Thursday, October 05, 2006

Came so far for beauty...

Just got back from a whirlwind run up to Dublin's Point Theatre to go to the Leonard Cohen Tribute 'Came So Far For Beauty'. Left Cork yesterday afternoon just in time to get to the theatre - well nearly (Dublin. Traffic. I hate it.) we may have missed a couple of songs at the start, which was annoying at first but when we realised we were at a four hour concert we figured we could afford to skip a couple, even Nick Cave songs.

Great night. Some truly incredible moments - moments of incredible muical beauty, moments which were honestly moving. And then also some stuff which one friend of mine described as craptacular, which was more than generous to it.

In a four hour concert packed with musicians and singers, I won't remember everything that was good but here are the highlights for me:

Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) was superb. He made Leonard Cohen songs which generally have one note in them soar and swoop and flow and rise and fall and god knows what else. Beautiful.

Gavin Friday came on and whispered his way through 'Who By Fire' which I thought was going to be brilliant but it just never really took off - his next song was helped by having Antony on backing vocals and at some point Gavin came on with someone called Mary Margaret O'Hara and did 'Hallelujah'.

Wow. Gavin did a good job with Hallelujah, but it was Mary Margaret O'Hara's incredibley unique take on it that really made the song something special. It's near impossible to describe. Gavin began the song in his own throaty and dramatic style, and at first I thought some of the strange high pitched vocal stabs she was taking at the song were mistakes, until she suddenly took off, changing the rhythms and patterns, breaking in on Gavin's vocals in unexepected places, at times singing beautifully softly and at other times furiously screaming.

I think a lot of the audience weren't impressed, some didn't know what the hell to make of it but I thought it was genius.

Nick Cave did several impressive songs including his fabulous version of Suzanne with Perla Batalla & Julie Christensen (Leonard Cohen's backing singers) which is available on the I'm Your Man soundtrack.

Jarvis Cocker also really impressed, pretty much any time he came on stage, but particularly on his duet with Beth Orton, 'Death of a Ladies Man' which they both made an amazing job of.

It was a night for duets really, another highlight of the show, possibly THE highlight for me was the duet between Lou Reed and (I think) Julie Christensen. They sang Joan of Arc, a song I never really liked but they made sense of it. I'm a big Lou Reed fan, but I had to admit that earlier in the night his renditions of Cohen's stuff were good but not particualrly earth shattering. But this was. I hope there is a recording of this out there, I would love to have it.

They were the big moments for me, Laurie Anderson did some mad stuff (what else wouls she do), some people I never heard of did some woeful stuff, oh wait! I forgot - The Handsome Family did some great stuff, particularly their version of 'A Thousand Kisses Deep'.

At one point in the night, just as we were taking the interval a man stood in front of our seats. His face was oddly familiar. I couldn't place him but I had an instant dislike for him. I asked Jeremy if he knew him and he said it was Noel Dempsey. Right. That's why I know his face then.

Also, after the intermission I was able to navigate back to my seat by Glen Hansard who was sitting directly above us on the balcony. Handy.

Looking forward to seeing him play with the Frames on Friday night in the Everyman in Cork!

Thanks to Jeremy and Gemma for the excellent birthday present of tickets to Came So Far For Beauty, and for the lift up and down!!!