POLL on, my brother: The Leonard Cohen Memorial POLL Voting Thread - Ballots due Midnight ET, Dec. 1st

DOALM rules

Thanks to the 14 voters in so far, keep it rollin'

ballot sent!

looking forward to this rollout.

DOALM is shit

i already regret not putting "waiting for the miracle" higher. sorry, leonard cohen. hopefully other people pick up the slack!

thx for the ballot Karl!

for the record ballots will still be accepted until NOON EST on SUNDAY.

17.5 hrs till deadline, so anyone left - get crackin'

Still think the best thing he ever did was that WWII song, sung in French and English, forget the title

The Partisan. That was high on my ballot, too. It's such a gorgeous sounding song: the backing vocals coming drifting in and the melodica sounding keyboard instrument (I THINK it's a melodica).
There's something that's been sort of overlooked as the view of Cohen has changed to that of a smiley, benign old Zen master skipping around adorably in a tailored suit and that's quite how stern he could be at sounds. There's a real power in his voice around this time even as it sounds quite frail as he strains for notes slightly too high or low for him, he's still a force to be reckoned with.

yes there was a certain severity at times (queen victoria!)

Just wanted to let you all know that the kindle edition of the biography mentioned upthread, I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen is selling for $1.99 on Amazon (in the US, at least).

Reading a biography of him actually made him a lot more interesting to me: like I said, there seems to be this new perception of him as a lecherous monk, something like a thinking man's Tom Jones. He was a lecherous monk but there was so much more to him than that and it doesn't do him any justice. Reading about things like his baiting of German audiences with Nazi references, taking to the stage in fits of amphetamine fuelled paranoia, deciding he was going to go join the Israeli army on a whim during the conflict in 73, touring mental institutions, experimenting with Scientology...he fitted a lot into those 82 years. Not all of it wise. So this hagiographic image of him floating around long before he died, it does him no justice especially as a writer who put his own frailties under the magnifying glass so. Even towards the end there's the smiling assassin's steel in You Want It Darker (which relistening to made me realise Treaty was unduly absent from my ballot, hope some others have voted for it).

Greil Marcus was asked about Leonard Cohen yesterday. Response:

think the reason I like Leonard Cohen better on movie soundtracks—McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Natural Born Killers, Pump Up the Volume most memorably for me—is that there the music is orchestrating the actions of people, and if they’re good, and here they are (Julie Christie, Shelley Duvall, Warren Beatty, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Woody Harrelson, Juliet Lewis), they draw us in, and we care about what they’re doing and why, we worry about them, we feel protective toward them—in other words, in the movies there’s a dimension of humanness, of vulnerability and jeopardy, that is attached to the music, a dimension that I find completely absent from Cohen’s music on its own. To me it was more than half a century of someone looking down from his tower of song on everyone else. Randy Newman put it best, long ago, introducing his song “Suzanne” onstage in San Francisco: “This isn’t Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne.’ It’s on a somewhat lower moral plane, actually.”

Otm dan

but that was only replacing the previous 1d perception of cohen as depressive doom merchant - basically there is a bit more to this guy's life & work

like in the years before your basic types decided it was all about wry genial irony the idea of having to say "no there's also an element of self loathing/paranoia/whatever" would be absurd no

there’s a dimension of humanness, of vulnerability and jeopardy, that is attached to the music, a dimension that I find completely absent from Cohen’s music on its own

I guess someone needs to hear Death of a Ladies' Man.

Marcus reliably boring

I am a xgau-sceptic and xgau is a cohen-sceptic but his long essay on cohen is good (haven't read the recent obit btw); it does contain the kewl anecdata that all the hardcore cohen fans he knows cheated on their wives tho

Simon I am trying to throw something together now btw, it's difficult

simon I won't be able to get in today but possibly tomorrow morning? If that's too late that's fine

tomorrow morning could be workable - I'm only rolling out the albums on Monday so there's some wiggle room. all I'm doing today is collecting links, quotes, etc

for anyone struggling, I highly recommend just doing an unranked or partially ranked ballot.

Submitted

Don't sweat this, people: throw a buncha songs on a list, make sure "Hallelujah" ain't on it, hit send.

we are now up to 19 ballots!

I entered an antique shop today and the only two CDs they had - as in, at *their entire CD stock* - were pristine used copies of Ten New Songs and Recent Songs, which I'd been looking for. That made my whole week.

Don't sweat this, people: throw a buncha songs on a list, make sure "Hallelujah" ain't on it, hit send.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 4 December 2016 17:52 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pretty much what I did yah; clearly hallelujah is a lovely and excellent song but I could do the out four 20s without touching it, also I voted for two albums that contain it

*three or four

I *may* have to delay the rollout by a day as tomorrow night I will apparently be making dinner for a human woman, a thing that quite literally never happens. The Cohen effect?

Also, my second Cohen biography ebook came in today - very fortuitous timing.

Follow Leonard's implied advice and wear a suit & tie.

Or don't. I don't know anything about your life.

y'know I don't even wear a tie to work but I might but one on for kicks when I get home

Scratch what I said, the rollout WILL start tomorrow night, albeit in slightly unorthodox (read: not work-intensive for me) fashion.

Unless any more come in before I go to work tomorrow, we got in a v respectable 20 ballots.

here we go

Laughing Len strikes again: ILM Artist Poll #81 - Leonard Cohen

Voted!

Yer in!

Ranking those late albums.

I really like your take on "I'm Your Man."

thanks

FWIW this sentence seems to be missing a clause:
"It’s hard to remember which songs appear on the comeback albums, but to my ears Popular Problems is where the performing chops gained by a tour necessitated by money problems."

and you forgot the record "old ideas"

and i think you mean "if it be your will"

sorry to nitpick :(

the webb sisters version of the latter song was a staple of the late tours, and it's quite something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDemnguRYj4

that sentence works actually, although I would have subbed it – the performing chops on PP gained (i.e. improved) as a result of the tour.

Thanks for the correction!

I rank 1971-1979