Called in for another cohenoscopy
Ronald de Wolf asks:
how does Leonard Cohen (the Montreal-born singer-songwriter, a.k.a. my latest hero) fit in “the Cohen balance of the universe”?
I’d heard of him, but I knew nothing about him until Ronald’s question prompted several hours of websurfing. (Thanks a million, Ronald!) As a result of this diligent research — as well as almost three full minutes of listening to mp3’s — I can now offer the world the following
COHEN SCORECARD
Starting credit: 1 point.
Seems like a nice guy: +3 points.
Singing voice several notches below me with a sore throat: -2 points.
Songs that I can’t imagine listening to for pleasure: -1 point.
Then again, I don’t listen to music: 1 point back.
In his seventies, continues to attract babes like flypaper: +4 points.
Is nevertheless profoundly melancholic: -4 points.
Verdict: Inconclusive.
Follow
Comment #1 June 8th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Until you have watched the movie “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” and heard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” as performed by Jeff Buckley (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000029DD/103-9181440-8789410?v=glance&n=5174), you might consider yourself not fully qualified to form an opinion on matters L Cohenesque.
Comment #2 June 8th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
You’ve never heard of Leonard Cohen? -1 point. You don’t like his music?? -2 points…. You don’t listen to music at all?!? -100 points.
Comment #3 June 8th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
poetry is still around
rhymed metrical (rhythmic) verse is a type of poetry that is still around
the lyrics of Leonard Cohen songs qualify as verse
Dylan Thomas wrote some rhymed verse too—I’d rate them roughly equal. I’d guess in a hundred years, in an anthology of verse poets, Cohen might get about as much space as Dylan Thomas.
You dont have to listen to his recordings of his songs to guess his future reputation—just read aloud to yourself—what kind of singing he does and whether people like it or not doesnt matter in the long run.
He may not be among the top 5 verse poets of the 20th, but he is one of the good minor ones. Won’t be forgotten any time soon, I guess.
Comment #4 June 8th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” is abso-fucking-lutely amazing.
Comment #5 June 8th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Little known fact: Cohen was a poet of certain renown before he ever recorded his first album.
More specifically he published three poem books before he ever recorded his first album.
Comment #6 June 8th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Arrrr!!!! Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah is ***AWFUL***, its full of over-produced poor attempts at emotion. Check out Kathryn Williams’ version for the real deal.
Cohen sounds like conan as in ‘conan the barbarian’. +5 comedy points.
Comment #7 June 8th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
There are too many Cohens.
Comment #8 June 8th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Some of his first songs (including his first hit, “Suzanne”) were published poems before being put to music.
As for songs to “listen to for pleasure”, check out the tribute albums I’m Your Fan, Tower of Song and Famous Blue Raincoat. Fantastic!
Comment #9 June 8th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Ah, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Write an open letter to your brother thanking him for having an affair with your wife because it has made her a bit less sad and you too will get girls into your seventies. See also: Adam Cohen, Leonard’s more attractive but less poetic singer/songwriter son.
~brie
Comment #10 June 9th, 2006 at 2:19 am
You’ve never heard of Leonard Cohen? -1 point. You don’t like his music?? -2 points…. You don’t listen to music at all?!? -100 points.
I’ve been emotionally affected by everything from Beethoven to Beatles to jazz to bad Top 40 music. It’s just that I rarely find myself listening of my own accord except out of intellectual curiosity. More often, I’ll just google the lyrics and try to understand what’s being asserted.
(Note that parody songs, like those of Tom Lehrer, Weird Al Yankovic, or The Simpsons, I put in a different category entirely.)
It’s funny — the entire rest of my family is extremely musical, but somehow I didn’t inherit the gene, or maybe only got a recessive.
(“But everyone who’s good at math is good at music!” goes the time-honored retort. I guess I suck at math then.)
Should I fake a passion I don’t feel, in order to appear more cultured?
Comment #11 June 9th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Write an open letter to your brother thanking him for having an affair with your wife because it has made her a bit less sad and you too will get girls into your seventies.
Hi, Brie! Your comment brings up one of the central differences between math and music: with music, you can never tell if the guy actually believes in his work or if he’s just faking it for the babes. With math, the question doesn’t arise.
Comment #12 June 9th, 2006 at 6:38 am
“[W]ith music, you can never tell if the guy actually believes in his work or if he’s just faking it for the babes. With math, the question doesn’t arise.”
Your girlfriend will be thrilled to know you’re just faking all this complexity stuff for her.
Comment #13 June 9th, 2006 at 7:19 am
Your girlfriend will be thrilled to know you’re just faking all this complexity stuff for her.
Err, that’s not quite what I meant when I said the question didn’t arise. 🙂 But I will admit that I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to meet someone who digs quantum lower bounds.
Comment #14 June 9th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Amazing, I have finally found someone who appears to think of music in the same way as I do.
Most people think I am some kind of freak when I tell them that I never listen to music on my own.
Comment #15 June 9th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Johan: Awesome — let’s start a club! “Not Of Our Own Accord: The iPodless Freaks of the World.”
What should our theme song be — 4’33” by John Cage?
Comment #16 June 9th, 2006 at 11:21 am
I don’t listen to music on my own, either…except for Leonard Cohen.
Comment #17 June 9th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
— Ludwig van Beethoven
Comment #18 June 9th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
I can totally picture the first date: The boy, the girl, the lake, sunset. Venus above horizon.
Girl: “Are you thinking – what I am thinking?”
Boy (shyly): “Most likely, I think, yes.”
Girl: “So, can you clarify what’s your take on the lower bounds?”
Comment #19 June 9th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I don’t listen to music, I cannot understand it.
Scott and Johan, what you say is music to my ears…
Comment #20 June 11th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I think comment number 2 summed it up pretty good. Not caring enough for music to listen to it on your own accord is, while not in any way a moral defect, certainly pretty sad.
More often, I’ll just google the lyrics and try to understand what’s being asserted.
“What’s being asserted“? I dearly hope this is a joke.
Should I fake a passion I don’t feel, in order to appear more cultured?
No, but there’s no contradiction between having some less than impressive quality and it being wrong not to admit to it.
PS. Anyone who thinks Cohen’s low pitched voice is detracts from the value of his music might not, shall we say, be the best person to comment on it.
Comment #21 June 12th, 2006 at 1:07 am
Scott, this may sound vain of me, but before you give up on music entirely, listen to “Music Has the Right to Children” by Boards of Canada.
I like listening to music with interesting structure. You might think of it as being akin to a convoluted reduction. I think I like this music because my brain resonates with the structure in some way. Maybe you will like the structure of this music.
Comment #22 June 12th, 2006 at 1:34 am
No, but there’s no contradiction between having some less than impressive quality and it being wrong not to admit to it.
Don’t you mean, there’s no contradiction between having some less than impressive quality and it not being wrong not to admit to it? 🙂
(Note: I’d written some more before, but it should really be a separate blog entry.)
Comment #23 June 12th, 2006 at 1:35 am
Anonymous 1:07: Thanks for the rec!
Comment #24 June 12th, 2006 at 10:32 am
If Scott prefers to read the lyrics to search for meaning, who’s to stop him? Not everyone was made to sit still listening for music for hours on end. The mercurial Glenn Gould put it well:
l’m not one of those piano freaks you know. Of course, l know there are people who would gladly sit in the most uncomfortable chair with other people in uncomfortable chairs and listen to hours and hours of the stuff, but it’s nothing l would ever subject myself to. l just don’t like the sound of piano music that much.
Comment #25 June 12th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
If Scott prefers to read the lyrics to search for meaning, who’s to stop him?
Of course nobody’s going to “stop him”. Who said anything of the sort? That’s an argument (loosely speaking) that could be applied to just about anything. In a post that was recently linked by someone here, Scott called a journalist a doofus just because he didn’t care for algebra. What’s the difference, really?
Scott’s appreciation of music entails reading the lyrics to see what’s being “asserted”. If that’s what floats his boat, fine. But I find it quite sad, and I don’t see why I can’t say that.
As for invoking Glenn Gould, give me a break. Gould spent at least eight hours every day playing the piano. Are you seriously quoting him as an authority on the opinion that a life without an active interest in music is just fine?
Comment #26 June 13th, 2006 at 12:13 am
So prickly! Dear Anonymous, I intended my comment to be no more and no less serious than the crack of Gould’s it contained.
Comment #27 December 21st, 2006 at 7:08 pm
[…] According to ancient complexity lore, at a saddle point high in the mountains of Oberwolfach lies buried a single flask of a mystical elixir known as Websbane, or the Hammer of Firefox. Some say that the productivity-enhancing potion was brewed from the sweat of Erdös and the toenail clippings of Euler; others that it was mixed, condensed, and extracted for the Prophesied One centuries hence who will derandomize BPP. Yet all agree on the tonic’s awesome efficacy: it is said that one drop would furnish lifelong protection against Slate and Salon; a teaspoonful would lift Wikipedia’s stranglehold on the soul. He who once imbibed would neither reread Onion articles from dusk till dawn, nor follow hyperlinks till scarcely a blue word remained amidst the purple, nor while away a Thursday googling a Montreal-born singer-songwriter mentioned in an email of de Wolf. Papers would get finished – books written – reimbursement forms turned in – blog entries posted without delay. […]
Comment #28 December 21st, 2006 at 7:13 pm
[…] I took a lot of flak for expressing wrong musical opinions last week. Since I so enjoy the role of human flamebait, I’ve decided to have another go at clarifying my views about Art in general. See, until a few years ago, I was intimidated by art and music snobs, by the sort of person who recently deposited the following on Lance Fortnow’s blog: man, the ignorance displayed here is taken to new levels. your ph.d. in computer science qualifies you as nothing musically, dumbass. ever heard of dynamic range? go look it up. […]
Comment #29 December 21st, 2006 at 11:28 pm
[…] Rather than give examples of this mistake — where would I start? where would I stop? how often have I made it myself? — I figured it’d be easier to give an example where someone didn’t make it. Today I received an email from a graduate student who had proved a quantum oracle separation, and wanted to know whether or not his result was too trivial to publish. I get fan mail, I get hate mail, I get crank mail, I get referee requests, but this is something I almost never see. After telling the student why his result was, indeed, too trivial to publish, I wrote: There’s no shame in proving things that are already known, or that follow easily from what is. Everyone does it, the more so when they’re just starting out … The very fact that you cared enough to ask me if your result is trivial bodes well for your proving something nontrivial. […]