And thus ends another year, slowly and quietly, and here in Newfoundland, a bit on the chilly side. No one is in much of a hurry around here in the post Christmas hangover, - January is a slow month in St. John’s. And thus my attempts to update this journal in any remotely timely fashion get harder and harder.
In the media I follow, it is the time of year-end lists and whatnot. I started to write this entry a good while ago, with just such an idea, and then immediately realized it was the act of the lazy and cynical. In my journalism days we would mock such lists for what they were - an easy way for our columnists to recycle their previous work. And anyway, what would I write on such a list? I would be lucky to find five new songs I heard this year that stayed with me for more then ten minutes. I saw a handful of shows, and left most of them dissatisfied for one reason or another. After starting this entry and abandoning it a dozen times, I am feeling like I may have written myself into a corner. The original idea of this blog was to use songs and music I like as a platform to discuss the band, its music, and everything else that made sense. Having written some 50 of these small essays now, the ‘everything else’ has gotten more interesting to me than the songs themselves. Or perhaps I am on the wrong track altogether.
One song I have listened to more than most recently was ‘Suzanne’, by Leonard Cohen, a song I first heard over 20 years ago. The reason I came back to it was watching Cohen himself do it live. That was over a year ago, and yet I cannot stop thinking about the song and his performance of it. For years, ‘Suzanne’ and the early greatest hits collection it appeared on has been a guilty pleasure of mine. In my university days I aspired to that same sort of mysterious poetic intellectual drunkard persona Cohen cultivated so well in the 70s, and his lyrics spoke to me at every level. I was a bit reluctant to see him play, actually - I did not want that memory ruined by a shit rendition. At the last second I decided to use my ticket, and bailed on a studio session to catch the second act of one of his St. John’s shows. ‘Suzanne’ was the second song I caught, and I was instantly relieved. Cohen was utterly convincing. He has lived every syllable of his words and music, and offers wisdom and acceptance to go with his considerable gift for melody. The song had changed immeasurably in his skilled hands, yet it was still perfect. And in fact, seeing the great man perform it live really changed the way I have listened to any song from then on. I have spent a year thinking about this, and trying to put the conclusion into something useful.
In a way, my efforts on the last tour with the solos kind of did the same thing. Granted some songs worked better than others, but it was an interesting learning experience. The idea was to force an element of musical spontaneity into every show, especially those nights when we might have just gone with the familiar and known. When you are out there by yourself, (a couple of times without even the benefit of an instrument), it really does depend on your delivery of the lyric and the melody. Without the crutch of arrangement and rhythm and hooks and whatnot, you really do have to offer a performance that comes from the heart. That statement is weighted with cliché, but you just don’t have anything else. Everything Cohen sang was like that, and I am envious.
The recent death of Ronnie Drew, a singer I love, sent me into the depths of youtube, where dozens of videos of his huge catalogue exist. There was a man who lived and loved every word and note he sang. Like Cohen, his voice was limited and eccentric, yet he conveyed a passion and emotion that shone through even the most dire of arrangements and circumstances.
I am slowly coming to believe that my efforts to hear and learn new music all the time may be a bit misguided. Cohen has been singing the same 30 songs for a lifetime, but yet his audience drank them in like a good French red wine, one that has the capacity to be different with every sip. He has the ability to fine-tune the meaning of each note and phrase, to paint the same picture from many different angles, with many different colours. Ronnie Drew had the same quality, an uncanny ability to sing a song and make it flow like a good novel, one you can read over and over again, always finding something new. Thinking back to the solos we played on the last tour, the ones that worked the best had little to do with their musical merit or relevance to the audience at hand, and more to do with the passion and meaning (and even humour) we were able to put into them.
That, I have come to believe is the lesson of Cohen and Drew. Perhaps I should cease to search for the new, and instead really learn the songs I already know.
Either that, or start writing about books and wine.