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I’ll admit straight up that I’m not a huge Leonard Cohen fan. This isn’t to say I don’t like him, just that I’m not the one who picked out this show to see and all things considered I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought a ticket to see this by myself. My girlfriend however is a pretty big fan, and I’m never one to say no to someone who’s supposed to be one of the best songwriters on the planet ever, so why not right? I know that Leonard Cohen has influenced pretty much half of the people that I listen to already, so I’m pretty stupid for not having given too much attention to his music. Most of my favorite artists (along with 2.2 million other people) have covered Hallelujah or one of his other songs, Tori Amos is fond of Famous Blue Raincoat and I’d heard a few songs here and there in soundtracks so I’m not TOTALLY unfamiliar… but at the same time I’m not gonna lie about things here so there you go, full disclosure.

All that said, I actually really liked the show. I’d been sternly warned before the show not to fall asleep, but really despite most of the songs being of a folk-singer-songwriter sort of vibe (which is not my primary interest but something I can definitely get into) it was amazingly entertaining. Everyone on stage played multiple instruments and the arrangements were very nice. It was a better stage show than most bands I see who mail it in, Leonard Cohen is really giving you your money’s worth in a show. I assume this will be the only time I’ll see him play, the last time he was in CA was 14 years ago, so I think this is his last tour and one for the money since tickets were not cheap at ALL. With that sort of expectation though, he really put value in the show. Some bands for otherwise expensive tickets will make a really big effort to get off the stage in an hour and a half, fill the show with opening acts that add value and it’s a tossup on whether it’s great or not. Leonard Cohen said screw opening acts (yay) started prompt at 8PM (yay) and played for a full 3 hours. An hour-ish for a first set, an hour-ish for a second set and a full hour of 4 encores. (or you could just say a third set around an hour with him skipping off stage for a few seconds and coming back on or whatever). Wow.

1. Dance Me to the End of Love
2. The Future
3. catvAin’t No Cure for Love
4. Bird On A Wire
5. Everybody Knows
6. In My Secret Life
7. Who By Fire
8. Chelsea Hotel #2
9. Waiting For The Miracle
10. Anthem
11. Tower of Song
12. Suzanne
13. The Gypsy’s Wife
14. The Partisan
15. Boogie Street
16. Hallelujah
17. I’m Your Man
18. A Thousand Kisses Deep [recitation]
19. Take This Waltz
20. So Long Marianne
21. First We Take Manhattan
22. Famous Blue Raincoat
23. If It Be Your Will
24. Democracy
25. Lullaby
26. Closing Time
27. I Tried to Leave You
28. Whither Thou Goest

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless FLAC via Dimeadozen (registration required)

Links:

• Official Site
• The Leonard Cohen Files

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am and is filed under concert.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.