Leonard Cohen - Wang Center, Boston MA 5-29-2009

[music | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Tower of Song] -- note: This isn't as much worth chasing down as it sounds, more just "fun".

¿Quien es mas Macho: Leonard Cohen, o Nick Cave?

Tonight's Leonard Cohen show will certainly have been the coolest show I go to this year. As people have been saying all tour, he just keeps going and going. This show clocked 3:15 including a 15 minute intermission. The arrangements were spot on, and at 74, he can run and skip around the stage better than I could. I am horrible at remembering sets, songs I know happened were:

Everybody Knows
Tower of Song
First We Take Manhattan
Boogie Street (Robinson)
A thousand Kisses Deep
Waiting for the Miracle
Democracy
Suzanne
Take this Waltz
Anthem
The Future
I'm your Man
Perfect Offering
Chelsea Hotel
Hallelujah
If It Be Your Will (Webb Sisters, awesomely)
Bird on a Wire?

Closing Time (laughs)
I Tried to Leave You (bigger laughs)

Fill in what I'm missing if you could, that would be swell.

Pictures and less than apt comparisons

The Webb sisters remind me a lot of maybe two Sarah McLachlans. Natalie and I were both thinking of the Bowman sisters, but I like the Webbs more, they did a beautiful job with If It Be Your Will.

There were lots of laughs during the show, Perfect Offering offered some, and the encore songs were well placed. He was jumping and skipping around and I believe him when he would say how much they appreciated being on tour. If I can do what I do at 74 and people like it, I'll be very appreciative too. There's not much I can really say about the show itself beyond the fact that it was stunningly good.

Since I invited the comparison, I actually never wrote anything about our trip to NYC last year to see Nick Cave at the WaMu theatre which, it should be noted, was minutes after WaMu went ByeBye.

I wasn't disappointed in that show, and certainly got the Coolest Guy of last year, for sure. The set wasn't very long compared to most shows we go to, especially considering the depth of possibilities from the Bad Seeds catalog. But what it lacked in length it made up in intensity. I was especially fixed on Warren Ellis and his Violin Abuse. I see lots of string instruments being used for various whack-jobbery, but the terrible things he did to that violin to get the most perfect sounds were just beyond what I've seen someone do live. Studio, sure, but yeah, I liked it...Melora, Erica and Zoey have nothing on this guy, believe it.

I was just totally excited to see so much of my favorite music, and to be able to see the Bad Seeds (unfortunately missing a couple of crucial seeds) after so many years and years of records, but no US tours, or tour dates that I never notice and aren't near me. Stupid Boston for ripping down the only venue they would have played (Avalon) due to the requirements for a certain % general admission and a certain total cap. number. Boston left itself for a year with only the Orpheum really for that size rock venue, which doesn't have GA capacity. Bleh. Oh, and Stupid Americans for not loving this guy like the rest of the damn world does, which makes it a bad deal for him to tour here. Thanks guys, this is why we can't have nice things.

That show was worth every penny it took to drive to NY, stay on Long Island, train fare, all that. I left the camera home because I wasn't positive they'd let it in. While walking around NY I tried to buy a smaller point and shoot jobby, but I couldn't get one with a charged battery. I know, I know, it's New York, America's Hong Kong...I just didn't look around enough. They would have let me in anyway, no one checked anything.

Here are pictures from way in the Balcony, as always, many more in the Flickr set: