Monday, October 01, 2007

Leonard Cohen and Martha Wainwright

I am just watching the "Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man" movie. One of the best bits is Martha Wainwright singing "Traitor":



I think "I'm Your Man" is one of the best songs of the 20th century. I can't find a good version on YouTube though. Here is one with the man himself. But like everybody else, live, he messes up the delightful "macro rhythms" the studio version has. By which I mean that slow, heavier beat about every three seconds. What's that called?

Update: OK, I found the studio version playing over the title sequence, here it is:




Related article.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Leonard is a genius. Here are a couple of my many favourite songs from him:

If It Be Your Will
Here It Is
Go No More A-Roving


Quite exceptionally he has produced some of his best work very recently even though his career is generally thought to have peaked years ago. Apparently it hasn't. Maybe his stay at Mt. Baldy is the reason ...

Anonymous said...

Well, Sharon Robinson and Anjani Thomas are certainly two additional reasons.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, I was not aware of the 2004 album Dear Heather, but I've just gone to iTunes and bought it.

Anonymous said...

Leonard is the man.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on discovering Dear Heather! In addition to Go No More A-Roving I also particularly like the second song, Because Of. Amazingly powerful in its minimalism. The rest are good too. It's easy to see why women go gaga over this man even at the age of 73.

Leonard Cohen Files is the definite web site about Leonard.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"It's easy to see why women go gaga over this man even at the age of 73."

It's funny, I saw an interview maybe five years ago. The woman interviewer acted like David Letterman when he interviews Selma Hayek. Absolutely drooling.

Anonymous said...

We need to "reverse engineer" his charisma so we can have something similar. :-)

There was an interesting documentary about the man filmed while he was living at Mt. Baldy. I saw a VHS copy of it years ago. I would like to get it on DVD but have no idea where one could obtain it.

Anonymous said...

gawd awful.............she could raise the dead with that screeching broken voice. ouch! please make this go away.