Bards of Canada: Leonard Cohen 90

Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat

We'll remember the 21st day of September with a milestone birthday of someone in need of less than no introduction.

I know I've covered him a trillion times before, but I checked and it's been 7 years so we can consider the statute of repetition limitations expired for someone of this import and artistic pedigree.

That said, I wasn't going to go back to him on here, but I found and restored a concert that doesn't really circulate properly and transformed it into a somewhat more efficacious state, so here we are.

He was an award-winning poet in his native Canada before branching off and beginning his one-man assault on the Tower of Song in the 1960s.

Using the Flamenco techniques he had dabbled in when he had briefly studied guitar, he molded his words into tunes and before too long, he was considered by many as gifted a songwriter as had ever done it.

When he finally passed in 2016 at 82 -- he died the day before Trump was elected, so he must have known it was as good a time as any to depart this realm -- he was thought of by a whole lot of folks as the greatest songwriter of all time.

The sad reality is that they just don't make them like Leonard Cohen anymore.

In fact, were he to show up at the record company today, they'd tell him his songs didn't talk enough about wanting to be famous and they'd call security and have him removed.

Sad reality part two: the people you hear on the radio today could not author one single composition that could carry the water weight of a single, solitary Leonard Cohen song, were those people to live to be 10,000 years old.

You can bet your last dollar that the CIA/Mossad chucklefucks that run the "music industry" like it just that way, too, as it leaves more impressionable and talentless candidates available for the kid-diddling Kompromat they intend when it's like that, seen?

Too many Leonard Cohens around and before you know it, you might have a population that might be inspired enough by music and its ability to transmit world-altering messages to cast off the chains of their oppressors, and we cannot have that, can we?

Nope, it's better for the serfs of the ruling classes to be inundated with a billion Doja Cats and whoever the next here today, gone later today Autotuna is on the hook right this minute, I'm afraid.

That's OK, because we're venturing into the heart of Mossad territory for this show, and Lenny gonna lay down his Blues for the Jews no matter what malfeasance -- even exploding pagers and cellphones! --- the spooklets drifting around like terror tumbleweeds care to cook up.

Leonard Cohen

Mann Auditorium

Habimah Square

Tel Aviv, Israel

11.24.1980

01 Bird On the Wire

02 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

03 Who By Fire

04 The Gypsy's Wife

05 Passin' Through

06 Lover, Lover, Lover

07 The Guests

08 Suzanne

09 The Stranger Song

10 Chelsea Hotel #2

11 The Partisan

12 Famous Blue Raincoat

13 Lady Midnight

14 So Long, Marianne

15 Memories

16 Sisters of Mercy

17 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

18 Diamonds In the Mine

Total time: 1:50:34

disc break goes after Track 08

this is likely the complete concert

Leonard Cohen - guitar, recorder & vocals

Roscoe Beck - bass

John Bilezikjian - oud & mandolin

Bill Ginn - keyboards & accordion

Raffi Hakopian - violin

Steve Meador - drums & percussion

Paul Ostermayer - reeds & winds

Mitch Watkins - guitar

Sharon Robinson - vocals

Jennifer Warnes - vocals

Tracks 01-15:

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, meaning this likely originates from preFM reels of indeterminate origin

sourced from the unauthorized 2016 digital fileset "The Legendary FM Broadcasts," on the Radioland label

re-edited, repaired, denoised and remastered -- with repeating material eliminated and tracks joined to flow properly -- by EN, September 2024

Tracks 16-18:

audio captured from a 320/48k HD YouTube file

seemingly sourced from a master off-air FM capture of unknown origin

captured, repaired & remastered to match preceding remainder by EN, September 2024
721 MB FLAC/direct link

Like I was saying, I went to Leonard Cohen again because any performance of his that doesn't adequately circulate needs to, especially in a form way more flowing and listenable than the original fileset was set up.

I shall return at the end of the month with two more things, including a tasty centennial celebration, but I hope you can get next to this tremendous 1980 voyage to The Holy Land with today's 90th b'day bard.--J.

9.21.1934 - 11.7.2016