby and are taken to their rooms; the bellboy and chambermaid meet in the corridor; and the manager and his wife apparently have angry words in the lobby after which she strides off.
   2. Memories - the bellboy pursues the chambermaid around the laundry and ballroom.
   3. The Gypsy Wife - the manager’s wife, in fetching attire, dances on the boardroom table.
   4. Chelsea Hotel # 2 -  two lovers try, and fail, to make love, and the admiral and diva at last face each other across the hallway.
   5. Suzanne - scenes of “Suzanne” with Cohen are interspersed with shots of the two couples reunited and dancing together, and the hotel manager distraught and then drinking at the bar.

A short epilogue repeats the opening material from ‘The Guests’.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.19.2012
10:48 pm
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Recently discovered footage of Leonard Cohen performing ‘Suzanne’ in 1972
08.07.2010
08:16 pm
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Here’ a followup to a piece I wrote for Dangerous Minds a few weeks ago.

Leonard Cohen sings Suzanne from Tony Palmer’s lost and recently found documentary of Leonard’s 1972 European tour Bird On A Wire which will be released on DVD August 21.

This clip includes an excerpt of Cohen performing Suzanne and some additional footage from the documentary. It looks good.

‘Bird On A Wire’: long lost Leonard Cohen documentary to be released

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.07.2010
08:16 pm
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Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen
05.03.2010
11:36 pm
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Fascinating film about Leonard Cohen the poet/novelist and not yet folk singer of 1965. It’s strange to see him a) so young (he’s 31 here) and b) to see him being funny! Parts of his act back then was straight stand-up comedy. Leonard Cohen funny?

Informal portrait of Leonard Cohen. The film begins with Cohen delivering a comic monologue about his visit to a friend in a Montreal mental hospital. Later he is seen reading poetry to rapt audience and also alone, or relaxing with family and friends, walking the streets of the city, eating in a popular night spot, sleeping in his three-dollar-a-night hotel room, even taking a bath. His poetry readings are principally from “A Spice-box of Earth” and “Flowers for Hitler”. A press conference with Cohen and his friend Irving Layton forms a part of the film.

Filmed and recorded at various locations in 1964, released in 1965 by the National Film Board of Canada. Directed by Donal Brittain and Dan Owen, produced by John Kemeny. Black & white, 44 min.


 

 
Thank you Nicolae Halmaghi!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.03.2010
11:36 pm
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