With your standards so high and your spirits so low

[alexsarll]

Wasn't last night *glorious*? I abandoned the ironing to whack on The Sky's Gone Out, turn off the light and watch the colours dance across the sky and the sheets of rain. When the heavens subsided a little I put the lamp on and re-read 'Violent Cases'. Yes, you don't need to say it.

Leonard Cohen did the world a great service when he wrote 'Hallelujah'. How unfortunate, then, that it should apparently be the first song to suffer from the erratic arrangements which have nigglingly marred so much of his work since. Still, perhaps it needed to be imperfect that it might more readily be covered by those who'd do it justice.

The Ipcress File gives the impression of having been intended as an anti-James Bond, with its vision of a drearily bureaucratic, bespectacled secret service. But forty years' distance have suffused it with a certain St Etienne-style nostalgic glamour, and now it has more in common with the early Bond films than separating it from them.

"For those writers who manage to steer away from any tales which libel or otherwise harm the living, one area of danger remains - the undead." So be careful what you say about Dracula, kids.

Still shadowing the Mirror today, so my presence online will itself be shadowy.

Comments

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

Last night's storm was ace! We were standing on the bed watching the lightning and the rain lashing down, and people running to escape it and then realising they were already soaked through and might as well just walk.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I very nearly headed out into it, but then realised that I had no garden in which to dance and it just wouldn't be the same on SGR.

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

Not really. I had freshly blow-dried hair issues, but Kate stood on the balcony for a bit to watch it.

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

Fine choice of current music there.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

About half of that album is bloody good - shame about the singles, though.

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

It's been given a very unfair rep, but for every Teachers or Reader Meets Author there's a Dagenham Dave or a never ending drum solo to start a song. The album could really have done with having some of the excellent b-sides to replace some of weaker tracks.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You could say the same of most of his albums, though - except perhaps Bona Drag, for obvious reasons.

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

Yes, but to a much lesser extent. Southpaw has some real low points on it.

[big-trend.livejournal.com]

Reader Meet Author should have been the lead single.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You reckon? There's a nice bit of self-laceration to it, sure, but it's still a little trite in places.

[big-trend.livejournal.com]

It's as good as anything on You Are The Quarry. Dagenham Dave, while I grew to quite like it, just completely confused and offended people and he was doomed even before the album was released. A shame, because the Dagenham Dave b-sides are stellar.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Come now! Sure, it was a bit galling that You Are The Quarry was treated as an unprecedented return to form, but I'd still say that aside from 'America...' it is his first consistently great album since Vauxhall & I.

[cappuccino-kid.livejournal.com]

"I could say more/But you get the general idea" is one of the best couplets ever. I kick myself for having been beaten to it every time I hear it.

[johnnyvertigen.livejournal.com]

It's a pity it's only followed by a mantra of "Dagenham Dave, Dagenham Dave" ad nauseum.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Now that's hardly fair - at one point it's "oh Dave from Dagenham" instead!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you take contrarianism too far.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Ah, Hallelujah. A song so covered that half the people who like it don't know who wrote it first. Crusading to educate them seems to be a futile game as well. Blast.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it would help if Len's version were one that you could play them and say 'Now get a load of THIS'. And the tragedy is, the version one infers from covers of 'Hallelujah', and even most of the other songs on Various Positions, *would* be that sort of version.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Depends on the audience, surely? I've played the original for a couple of people who've gone weepy and overwhelmed at the gospel choruses and others who were too enamoured with the growly voice to even notice the arrangement.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Perhaps so...but then Len fandom always throws up these schisms, doesn't it? I speak here as one of the minority who adores (some of) Death of a Ladies' Man.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

My experience of the fandom consists of me, my mother, and the infrequently frequented leonardcohen community, I'm afraid, so I don't have the first clue how it schisms or doesn't. Have you heard any of Dear Heather?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, and tbh most of it's a bit of a mess.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Agreed, I think the only parts I enjoyed were Villanelle for our Time and on occasion Dear Heather, the rest is just ... inchoate. It seems more like a sketchbook than an album.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Agreed. With the right person telling him when to take this bit off, finish that line &c, it could have been wonderful.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Seems like every entertainment medium is in desperate need of editors. Woe.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The problem being, of course, that when we see artists sprawling we crave the great editors, and forget how many artists who were doing just fine have been mauled by the more-prevalent muppet editors.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Of course, the acceptable solution would be to foist the muppet editors on the rubbish artists and leave them to fester in obscurity. There needs to be some sort of dating agency for editors and artists - SpeedPruning, or something.