Just got back from a wonderful installment of the Came
So Far For Beauty Cohen Tribute at the Brighton Dome in England. Below
is a good report on it by a likable blogger named Richard. My solo contribution
is highlighted, but Perla and I were on the job full time. It's been fun
working with Hal and crew this year, and it looks like there may be more
to come... Please do thoughtcat the favor of visiting his site....
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"Three hours, 23 musicians, 31 songs and, extraordinarily, not a
bum note all night," reports the
Independent
on the Brighton Leonard Cohen tribute. Hmm, not so sure it was
quite that perfect an offering (not that it matters - the cracks in
the thing are how the light gets in, after all), but it was a damn
fine show, and it's great to see anything so enthusiastic about Thoughtcat's
favourite Canadian in
the national press.Today's Guardian meanwhile has a
good review of the concert - not quite as thorough and obsessive
as mine, of course, but then that's the difference between blogging
and real journalism, I guess...
23rd May
Mrs Thoughtcat and I made the spontaneous decision yesterday
afternoon to go to Brighton at absolutely no notice whatsoever for
a Leonard
Cohen tribute concert called Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty,
featuring such luminaries as Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker and Beth Orton.
It was about 4pm when I noticed the gig - due to start at 7.30 - advertised
in the Guardian Guide, and despite the fact that the website said
RETURNS ONLY we decided to head down there and take a chance. We were
lucky with the trains, getting onto a fast at Clapham, and arriving
45 minutes (and one sausage sandwich) later in the seaside
resort so legendary amongst sarf Londoners like myself. Sadly
we didn't have time to go crunching on the famous stony beach but
we did get to the Brighton Dome Concert Hall well before the start
time. Across the road there was a show (part of the same current Brighton
Festival as the Len tribute) by
TheLadyboys of Bangkok, which we agreed would probably be a suitable
alternative if we couldn't get in to LenFest, but we needn't have
worried because within about 3 minutes of queuing for "returns" we
were in centre stalls seats and having a fabulous evening. Being a
LenNerd, I did of course scribble down the set list on my programme
as the show progressed, so "here", as Len
himself once sang, "it is"...
SET 1
After an intro of the "Promenade" theme from Mussorgsky's Pictures
at an Exhibition (for some
reason), in a slightly unnerving reversal of the curtain call tradition
the show opens with all the performers taking the stage at once for
an en-masse version of There Is A War.
Nick Cave (black three-piece suit and shirt) and Jarvis
Cocker (jeans, striped shirt, lank hair and big glasses) fight
it out for the title of this evening's Tallest Celebrity Leonard Cohen
Fan.
Rufus Wainwright (dark suit, open-necked white shirt, chest hair,
sideburns) camps it up slightly to stage left while sister Martha
Wainwright (short blue skirt, hands in the pockets of her too-small
white jacket) bends almost double to her stylishly-too-low mike. Original
Cohen band backing singers
Perla Batalla (long curly brown hair and flowery yellow &
orange frock) and Julie
Christensen (runner-up in the Tallest Celebrity Cohen Fan contest,
bleach-blonde in a long black dress) contribute, well, backing vocals,
really.
Musical director Steve
Bernstein (short, bald, dark suit) plays a stunning trumpet solo,
otherwise the performance is a little bit chaotic (but we'll forgive
them because it's only the opening number).
Everyone then goes off leaving Nick Cave to sing
I'm Your Man with Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen. The backing band
(drums, trumpet, baritone sax, double bass, guitar and three violins)
replace Cohen's original humble Casio recording with a sleazy, deliberately-slightly-out-of-tune
bar-room arrangement which fits the spirit of the song but is a bit
hard on the ears. At the end Cave repeats the desperate refrain "I'm
your man" waving his wiry arms in the air like a character in a rancid
musical appealing hopelessly to the woman he loves. Perla and Julie
can't quite hide their amusement.
Kate
and Anna McGarrigle and Linda
Thompson then come on and do a lovely acoustic version of
Seems
So Long Ago, Nancy. The McGarrigles (small, jeans, spectacles,
acoustic guitars carefully fingerpicked) explain that they're there
to represent Leonard Cohen's coffeehouse roots, adding that they get
stools to sit on "because we're old". Linda Thompson (even smaller,
in a spangly silver jacket) points out her
lack of a stool and observes "I guess I'm just not old enough yet."
The song finished, Linda introduces The Handsome Family, who then
don't appear because she's forgotten that according to the agenda
she's now singing Story of Isaac, for which she grabs one of
the McGarrigles' stools. A very nice version, again true to the starkness
of the original, with a couple of nice bluesy twists.
The
Handsome Family then do take the stage for a decidedly non-electronic
version of
A Thousand Kisses Deep. Brett Sparks (quiff, sideburns,
goatee, Jarvis Cocker's glasses, general cowboy appearance) is the only
singer here tonight who has a voice anywhere near as deep as Leonard
Cohen's, while wife Rennie (long black and red dress, bright lipstick)
harmonises over his baritone. Rob Burger's piano is very nice but guitarist
Smokey Hormel takes a solo which feels a tad too loud and squealy for
this
otherwise "smoky" song.
Laurie
Anderson (big trousers) then comes on with Perla & Julie
to sing
The Guests and play her funny violin-which-doesn't-look-or-sound-like-a-violin.
Call me uncultured if you will but I honestly never knew she could
actually sing - I always thought she was "just" an off-the-wall New
York performance artist who made installations of herself lying on
floors doing spoken-word things inspired by Moby Dick. So it's
great to finally be corrected, as she sings this beautifully.
Martha Wainwright returns with an acoustic guitar to sing
Tower of Song. I remember her
doing a somewhat buskier version of it at the Leonard
Cohen Experience on Hydra two years ago and singing "27 virgins
from the great beyond" instead of "27 angels". This time it's a bit
tighter, and
virgins and angels are not confused. A really nice rearrangement,
and Mrs Thoughtcat's favourite so far.The backing band then
perform Cohen's only instrumental, Tacoma Trailer, a beautiful
Synclavier piece described as "somewhere between Chopin and Vangelis".
Young US pianist and arrangerRob
Burger (straggly beard, Huck Finn cap) plays it on his ordinary
piano which gives it a slight Liberace feel. The piece starts off
really well, sounding like the best song Leonard Cohen never put words
to, but the band builds it up a little too ambitiously and Hormel's
guitar again seems a bit
Rufus Wainwright then returns with Julie & Perla and
sister Martha to do Hallelujah. Musically it's nothing like
Jeff Buckley's hauntingly beautiful cover, with which all subsequent
versions are doomed to be compared - in fact, owing to
Rufus's basic piano style, it's a bit metronomic - but his singing
is great (even if he does have a habit of pronouncing the word "you"
at the end of the lines literally rather than to rhyme with the last
syllable of "hallelujah"), and moreover he takes a leaf out of Buckley's
version by singing both the
original four verses and the four "alternative" ones.
The Handsome Family then return to sing Ballad of the Absent
Mare, to which trumpeter Steve
Bernstein adds some fabulous mariachiesque licks. For the penultimate
verse
("Now the clasp of this union / Who fastens it tight?"), the band
lowers the
volume and Brett Sparks speaks rather than sings the lines, rounding
off the
song like a voice-over epilogue to a beautiful movie.The McGarrigles,
Martha Wainwright and assorted others come back to do an upbeat,
honky-tonk version
of Came So Far For Beauty. This arrangement of a song which
I've always
considered a lament doesn't really work for me, but it's fun to see
a
schoolteacherly McGarrigle sister grooving away at the ivories as
if she's been
given a rare break from playing hymns and now has free rein to boogie.
Nick Cave then comes back and tears into Diamonds
in the Mine. On the Spinal Tap scale of 1 to 11, the
volume has so far this evening never risen above about 4, but he cranks
it up to, well, not quite 11 but certainly 9. This must be my least
favourite Leonard Cohen song ever but Cave pulls it off so well, grimacing
fiercely and kicking and punching the air at every opportunity, that
it's impossible not to love it. Cohen's original ska-inflected version
is ditched in favour of a no-messing-about, in-yer-face 4/4 rocker.
Somewhere around verse two, a stage-hand, who looks all of 14 years
old, runs on in front of Cave to reconnect a cable and then runs back
off again, adding to the surrealness of the performance, and then something
even weirder happens. So far this evening most performers have been
referring to lyric sheets placed on music stands; this has incidentally
been a bit offputting, because while it means they get the words right,
it has detracted from the spontaneity of some of the performances. When
Cave comes on for this number he whips the lyric sheet off the stand
and clutches it in one hand and the mike in the other, using the sheet
as a prop rather than a guide. In doing so however he somehow manages
to tangle his microphone lead around the stand, and at one point he
yanks the mike so hard that the back of the stand falls off, exposing
the lamps that light up the lyric
sheets, so they're now glaring out beside him as if in sympathy with
his furious delivery. Cave, now sneering to stage right, doesn't notice
this, nor does he realise that the lead is stretched almost taut, so
for the last verse the audience is on the edge of its seat, preparing
itself to be mortified in case he tragically emasculates himself (er,
vocally) in mid-rage. Thankfully this doesn't happen, the song finishes
without further incident, and - partly from relief, I think - the audience
gives him the biggest round of applause so far.
Julie
Christensen then brings us all
back to earth with an excellent rendition of A Singer Must Die,
backed up very sympathetically by the house band. There are drums
on this version, unlike the
original, lending a kind of military flavour to the "courtroom of
honour" imagery, and with Christensen's short, shiny blonde hair done
up in a slightly old-fashioned style and her plain long black dress
there is a definite Marlene Dietrich/Blue Angel/Night Porter feel
to the whole thing. And is it me or does she invest a fair amount
of sarcasm in the line "Sir I didn't see nothing, I was just getting
home late", pointing up the lameness of this excuse with all its present
political ramifications? Donald Rumsfeld in his Senate hearing springs
to mind, but, trying as I am to have a nice evening, I dismiss him
from my brain immediately.
Beth
Orton (long hair over half her face;
simple, silky, almost transparent white frock) comes on next to resounding
applause
and sings
Stories of the Street. So far this evening the lighting
has
been subtle and neutral, but for this song Orton is backdropped in lime
green,
echoing the suitably uneasy (and excellent) arrangement of shuddery
violins
and spooky backing vocalisations by Julie & Perla.
Next up is
Teddy Thompson, son of Linda and
Richard
Thompson ("the Clapton it's OK to like" according to the oh-so-hip
Guardian Guide), all blond hair and off-white suit. Strumming his acoustic
guitar so he looks and sounds uncannily like a young Bob Dylan, he eases
into a lovely version of
Tonight Will Be Fine, slowed from the
original 4/4 to a tender 6/8 with a few chords and beats changed interestingly
here and there. For me, this is what events such as this, and cover
versions in general, are all about - not xeroxing the original but rendering
your own interpretation. Thompson does this so well he makes it all
his own, in particular lending the freshness of youth to these lines:
"Sometimes I see her undressing for me /
She's the soft naked lady love meant her to be / She's moving her body
so brave and so free / If I've got to remember, that's a fine memory."
Jarvis Cocker then comes on for the first time since the mob-handed
opening number. He takes the
mike and says, "If any of you are sitting there with your legs crossed
or dying for a drink, I've got good news and bad news. The good news
is that this is the last song before the interval. The bad news is
it's nine minutes long." There's much laughter, and then he urges
us to "Stick with it!" Nobody's about to run out though if they can
help it, as the rarely-seen Pulp star, accompanied by Beth Orton,
begins a typically laconic version of the even-more-rarely-heard Death
of a Ladies' Man. It's a great choice for the unlikely sex symbol,
and his dry delivery and Sheffield accent turn the song instantly
into a Pulp number, the more so for the funny little moves he does
to "act out" certain lines - holding up a thread of cotton and dropping
it as he sings "The man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread",
laying his finger under his nose for "his working-class moustache"
and, best of all, giving his lanky hips a copyright Cocker sway to
approximate "his cocky dance". I'm not sure if the song does last
nine minutes but with its several false endings it probably feels
like it for anyone who is actually crossing their legs. Brilliant
stuff, and a superb ending to a fantastic first set.
SET 2
After the interval - in which there is a queue for the gents as well
as the ladies (I choose the gents)
- and people begin milling back to their seats, the house band apparently
starts tuning up, but after a few minutes it becomes clear that they're
actually improvising on Improvisation. This is followed by the
McGarrigle Sisters who come on and sing You Know Who I Am,
again approximating the original, sparse Cohen arrangement.
Martha Wainwright
follows and sings The Traitor. The backing band start with
a slightly warped version of the original instrumental introduction
to the song; so far, so good, but after that there's a dicey moment
as Martha rushes the last line of the first verse, leaving the band
a few beats behind. It's not clear whether the band are playing the
original arrangement and Martha is singing a different one, or whether
she made a genuine mistake to begin with, but either way from the
second verse onward they all come together to perform the whole song
the same way, and it works and it's delightful.
Beth Orton then returns with Perla and Julie
to do Sisters of Mercy. Despite what I said above about
the importance of original interpretations when doing cover versions,
this near-photocopy of the original is fabulous - perhaps it's just
more of a "classic" than some of the others, or is at least a bit more
fragile than some Cohen songs, and so benefits from less messing-about-with.
Whether the
consumption of a bit more alcohol in the interval had anything to do
with it I don't know but this is the first song of the evening to attract
applause and whoops as it starts.
The Handsome Family come on again, Rennie Sparks now armed
with a banjo. "We're bringing the white trash to the party now," she
says, laughing, and they and the band launch into a full-on country-stomp
version of Heart With No Companion, complete with bluegrass
fiddle solo and some fine twangy guitar.
Perla Batalla then comes to the front of the
stage, now barefoot and with her bubbly long hair spilling all
over the shop. "I let my hair down because my daughter said to me 'You
look like a dork'," she explains to much laughter. Then she says that
the song she's about to sing is "my favourite of all Leonard Cohen's
songs, I mean, if I had to choose a favourite, you know, if someone
was holding a
gun to my head and asked me what it was, I'd say this one." She
then does a passionate version of Bird on the Wire, not only
without recourse to those damn lyric sheets but with her eyes clamped
shut for the entire song. She's a tiny woman, and a couple of times
she cuts a Piaf-like figure, especially with the bare feet. She gets
very nearly a standing ovation, or certainly the longest and loudest
round of applause of the whole evening.
Rufus Wainwright returns and sings an equally passionate Chelsea
Hotel No. 2. I have to say how much difference it makes to the
interpretation of these songs when men, especially, sing them without
accompanying themselves on guitar, piano or any other instrument:
it's hard to explain the difference exactly, but the songs just seem
less "folky" and more interesting. Certainly, Wainwright's magnetic
performance of this is the more so for the fact that he's just singing:
taking centre stage, the mike on a stand, his eyes closed, his hands
held out and gesturing, his legs apart, his rings glinting in the
lights, the first few buttons of his shirt open (I mean, I'm straight,
right, but even I can see how
gorgeous he is), and completely into the lyric, he turns this into
more or less a torch song, exploiting the sexual ambiguity of the
words (no gender is ever mentioned, after all) to heartbreaking effect.
Even the simple lyrical change of "We were running for the money and
the flesh" into "We were living for the money and the flesh" seems
to have deeper, more desolate resonances. Another
outstanding reinterpretation.
Laurie Anderson now comes back with Perla and
Julie and her funny violin for a sumptuous and
reverently quiet rendition of the prayer-like If It Be Your Will.
Julie and Perla stay where they are and The Handsome Family return.
"Oh! It's the Handsomes!" says Julie
Christensen, feigning surprise at another song by the country duo.
It's not really clear whether she's being sarcastic or not. "We're
gonna do a song about a raincoat now," growls Brett Sparks, and accordingly
the band go into a very nice version of Famous Blue Raincoat,
complete with a backdrop of rainstorm-blue lighting. Guitarist Smokey
Hormel slaps on loads of echo and reverb to crank up the atmospherics.
Linda and Teddy Thompsoncome back on. Linda is
now wearing a white jumper in place of the spangly,
shimmery jacket she started with. I'm just about to whisper to Mrs Thoughtcat
"Where's her jacket gone?" when she (Linda T, not Mrs Thoughtcat) says,
"In case any of you are wondering what happened to my sparkly jacket,
Rufus Wainwright came up to me backstage and said..." And here I'm thinking
she'll say that he asked if he could wear it, but the truth is much
funnier. I can't remember exactly what she said he said, but it was
something to the effect of "I really like your jacket" - "But what I
heard him say was 'That jacket makes you look like Fat Elvis!'"
There's much laughter and groaning, following which Linda T adds urgently,
"That's not what he said, it's just what I heard!" Rufus
can then be heard to shout camply from the wings, "I never said
that!", forcing Linda to say a second time that "he didn't say it at
all, but..." and digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole.
Anyway, the mother-and-son team then perform a very nice version of
Alexandra Leaving,
surprisingly only the second song from Cohen's latest album so far.
After finishing the song Teddy hugs his mother from behind and kisses
her and for a moment it's all a bit sentimental-cum-Oedipal.
Nick Cave returns with Perla and Julie for a nervy reinvention
of Suzanne, several times the speed of the original (which
in other words brings it up to about normal speed). It doesn't quite
come off, but it's an interesting idea, and Cave even singing the
song at all (especially given his other more obvious choices) certainly
throws new light on it.
It's now 10.30 and annoyingly Mrs Thoughtcat and I have
to catch the last train back to London in a
short while, so are only able to stay for one more song, even though
there's probably at least another half an hour of the show left. Thankfully
the last song we hear is one of the best all night. Teddy Thompson
comes back on and says to the audience, "How's it going?" We shout
back that it's going very
well, thank you. "It's funny that, innit?" he says. "Nobody's said anything
for the whole gig." Someone in the audience, thinking this is an invitation
to a conversation, starts trying to talk to him, to which he responds
by turning to the band and saying, "Well, I'm ready!" and adding his
Dylanesque strums to a
storming version of The Future. A few rows ahead of us are three
post-punk-type Brighton girls, all bone-thin with luminous twisted hair,
black lace bras and tattoos. When Teddy sings "Give me crack and anal
sex" they all fall about. During the ensuing applause we become the
sort of people we hate by
forcing half the row to get up to allow us out, and as we leave the
auditorium Rufus Wainwright is saying "I dedicate this next song to
Doris Day." We don't have time to hear what song it is, so the mind
boggles...
It's annoying that we had to leave the gig there, but having seen
some superb performances of nearly 30
Cohen songs we can't say we didn't get value for money. Of course
getting home on the last (slow) train from Brighton, trying to fill
our rumbling stomachs with cocktail sausages and crisps from Marks
& Spencers, listening to the inane ramblings of drunk geezers
on the other side of the carriage, and then catching another train
to Kingston and then a bus back to Twickenham to finally arrive
home at 2am wasn't much fun... but even that didn't take the edge
off it for me.
Roll on the Leonard
Cohen Experience in New York next month!
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