Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Stranger

      It was almost fifty years ago in Dec. 1967 that a novelist and poet, little known in America but on the rise in his home country of Canada, released his debut album.  His name was Leonard Cohen and the album was Songs of Leonard Cohen.  However unassuming the title and the stark, sepia toned cover photo of a demure Cohen seemed, those grooves contained songs full of mystery, atmosphere and immense poetic power.  From the first bare notes of "Suzanne," the listener is gently ushered into a strange world that somehow feels familiar.  The song seems to emanate from another, higher realm of sensation: a snowy, ethereal world of half-remembered dreams and memories of lost love.  Like the title character, the half crazed, beatific Suzanne, the song itself remains beautifully elusive, giving only faint impressions of a "divine" love which is unattainable.  Every song on the album is likewise charged with palpable mystery.  Songs like "The Master Song" and "The Stranger Song" are enigmatic gems of curiosity.  This is a testament to Cohen's poetic ability which, when paired with the bare instrumentation of the songs, casts an enchantment over the listener which linger in the brain long afterwards.  His debut, released when he was 33, was the start of a long and ultimately prosperous career, which over the years earned Cohen millions of loyal fans.  It's my opinion that his appeal lies partly in his seamless blending of apparently opposing themes: his work always strives to bring together the disparate threads of spirituality and sexuality, piety and passion.  In all these elements he seems to be able to draw out a universal concept; the theme of longing.  His best songs ache with the burden of longing which all humans carry, whether for physical satisfaction or something more ethereal, beyond the earthly.  His body of work speaks to so many people because it strives for inclusion rather than exclusion.  Everyone can see themselves in the band of wounded souls that his songs give voice to.  Cohen seems to have us pinned at every point in our life: in victory, in defeat, in ecstasy, in the clutches of despair, in the spring of hope and the winter of disillusionment.  He shows time and again that this earthly life is not perfectable; try as we might we can not shape it to our will.  The harder we try the more we suffer, but it is our suffering which gives us our ragged beauty.  We are angels howling in misery at the bottom of the pit of life.  Perhaps what makes "Hallelujah," his most cherished song is that it expresses this concept perfectly.  We are all fighting an inner battle, a spiritual struggle within ourselves, one in which the only victory is surrender.  Once we realize that "perfect" victory is unattainable and that even love is "not a victory march," but rather a melting of oneself into something larger, it becomes clear that we are all singing a broken "hallelujah," with a holiness all its own.  This is where the power of his songs emanates from; the collective realm of suffering and salvation that makes up life.  Cohen himself is a beautiful stranger in the world of music.  He seems to have slipped in quietly and unobtrusively when no one was watching the door and has been there ever since, secretly feeding our lives with wisdom from another place.  Like all great visionaries, literary or musical, I see Cohen as a man of two worlds: he lives among us, embracing the fullness of the world rather than shunning it, but he ultimately answers to a higher calling.  As evident in First We Take Manhattan when he writes, "I'm guided by a signal in the heavens," Cohen's gaze rests on a distant horizon that is hidden from most of the world.  Who or what supplies this signal is unclear, even to Cohen himself, but that's exactly the point.  Cohen chooses to live in the mystery of existence, marveling at it's boundless manifestations and trying in his humble way, to pay tribute to the curious emanations of beauty he witnesses everyday in our world.  I think I speak for all his fans when I say I'm lucky to be alive at the same time as Leonard Cohen.  

The Mercurial Ghost

He's been called so many things: Poet, spokesman, prophet, phony, sell-out, and perhaps most famously, Judas.  Yet through all the changing winds of status and stature he's only had one name: Bob Dylan.  The name itself is a fabrication, a manufactured pseudonym that remains as elusive as the man that it identifies.  Regardless of how the name came to be, since it was introduced to the world in the early sixties, it's a fully charged name, one that crackles with strange electricity whenever it is brought up in the right circles.  Bob Dylan means a lot of different things to a lot of different people but the common thread that connects them all is the passion with which his ever morphing music brings out in people at various stages of their lives.  Dylan seems to live within everyone in some form or another.  In his 50 year career it's as if he's lived behind everyone's eyes, seeing all and experiencing all in order to dispel the stories and situations of everyday life spanning this continent and the world beyond.  At his core, Dylan is an actor who feels most comfortable in other people's skin.  Since Bob Dylan doesn't really exist, Bob Dylan can be anyone.  In many ways he represents us all and his music seems to speak to all our hopes, fears, insecurities and jealousies, triumphs and despairs as well as our great cruelty and compassion, both personally and collectively.  He encompasses an entire universe of human behavior.  Because of this I see him as the ghost who lingers in the back of our consciousness, smiling, laughing, crying, berating...  Within his music lies a vast, dark ocean of sensation and feeling beyond the waves of thought we battle with day after day.  When Dylan's masterpiece Blonde on Blonde was released in 1966, giving rock it's first double album, he described the record as having the "thin, wild, mercury sound," he'd always heard in his head.  That beautifully cryptic phrase suits Dylan's personality to a tee: the mercurial star of electricity shifting to fit the contours of his wild vision, wherever it may take him.  Those who listen to him are lucky enough to have been along for the ride.  Like anything worthwhile, it hasn't always been the smoothest, most comfortable ride and at many times people have felt the desire to get off.   When he first showed signs of abandoning the seemingly pure paradise of folk music in favor of more personal, introspective songs ripped from his soul as well as writing more absurdly humorous songs with no specific target, gripes that he was selling out to commercial interest began to be heard.  Plugging in his electric guitar and fronting a rock band was seen as rubbing salt in the wounds of folkie purists who already felt betrayed.  Overnight, Dylan had gone from obscure Greenwich village urchin to the rugged king of the folk revival as well as a reluctant prophet-poet for an outspoken generation with a common dream of changing the world.  When Dylan turned away from this almost deified position, one which never sat right with him in the first place, it was seen as the ultimate slap in the face. What all those suddenly jaded folkies failed to see was that rather than abandoning the movement completely, Dylan was instead widening his gaze to encompass a whole universe of previously overlooked derelicts and outcasts swept aside by our often savage and unmerciful society.  His songs were throwing a light on the narrow corners of our world and exposing the tangled web of complex situations and circumstances at work behind everyday life.  Songs like "Chimes of Freedom," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Tombstone Blues," and "Desolation Row," with their parade of downtrodden and warped circus renegades, hold up a fun house mirror to society in an attempt to show how bizarre this "normal" life usually is and just how truly complicated it can get.  In order to effectively showcase all of this lunacy it becomes necessary for Dylan to be more than one person.  The true genius of Dylan's work lies in its adaptability; by writing about general, universal themes and concepts with a razor sharp wit and satirical eye, his best songs continue to be applied to a myriad of situations whether political or social, personal or collective.  As Dylan himself so wisely observed in 1965, everyone has their own personal ideas and images about even the most universal of concepts and therefore it's useless to write songs with specific messages.  Instead, his most timeless songs remain stubbornly elusive and beautifully enigmatic.  Their essential meaninglessness allows them to be continuously re-adapted to fit the shape of current circumstances.  Like water, they contour to almost any situation.  In Dylan's world, it is meaninglessness which is holy, meaninglessness which represents a rare kind of freedom:  the freedom to be anything and anyone, do almost anything and to simply keep on keeping on.  It is meaninglessness and selflessness that allows this man named "Dylan" to be anyone he chooses.  He is all encompassing, he is everyone and he is no one.  His music, to me, represents the perpetual surge of creation and existence present behind all things at every moment.  One can listen to his songs and see the full span of life replete with all the  mysterious misfits who inhabit and pass through this realm and the infinite array of experiences, most beyond comprehension, that one can encounter in their life. In this way Dylan's music -- which will have people discussing, arguing, contemplating, cursing, laughing and crying over until the end of time-- fulfills the basic characteristic of folk music, which is the ability to be re-adapted time and again to help shed much needed light on the world's increasingly desperate situations and provide some perspective from places just beyond the fringe of our consciousness.                     

Viva La Vinyl

For my maiden post I wanted to talk about the vinyl revival I've been experiencing lately.  Since I was born in 1989, I missed out on the days of vinyl dominance and therefore had to work my way backwards to these relics from a bygone era.  When I seriously got into music, I bought cd's of the bands I was listening to at the time: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, etc.  Even as I watched the cd begin to bow out to MP3's and IPOD's, I still preferred those little plastic discs.  A friend of mine who grew up listening to vinyl turned me on to the more subtle pleasures of collecting and listening to my music at 33 1/3 and 45 rpms.  Soon I began seeking out whatever record stores still existed around Rhode Island.  One of the best is Round Again Records in Providence.  Here you're sure to find a few gems in near pristine condition for a steal.  I discovered fairly quickly what a joy it is to hold an album, admire the artwork of a favorite cover, slide the record out, place it on a turntable and put the needle down.  The first distinct pops of a record can deliver a feeling of comfort almost as enjoyable as the actual music.  Since getting into vinyl and hearing many of my favorite albums on both vinyl and cd, I've become aware of the differences between the two formats.  One hears all the time, usually from vinyl purists, that vinyl gives a much warmer and richer sound as compared to the often cold, hollow sound of many early cd's.  For most vinyl fanatics the occasional pop or crackle is a welcome addition to the music itself, one which adds to the atmosphere of the music being played.  I've found that I deeply enjoy the sound of a record over my speakers.  Vintage vinyl also offers the listener the chance to hear their music in a format that isn't heard much today but was once the standard; that would be Monural sound.  Music delivered with a punch from one channel of direct sound.  When I first started listening I didn't know anything about mono or stereo and probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference if my life depended on it.  Now with the resurrection of vinyl and in the interest of recapturing the sound of those early rock records, many classic albums have been reissued in mono on both vinyl and cd.  I recently bought the box set of Dylan's first 8 albums in mono cd to go along with my stereo set.  I'm sure most who grew up listening to those albums and many more in mono would argue that was the way they were meant to be heard.  They'd probably tell you stories of buying their first stereo album and having to run back and forth from speaker to speaker to hear everything that was playing.  Having listened extensively to both I like to think that I can appreciate both mono and stereo and accept their individual limitations just like I accept both vinyl and cd.  I find that certain albums are enjoyed more on vinyl than cd and vice versa.  This might be because the artwork on the cover can be appreciated more on a record sleeve than from a little booklet or it might be that the track listing is appreciated more when one has to take a moment to flip the record.  The extra work that goes into playing vinyl can be either seen as a labor of love or a waste of time depending on who's doing the listening.  For those who listen to music as a means to some other end like dancing, or providing background ambiance, it's crazy to listen to vinyl.  For those who want something playing simply to fill in the silence around them continuously, vinyl is not ideal.  However, those who listen purely for the music and the multitude of feeling that a new, unheard record or a familiar, lifelong record can deliver, vinyl and the work that goes with it can be a treat for more than the ears.  Many current artists such as Jack White have been praising the merits of vinyl and releasing their albums in both formats to reintroduce vinyl to a generation that's grown accustomed to getting their music fix instantaneously.  Obviously, those not interested enough in music will never know what a vinyl record even is let alone how to play it, but hopefully the push from these popular artists will compel younger listeners to take some time and give good ol' vinyl a spin.          

Song of Myself

Before I really get started here it'd be helpful to give a little info about my life and the great love I have for the music and artists I cherish so deeply.  I'm a 23 year old from Rhode Island.  I'd like to say that most of my involvement with music comes from making it but mostly I'm just a professional admirer of other people's work.  For years I dabbled with the drums but these days my kit sits untouched gathering dust in my basement.  I've also been messing around on guitar lately, trying to teach myself a few songs.  My main focus is writing, something that can be immensely rewarding on good days and endlessly frustrating on bad days, which are most days.   I tend to jump between poetry and prose but I've also been trying my hand at songwriting.  Anything that can't be sung I just call a poem which means that most of my "songs" are poems.  How I found my way to the musical goldmine that I've been listening to is an interesting story.  Growing up I didn't think much of music beyond what played on the radio.  My parents are by no means audiophiles even though my dad's a musician; he plays electric and upright bass.  Even so, he was a strictly by the book musician having been taught to read music and playing mostly classical and big band stuff (not that there's anything wrong with that).  For most of my childhood my music collection consisted of little more than a few cds i kept in a shoebox, mostly of artists who were big at the time.  It was a friend of mine who grew up listening to vinyl and playing in bands who helped steer me towards the treasury of great music I've been exploring.  I started by listening to the popular rock bands and artists who've ensured a timeless place in pop culture and history: among others,The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Kinks and a few of the other royalty of Rock.  Dylan and The Beatles especially became my twin tour guides, showing both a way forward and backward into the foggy realms of music and culture.  My friend helped to round out my research into British bands by adding less recognized but just as heavy hitting bands such as The Dave Clark Five, The Yardbirds, The Animals, etc.  From there I moved onto heavier British blues bands, namely Cream and Led Zeppelin; the golden gods of rock.  With Dylan I began listening from his folk roots as the unwilling prophet of the protest movement but soon discovered that his mid-sixties work, paticularly the electric trilogy (Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde), was a veritable treasure trove of mind warping poetry and surreal imagery blasted into the brain along with some of the most ferocious guitar licks ever played.  Once I entered Dylan's twisted circus world, a fun house mirror version of our own, I never forgot the characters I met.  In the next few years my musical journey took me through the key places and periods highlighted on the map.  I made my way to San Francisco to hear Bay Area Bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe & the Fish jamming all night in grand ballrooms full of swirling lights.  Then onto LA and the Sunset Strip to hear the chiming, jet age sound of The Byrds, the dark, jazzy hypnotism of The Doors as well as the gruffer folk-rock of Buffalo Springfield and the garage groove of Love.  Soon enough I was deluged by a veritable waterfall of bands and artists pouring out from the cracks of every major music scene.  There are plenty of other bands deserving of mention but I'm afraid this listing would begin to turn into a book.  Bottom line is that the bands mentioned above and a hundred others just as worthy of praise were instrumental in shaping my views of the world and providing me with a boundless universe of outlets for expression and thought and continuously force me to look at the world in new and fresh ways, taking everything in and spitting it back out in the shape of a song.