Our household loves Leonard Cohen. But we learned from the documentary that we can sort of do without Nick Cave, and can definitely do without either of the Wainwrights, especially when Rufus tries to cover songs whose lyrics he doesn't actually know by heart.
Cohen is wonderfully understated, something his homage-givers can't quite capture.
(To be devil's advocate about even Cohen how hard would it be to write a Leonard Cohen song lyric generator? We can even make it an exercise for the reader. You don't have to implement it: Just some pseudocode and a list of your seed strings would suffice.)
Posted by Matt Bruce at August 19, 2008 10:28 PMYou might like the Cave Murder Ballads album. If anything, it went a long way toward justifying Kylie Minogue's career.
Posted by: Greg at August 20, 2008 07:28 AMI love Leonard Cohen, though it is only the albums that preceed Death of a Ladies Man that I know really, really well. And, I agree, the best Cohen is when he is in his understated mode... but there are noteable exceptions. "Diamonds in the Mine" is the first track that comes to mind.
I've only seen part of that documentary but I think it included bits with Nick Cave and Rufus. I seem to recall Nick's song from that doc not working that well but his "Tower of Song" on I'm Your Fan (which also features REM and Pixies) was top notch. [I'm going to look stupid if that's the song he did for this doc, too.]
I don't recall how the Rufus went but I am a big fan of his original work. It is not for everyone, I suppose. And I'm guessing that his Cohen cover is fairly representative, save knowing his own lyrics better. I am a big fan of Martha, too, though she has less material. I know Louden less but I recall liking the album I heard.
I don't understand the lyrics comment. You don't like Cohen's lyrics? Isn't that approximately 74% of his value?
I'm not really a programmer, but...
Verse[0]: DepressingBreakups[0..99]
Verse[1]: ReligiousMetaphors[0..99]
Verse[2]: Sex[0..99]
Verse[3]: Lovemaking[0..99]
Verse[4]: Fucking[0..99]
Verse[5]: StuffThatSoundsDeepWhenYouAreHigh[0..99]
while ! Sober:
i = random integer[0..5]
j = random integer[0..99]
sing [Verse[i[j]]
Posted by: maribeth at August 20, 2008 12:35 PM