Leonard Cohen - Live at the BBC [1968]

These well-preserved sessions at the BBC in 1968 offer a fly-on-the-wall experience to witness a young Cohen singing practically the entire first album. The voice is fresh and deep, pushing the songs outside the Tin Pan Alley perimeter, and delving into poetry with a richness of words and subject. Today, they still have that raw appeal of a young artist at the peak of his powers. This is the complete BBC recording. The sound quality is better than on the once commercially available bootleg known as "At the Beeb". There is also one extra track (One of Us Cannot Be Wrong).

While Dylan was the transition point for protest music to move towards singer-songwriter, there were others too championing to focus on songs not politics. Canadian Leonard Cohen, with his brooding monotonous voice, was a talented poet who would never have won American Idol. But where he lacked a sweet voice, he made up for it with the intensity of his songs. Suzanne, So Long Marianne and Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye are beautiful love songs without catchy hooks. They got your attention with words and the emotions in the song.

The origin of this BBC session began when bootleg label Yellow Cat released Leonard Cohen - At The Beeb [YC 018] to a wider audience as a silver-disc bootleg. It ran slow and was a few generations from the master. Then Cohen fan “briggY” shared his much improved version on the Dime site. But the original source was from a fan called “Artery”. This is how he came upon a copy: “This is most probably my transfer from Jim D’s cassette. I did it about 6 years ago. Jim wrote to a man at the BBC who sent him the cassette. He’d made a cassette audio copy for his own use I believe and indicated the videotape had been wiped.”

Dave Cousins and The Strawbs have been mentioned as the backing band at this BBC session.



Tracks (63:48)
1. You Know Who I Am (3:33)
2. Bird On The Wire (4:38)
3. The Stranger Song (6:17)
4. So Long Marianne (7:57)
5. The Master Song (7:37)
6. [BBC Outro] (0:05)
7. [BBC Intro] (0:09)
8. There's No Reason Why You Should Remember Me (2:08)
9. Sisters Of Mercy (3:57)
10. Teachers (3:56)
11. Dress Rehearsal Rag (6:05)
12. Suzanne (3:51)
13. Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye (4:10)
14. Story Of Isaac (3:58)
15. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong (5:21)


Recorded Spring 1968 at Paris Theatre, London.
Tracks 01-06: Broadcast August 31, 1968 on BBC2.
Tracks 07-13: Broadcast September 7, 1968 on BBC2.

Covers were appropriated/modified from the "At the Beeb" release.

http://filepost.com/files/d72937dm/lc_bbc_1968.rar
http://www.rapidshare.com/files/42290525/lc_bbc_1968.rar

Pass is my name