Chicago Theatre

It’s not every day you have the chance to see Leonard Cohen.  Or, every
year.  Or, um, every decade.  Something happened this past Tuesday
evening at the beautiful Chicago Theatre that hadn’t happened in 15
years…  Leonard Cohen stepped onto a stage here in Chicago.  “An
Evening With Leonard Cohen.”  “An Evening With!”  Code for no opener, so
the 8:00 time on the ticket meant that the man was walking onto the
stage at just after 8:00.  Standing ovation, back down into your seats
for the first set.  Yeah, two sets on this night, which I support fully.
Any band playing over 90 minutes, give us a break in there, will ya?  We
can talk about the highlights with our buddies, grab a beer, hit the
bathroom, move around a bit, and recharge for the second half of the
show!  Loved that.  Well, I loved it on this night especially, because
it meant L.C. was going to be playing for close to 3 hours.  Let’s start
with the voice.  What a voice it is.  It’s not like a David Byrne voice,
in that there’s no effing way in hell you could ever sound anything like
him when you’re alone, trying to belt out a line or two in your car,
driving to work.  His is a voice that you can kind of pull off.  Or
maybe that’s just in your head, but that deep, chilled out,
more-speaking-than-singing voice doesn’t make you feel like a total goof
when you quietly sing a line or two to yourself.  “I’ve seen the future,
brother.  It is murder.”  See?  It’s fun to, uh, speak along.  His
guitarist, Javier Mas, who was seated on the front of the stage, to
Leonard’s left for the entire set, was phenomenal, and I’m thinking that
the rest of the crowd agreed, judging by their most enthusiastic
applause for him during Leonard’s band introductions… I could write
for hours and hours about this set.  I could talk about how I’m pissed
that I forgot my camera and was unable to snap a photo of the marquee, I
could talk about Leonard’s kind removal of his fedora during a band
member’s solo, I could talk about how his financial misfortunes have
reintroduced him to his audience and how lucky we are for that, or maybe
how a friend of mine was amazed to see teenage hipsters pushing their
way to the front for his set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts
Festival back in April.  Yeah, on and on and on, but this blog is
designed to get YOU talking, so let’s hear it.

http://jasonthomas93.blogspot.com/