(This image found there.)
If it hasn't been made perfectly clear by what I wrote after I found out about his death, Leonard Cohen is one of my musical heroes. If I had to make a list of my favorite artists, as people do & then pressure other people to do, he would undoubtedly make my top ten most of the time. I have thought about & listened to to his songs for almost thirty years now. There are few musicians who have touched me so deeply & affected me so strongly.
Tonight I'll pay tribute to him in a curious way: I'll do an entire show of his music covered by other artists. Why do I do this? You'll recall, I've done this before with artists like David Bowie & the Velvet Underground, but I've mixed some shows up like with George Jones & Morrissey. Why just play others interpreting Cohen's work? Why not hear from the man himself?
You must know by now I'm a contrarian by nature. I have listened to enough Leonard Cohen tributes in the past two months to not want to basically do the same radio show as others have done. But I also find something magical about reinterpretations of songs - sure, covers can be awful, but there are covers that make you think about a song in an entirely new way, & covers that unlock the potential of a song so it actually surpasses its original. I hope you'll hear some of these tonight.
Tonight! 9-11pm Eastern! 8-10pm Central! 93.9 fm WLXU in Lexington! LCR online everywhere! Join me in paying tribute to a true poet.
(P.S. I noticed that I chose images from the album Live Songs on two blog posts about LC. I don't think that's my favorite picture of him, but for some reason I think of it first when I think of pictures of him. I don't know why that is.)
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