Random LC moment I am adoring today

[TheSpice-BoxOfEarth]

The Stranger Song episode in "Sound of Sixties" finally broadcasted here in Finland tonight and I cried with young Leonard. How mesmerize moment!

The day before yesterday when I was shopping with my grandmother (she has a picture about Leonard in her dining table, by the way!) we saw a man wearing Leonard Cohen t-shirt. I exhilarated and I wanted to go talking with that man (and try to buy a t-shirt ) but my granny thought it wàsn`t good idea and we just walked by couple of times.

[The Shrew]

Hi all, not really relevant to any previous posts - and as a newbie to this not sure where to put this. But ---- just spent a whole afternoon listening to all my original vinyls - loud - and they sound better (including scratches) than CD's. First heard LC in 1977 and asked my Dad if he'd ever heard of him - he thumped me!! Now enjoying as much as I did when I was 16!!

[MaryB]

Going to our favorite watering hole last night, listening to LC on the jukebox, and my husband saying, "Yes, we'll do Vegas and San Jose.". The going to the club and being a backup singer for someone while we croakied our way through 'Everybody Knows'.

[kwills]

I've been looking for this thread for a while,finally found it!

About three weeks ago I got caught in some really heavy rain and the water was running down my eyelashes and
I immediately though of the song,So Long Marianne, and I was smiling all the way home,drenched to my skin.

[bridger15]

I had to kill some time between appointments this afternoon. So I took a book and went to Starbucks. I sat in one of the comfy armchairs which was next to a young man (they all look young to me) playing a guitar. He apologized if he was distrubing me. I said no, it was very pleasant. He asked what music I like and he would serenade me.

Do you know Leonard Cohen?
No, but if you hum a few bars I will try and play it.

So I unleashed the floodgates and gently gave him a brief history.
He works on the Columbia label.
He has worked with Sharon Robinson - "A w o n d e r f u l lady".

Raphael Bernardo Gayol - very famous drummer, the best.
He is the most important member of the band. There is a sound delay and it is the drummer's job to keep everyone in time together. I told him LC calls Raphael, The Prince of Precision.

LC sometimes refers to his "chop", saying he only has a few. After I asked, this young man demonstrated the difference between a "riff" and a "chop".

I invited him out to my car and played some snippets from my personal playlist of non-tour songs.
Big smile when he heard LC "screaming", There are no letters ....No diamonds in the mine...

[douglas2]

having just finished watching the "live in London " dvd.............................
I heard his music
i breathed his song
i wondered why it took so long
to see what he had learned and i had missed
his intellect in life and love
his eversearching oration
warmed my soul and scarred my mind
in tuneful laceration.

[lizzytysh]

What a joy to read these! Mine was just minutes ago. At my friend's house, to whom I've been speaking about Leonard for years ~ playing some of his music, showing her some of his songbooks... I told her that Leonard was going to be playing in FLORIDA !!! After I told her that, no sooner than she started to tell me ~ no less than totally shocking ~ that her SISTER had seen him in Detroit ! She told me her sister had tried to get hold of me before that and my friend had told her sister that I was probably there!

BINGO. I sure was... and at that point in our conversation, her sister called from Michigan!! My friend gave me the phone to answer and I called her sister "Hello Mrs. Cohen" [rather humourous, since she's gay ] several times, and she just kept saying "Huh?" It took her awhile to put it all together that it was me... until I finally said "Hello, Mrs. Leonard Cohen" twice... and then she finally got it and SCREAMED, "It IS you!! I SAW HIM IN DETROIT!!" and went on and on and on EXCLAIMING about everything! "It's just one of those times IN YOUR LIFE... it was like the BEST CONCERT I've EVER SEEN!" Now, don't'cha just KNOW I was positively basking in these words and vibes!

Then she told me "IT is JUST SO CLEAR ~ he is A LEGEND!!" and how she cannot understand how she's NEVER known about him... and then went on to tell me "And the BAND ~ he has THE BEST BAND EVER!!!" Then, I can't remember how it came about because I was just so overjoyed to be listening to someone exclaim like this, the sister of someone I've been trying to get through to for 20 years... and here's her master's degree sister, who lives in Ann Arbor and took a writing course this summer, and there came in contact with some of Leonard's work because they were using it as part of the course for analysis... talking to me about something being "As a matter of fact, a thousand kisses deep!"

Then, she told me how she had bought the program and has it "right here on my coffee table" and is just so ASTOUNDED by his lyrics... how perfect they are and what a perfectionist he is... and how she bought the cd and how much she loves it!

She said how she had tried to reach me in the days leading up to it just to let me know she was going to see him, and how she would have loved to have gotten together there... !!! Then, she said, "You HAVE to get my little sister to go with you to see him in Florida!" [Haha... no kidding !] I told her she needs to come down and go with us!

Well, this just MADE MY DAY !!!


~ Lizzy

[mutti]

Delightful...how wonderful...how she will come to Florida and your friend agrees to come to the concert.
Either way what a great moment Lizzy!
Mutti

[lizzytysh]

Oh, I know, Mutti. That would be so awesome!

I just edited my posting to rearrange some words, to get things in the correct order of their happening tonight. I was so excited, I was doing one run-on sentence after another... and, in rereading, see that I butchered the sequence, as well.

I'd just love it if she would fly down and we would all go together, since I was planning to drive alone, anyway. More than that, though, I would love it if my friend could see him for the FIRST time... and finally know, first-hand, what I've been going on about all these MANY YEARS!! And if her sister, who loved him upon the first reading and then the first seeing... she said she couldn't believe it when someone in the writing class said that he was going to be performing in a couple weeks in Detroit [Ha... I can imagine how shocking that had to have been for someone just discovering him... like Box_of_Rain's experience]... and she said there was NO WAY she was going to miss it! She went with someone else, but my friend couldn't remember who it was, and I didn't think to ask.

I can't even tell you how this felt! It was like hitting the mother lode.


~ Lizzy

[Stamatina]

My best friend called me the other day, to tell me she is deeply worried about me. There is a greek poet I like and when I told her about him she exclaimed that her grandmother likes him, too, and when I met her grandmother we talked a little about him and one of his works and found we had similar opinions, which is what made my friend worry.

So, I had made a collection of LC's songs for my best friend and she had left the cd on her desk. Her grandmother walks in her bedroom and spots the letters LEONARD COHEN on the case and then goes to my friend and shouts with delight "Do you listen to Leonard Cohen?". My friend explains, "Stamatina gave it to me" and then her grandmother says something like "at last, you've started befriending the right people! Can I borrow it for a while?".

Hehe, my friend pleads me not to have so many things in common with her grandmother, but I think her grandma is cool.

[Womanfromaroom]

Either the grandmother is - or you are! Maybe both of you... I feel a little sorry for your friend, though...

[lizzytysh]

Haha. That's wonderful all the way around, Stamatina! Great, generational friendships, your best friend and her grandmother. Your friend doesn't have a chance now... she's surrounded .

[burningviolin]

Happened a few days ago but I stayed in a really cool hostel in Lisbon for the LC concert. It had individually decorated rooms and mine was the jazz room, complete with record player and records, with a neon sign on the wall which looked really cool at night!! all black and white decor and a saxophone light 'feature' on the wall. Here is a picture and also I took pictures of the neon sign, was somewhat fascinated by it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/37064482@N05/3785593954/
Usually downstairs there was some music playing, tended to be trendy thump thump music or Michael Jackson. When I came downstairs to check out what was on the stereo? only 'Dance me to the end of love"!! It was the end of an eventful trip (my first on my own abroad) my last LC concert and there was 'Dance me' on the stereo as I went to check out...very cool!! I felt like someone was watching me, who I don't know but it was a very cool moment!



La lah......la la la la la lah..........

[Mollydog]

I went away on the weekend with my bike club for a 3 day tour to Upper New York State. We met up with a local club who showed us some scenic routes around the area. At one point we stopped at the Eisenhower Lock on the St. Lawrence Seaway. As the lock gate was being closed someone in the group (not me!) suddenly sang "it's closing time". A few of us then started talking about Leonard and I found out that one person in the local bike club has been a fan since the sixties and has desperately been trying to get concert tickets. I told him all about the forum and sent him an e-mail with all the links when I got home. It's so good when I can indulge two of my passions (Leonard and cycling) at the same time.

Mary

[MaryB]

Here I am in my favorite watering hole, yet again , having a conversation with my husband and our son, when lo and behold, what do I hear from way across the bar, and not loudly, but the two most wonderful words in the world 'Leonard Cohen'. Did I hear right? Is it just because I wanted to hear it? On the pretense of going to get some popcorn, I passed by the gentleman, politely interrupted, and YES! another LC fan in Columbus, Ohio! Why do I get such pleasure in discussing all things LC with someone else ? Hopefully, Roger will become a member of this forum. I never did get the popcorn.