last updated Sunday June 21, 2009

The day I nearly met Leonard Cohen

A blog post about how I somehow got in to a private London gig in March 2007.

Chelsea Hotel No 2

This is me providing guitar accompaniment for Antonio Savi on Chelsea Hotel No 2 at one of the 2002 Hydra convention open mic sessions. Antonio was a wonderful singer and the performance was unrehearsed. The guitar coda was based on one LC played in a live version of the song in the 1988 Songs from a Life documentary. It's more interesting musically than as a video but it's a moment I'm extremely proud of. Watch this clip at YouTube

Review of 2004 all-star Brighton tribute show

This is hosted on Thoughtcat, but was designed specially for The Leonard Cohen Files, from which it's linked. The show featured stars including Nick Cave, Rufus and Martha Wainwright and Jarvis Cocker and some of the performances were later featured in the 2006 film Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man. Cohen band singer Julie Christensen later got in touch asking "whether I'd mind" if she sent the report around to her list, and posted a link to the review on her blog calling it "a good report by a likeable blogger named Richard". Perla Batalla's management also emailed me to put me right on a couple of points after it was published.

Memories of Hydra

A somewhat dizzy account of the fabulous 2002 fan convention, written for The Leonard Cohen Files, where it's hosted.

Len '93: An account of attending a Royal Albert Hall concert in 1993, written to 'bulk out' a transcript of a TV interview on Later with Jools Holland from the same time, which I did for Speaking Cohen. See an extract from the interview on YouTube

A transcript of Stina Lundberg's essential 2002 TV interview, also at Speaking Cohen. I didn't initially own up to doing this as I was afraid of being sued for copyright infringement by Ms Lundberg or her TV company, but as no writs have been forthcoming, what the hell...

The Leonard Cohen Name Generator

A slightly nerdy (you have to be a fan of Len's lyrics to get the joke) but very funny take on the name generator craze conceived by Thoughtcat's friend Elizabeth (who despite her credit on the page is not evil, although she is a genius).

Putting Arthur Smith and the Grauniad right in 2000. For the record, I did go and see Arthur's one-man Cohen show, and it was excellent. I'm just a pedant, that's all. The articles I refer to in my letter are Has anyone here seen Leonard? (actually now returns a 'sorry, we can't find that' result, but hopefully it'll be back soon) and Duck gets the bird from West End show.