Layer 506 . . . Inheritance Tracks, Wax, Laughs, Hardy and Even More Cohen

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It's often worth listening to Saturday Live at 9.00 on Radio 4, if only for the feature called "Inheritance Tracks". This morning featured Ruby Wax, who gets better as she gets older.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019q9jx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b019q9jx

"The piece of music I inherited was the first time I ever heard The Beatles' "Twist & Shout" - and I almost fainted on the floor. John Lennon's voice was the sexiest thing, and I didn't even know what that meant. I grew breasts overnight. Boy do I wish I'd met him. I only came to England to marry one of The Beatles."

This is something that people who don't 'get' the Beatles' fame and music fail to understand. Lennon's voice (and the band) was capable of being raw, raucous and totally compelling - especially back then - when Britain on the whole hadn't discovered rhythm and blues or soul music, and the musical idols of the day were people like Cliff, Adam Faith, Billy Fury and others too bland to mention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA9maAERDAs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlr4g5-r18

"The music that I would hand down is James Taylor's 'You Can Close Your Eyes'. The reason I want my kids to hear it is because I want them to understand how deep and profound our music was - in comparison to the stuff you get on X-Factor."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXxJHk3vWvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELElnewhHkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkIiaaXUjlE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpMfdob55W0

Ruby also mentioned 'Frontier Psychiatrist' - "The video is NUTS!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUecUKa_yqo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86TKkPA3QI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GEXwDJZuBo

To listen to Ruby's bit go straight to minute 49.30 (out of 58.00) if you don't have time to listen to the rest of the programme.

[47.35 - an amusing piece of poetry by Elvis McGonagall ]

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Jeremy Hardy at the Watford Palace Theatre

I don't want to say anything bad about Watford, so I won't say anything at all. Jeremy, on the other hand, was brilliant. Funny, political and passionate. Catch him when you can.

http://uktv.co.uk/dave/quotes/sid/7617
http://jeremyhardy.co.uk/
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/jeremy-hardy-tories/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/apr/04/politicalcolumnists.comment

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Here's another mention of Leonard from this week's Guardian:

Leonard Cohen shows there's life in the old dog yet with launch of new album

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/19/leonard-cohen-old-ideas-new-album?newsfeed=true

by Alex Needham
His detractors may sarcastically call him Laughing Len, but Leonard Cohen kept a roomful of journalists entertained on Wednesday night as he launched his first album in eight years.

"Old Ideas" proves that Cohen's long-term preoccupations with sex, death and salvation have endured. The inside cover features a drawing, by Cohen, of a naked woman and a skull.

[Cohen said] songwriting involved "perseverance, perspiration, but also a certain kind of grace and illumination."

[Jarvis Cocker asked] how Cohen felt about being awarded the PEN New England award for literary excellence in song lyrics.

"The thing I liked about this award was that I'm sharing it with Chuck Berry," said Cohen. "'Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news' – I'd like to write a line like that."

Once questions were opened to the floor, Cohen revealed that he is likely to tour after the album's release. The singer said he had been "invigorated and illuminated" by his last tour, which took in 247 shows over two years to huge audiences and ecstatic reviews.

Before he'd started the tour, Cohen said, "I hadn't done anything for 15 years. I was like Ronald Reagan in his declining years. He remembered he'd had a good role – he's played the president in a movie and I felt somewhat that I had been a singer. Being back on the road really re-established me as being a worker in the world and that was a very satisfactory feeling."

Comments on Len from the Guardian's feedback this week:

alexisd
Lovely article. Laughing Len is truly a living legend. Would have to say that I felt blessed to see him twice on his world tour in 2008. The atmosphere at the 02 was electrifying. He wears his learning lightly but he speaks so much truth, beauty and wisdom, he is impossible not to appreciate.


MoonMoth
For anyone interested in LC, a fascinating and revealing recent speech by him at the Prince of Asturias awards.


http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/10/25/upgraded-video-of-leonard-cohen%E2%80%99s-prince-of-asturias-awards-speech-with-no-overdubbing/


urlaccount
Seeing Mr Cohen in a concert hall in Vienna, where he sang for over 2 and a half hours and even the normally reserved Viennese were literally "dancing in the aisles", will always remain one of the top 3 moments of my concert experiences. When the audience showered him with roses was special too.


Of course, when he played "Take this Waltz" the Viennese audience went "mental" in their own sweet peculiar way.


I want more.


greatpoochini
For someone who can't sing, he is the master of melody, of tune, of song.


And then there's the lyrics.


The widest, most heartfelt, most gregarious tip of the hat to Leonard.


Dravazed
Leonard Cohen is the real thing: a poet in an era--and especially, in a country--that does not value poets. He is not a scribble of mediocre lines, he is not simply self-absorbed, he is not a relentless self-promoter. As noted in the excellent interview described above, he cares but is not didactic.


His poem/song "Democracy" is in many ways the theme of our time, the struggle to bring people back to the integrity of self-rule. He never fails to suffuse his work with a vulnerable tenderness that is only accentuated by his unmusical voice.


Thank you, Leonard Cohen, for your life and your life's work. Some of your songs are among the most important I've ever had the good fortune to hear. Bless you.


2baz
It feels like a privilege, a blessing, to live during the time that Leonard Cohen is recording and performing. Generations to come will tell me how lucky I was. And they will be right.


sammer
Only Dylan, who is more musical, has in my lifetime even attempted to yoke together the concrete and the abstract, the personal and the political, in the same line.


Cohen is a poet who was forced to make recourse to music to create an audience.. Dylan is a musician who was forced to make recourse to poetry to stand up and be heard.


They are the best of our times; but Cohen is the real poet.


Commit suicide listening to Cohen's lyrics? More chance I would have committed suicide because I had never heard his voice.


Thanks for everything you gave.


grembold
Whither thou goest, I will go...


sammer
He reduced the political choice of mankind to 4 lines without mentioning poltics:


I saw a man on a wooden crutch 
He said to me, 'You ask for too much.' 
And a woman in her darkened door 
She said to me: ''Hey, why not ask for more?'


PlanetNat
I too want to add my gratitude for being alive in the same era as the great man.


I love his voice, his words, his humour, his wit, his dryness, his darkness, his generosity as a thinker, poet, song-writer, performer.


DanielFrisbee
The thing I have found most inspiring about leonard cohen is his stoic approach- the balance of ego, incredulity and honesty. It's like he has nailed the scientific formula for how to address and express ideas. I think everyone can benefit from that, it is a gift we are all fortunate that he can share, including him. He strikes me as a fully realised individual - his ascension is a community event.


magicorgan
Leonard is of course your man and (as has been said) is along with Dylan the best songwriter of the last fifty years. i would just like to put in a word for Ten New Songs
one of his most neglected masterpieces, absolutely wonderful. Alexandra Leaving is one of his best songs ever. Not to be missed.


alilea
For me, the best Cohen album is the recording of his concert at the O2 in 2009


GregCallus
I was at that concert - wonderful show, awful arena (like a 10,000 seater cinema) but the performance was magnificent in many respects. Also the most musically-literate audience I've ever seen - they appreciated every minor tweak, every slightly-changed lyric, every phrase of a solo instrument that made delicate reference to a different Cohen song. Probably the best concert I've heard.


inspiring
Consummate performer........The man is perfect in every respect........


marmitetoast
I'm so glad Cohen is still with us and still recording and touring (and hopefully I'll get to see him). Such brilliant writer - I don't know anyone who can tie up love, despair, sex, politics, and theology in quite the same understated way. Some of his lyrics - Love Itself, or If It Be Your Will - are the most astonishing fusion of Jewish, Zen, and Christian thought, with his own wisdom and experience driving them. And he doesn't hit you over the head with how clever he is, either.


Just extraordinary.


Ricooper
Leonard Cohen is the greatest singer-songwriter of them all. When I first heard 'Songs of Love and Hate' as a teenager, I realised: here is someone who feels everything , who suffers everything, who understands everything, and yet it does not destroy him. He's kept me going for nearly forty years, and I treasure his life and work as a blessing.


CatBCN
I am not a "fan" of anyone else, but Cohen is simply incredible. Had the great luck of hearing him at the jazz festival in NIce three and a half years ago...have never, ever seen an audience (for anything or anyone else) that was as profoundly reverential, hanging on every note, waiting for the revelation of the next song, as this one. Left deeply moved, as I think did everyone there.


sunny15
Saw him twice on last tour - he has the most amazing charisma. Brilliant song writer and as sexy as hell.


Snowbirdk
I've been a fan of Leonard Cohen for more years than I care to remember and he has always been my hero. I had the great privilege of hearing him sing at the O2 and it was just amazing how he could make that vast hangar feel intimate, holding the audience in the palm of his hand.


glynluke
I met the man twice long ago. Even then he was charming, droll, gracious, self-deprecating, patient. I would always go and see him on tour in the 60s/70s. He was always impeccable.


whitworthflange
His songs are full of self deprecation and sly wit.
How about: I don't trust my inner feelings; inner feelings come and go.


Missbabs
I've always thought that in interviews Leonard appears as kindly, avuncular, and amused, but above all, detached. He doesn't seem to believe in his own mythology. As the mighty Ian Dury once said, 'Never explain' - it shouldn't be necessary. 


robbo100
When Leonard toured here in 08 and 09 the demand for tickets and the size of the venues he played came as a pretty big shock to me (as well as the price of the tickets!) Never realised there were so many fans. A very big cult audience I suppose combined with the fact that a lot of us had thought that seeing Leonard Cohen live in concert was something we were never going to see - so pretty much everyone who likes LC wanted a ticket. I wasn't really expecting that much to be honest - thinking LC was pretty old and his voice would be gone. Thought I'd just be there for the fact of seeing him. But he surpassed all expectations - really great shows. And as someone said earlier he managed to bring an atmosphere of intimacy to very large venues. Very much enjoy watching the DVD of the O2 performance also 


AshesRising
Being there [at the interview with LC] does mean you have to endure the monotony of waiting for a considered response. I have every sympathy for those who find silence so threatening - unfortunately in this media-driven cacophony it's a rarity. It's the wall to wall din that conceals the vacuousness of content, empty-headed superstars with verbal diarrhoea and not an intelligent thought they can call their own. That's why LC and his like are difficult for some to appreciate - they think before they open their gobs, and what they say is well worth the wait. 


Jamus1
Leonard will assuredly go down as one of the great creators from our time - a Shakespeare or Botticelli. I've been listening since '68 - how great to have Cohen play through my life as a grounding rod. 


Liuzhoukaf
We called him Laughing Lenny because he was funny from the beginning, not the miserable cliché which lazy music writers came up with..


PaxGrass
The New Yorker is streaming the new Leonard Cohen song 'Going Home', the first time they have ever streamed a song. They also publish the lyrics.


'I have been satirised as suicidal and self-indulgent' – a classic Leonard Cohen interview from the vaults

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/nov/29/leonard-cohen-interview-rocks-backpages?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

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Layer 52 Liberals, Leaders and Learning.

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For everyone who's either entering retirement, or looking ahead to that wondrous time, perhaps with some trepidation, there was a very encouraging feature article on ex-Pres Jimmy Carter in yesterday’s Guardian magazine.

During the past three decades, since leaving office, 83 year old Jimmy, who's still going strong, has written 25 books and has refused to sell out by grovelling for pots of money from the ‘lecture’ circuit on the back of the Carter ‘brand’, such as it is or was.

The man has integrity. He’s been busy pursuing a liberal agenda, seeing himself as a spiritual leader rather than a political one, championing unpopular causes. At 83 he still finds life exciting, challenging, gratifying, adventurous. His Carter Centre employs 150 people - “Waging Peace; Fighting Disease; Building Hope”, Advancing Human Rights and Alleviating Suffering. Way to go, Jim.

I always liked Carter. He can be proud of the fact that under his presidency the USA took some ‘revolutionary’ steps: establishing human rights as the basis of foreign policy, discontinuing support for fascist dictators who happened to support America’s ‘economic framework’, and never dropping a bomb or launching a missile. The man had principles. He refused to let the USA go on abusing its power and its weaponry. How things have changed.

America is clearly back to seeing itself as having the God-given right to run the world, and a Boss mentality. Consultation? Fuck off. Collaboration? What for?

What an incredible arrogance for any country to think that it can manage the whole world, and force the rest of the world bend to its will. So might is right . . . And right-wing Americans can’t understand why so many millions around the world despise them. Those foreigners - they’re ungrateful assholes, right?

Thank God for Obama. He understands this stuff, and is a brilliant advocate for liberal Americans who really do get it. He may not get elected this time around, though he surely must (please!), but he’s got the ear of the nation, come what may. And he won’t stop bending that ear, or cease from bashing enlightenment into the darkness.

His eloquence matches his passion and his clear sight. The only question now is whether the majority of Americans are ready for ‘change’, just as we Brits were in ‘97 after the Thatcher project finally hit the buffers in a train wreck of mangled ideology and sleaze.

In ‘97 all but the hard core of conservative Brits were finally convinced that social justice and decency were the way to go. Pity we didn’t quite manage to go there, thanks to Blair and Bush and their ilk. So Cameron’s now our next best hope? Ha! But a parliament with no overall majority could be interesting for a while.

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The blessed Jeremy Hardy, on the News Quiz last week, was right about people generally being rubbish at managing things, which is as true of the private sector as the public sector. Things stay crap because the majority of those in charge haven’t a clue how to create permanent, sustainable improvement. Even if they see the need for improvement.

But Labour’s closet neo-con administration, clueless and panicking, are increasingly attentive to officials and advisers of a right-wing bent who continue to beat the drum for privatisation and the out-sourcing (and the shedding of direct responsibility) of everything in sight.

Today's Observer, meanwhile, on its front page, trumpets "Schools Get Ultimatum: Improve Or Face Closure. Team Of 'Superheads' To Tackle Crisis".

Crisis? What crisis? "The major announcements by Ed Balls are part of an attempt to to claw back political ground from the Conservative party, which is pulling ahead in the polls."

The BBC’s sports editor, on Radio 4, did a piece on why British national teams more often than not fail to reach the finals of major competitions. Management! Oh dear, what a pathetic roll-call of duffers we’ve had. I’m convinced that our teams would have done a lot better if they’d been left to work out tactics themselves as an anarcho-syndicalist collective.

Management claim the credit when things go well, so they should take the blame when things fall apart, as they surely have, time after time. The Boss mentality has infected sport as surely as it’s infected the rest of our national life. The Boss says jump, and everybody has to jump, regardless of whether the Boss is an idiot or not.

It’s the same with the teaching profession - where attitudes are moulded and where young people are exposed to models day after day of teachers managing the learning of young people for better or for worse. And if teachers model ways of reaching learning objectives that require the involvement, commitment and understanding of those who are meant to benefit from the system and from the organization, then that sends out powerful messages about how to reach objectives.

Our traditions demand the opposite - children are expected just to passively do whatever teacher says they should do. Active engagement with their own learning, and agreeing their learning objectives - even just sharing what those objectives are supposed to be - usually isn’t on the agenda.

This has to change.

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Another news item today said that we’re eating fewer and fewer oranges. Children can’t even manage to peel oranges. Parents aren’t passing on the skills. As Jeremy Hardy said, it doesn’t matter - kids have all got knives anyway.

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Another news item last week. Imperial College, London University, one of our most prestigious technological and scientific establishments, has announced it’s no longer going to use ‘A’ level results - the so-called ‘Gold Standard’ - as the basis for deciding admissions.

WHAT!!?? BLOODY HELL!!

So what are they going to do? Easy. They’re going to assess applicants through their own tests and interviews. Wow!

They’re going to assess their thinking skills, their problem-solving ability, their creativity, their general knowledge, subject specific knowledge, etc. Revolutionary stuff.

Credit will given to those who would be the first in their family to attend university; credit will be given to those from schools which do not achieve good A-level grades.

Looks like the earth may be beginning to move a little.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3999109.ece