We pick and choose the concerts we go to because of the venue. It used to be that any “star” who came to Victoria played the Royal Theatre which seats 1400 people, or even the McPherson which only seats 800. Some stars still do, those who want to unplug and play to an intimate audience; Kris Kristofferson and Bryan Adams both played the ‘Mac’ last year and Jim Byrnes regularly plays a local blues bar. But normally the big names perform at the new arena, the
Savon Foods Memorial Centre (How’s’ that for a bad example of buying naming rights by donation. Briefly it was the Savon Foods Arena until someone shortened that to SOFA) which by arena standards is tiny, maxing out at about 6000 people for a concert. It is probably that small size that attracts the older troupers to this musically sophisticated city which has symphony, philharmonic, and university orchestras, a viable opera company, a music conservatory, and I’m sure more musicians of every description per capita than anywhere else in the universe. ‘The Savon’ was opened by Rod Stewart in 2006 and he's been back; Cher ended her never ending world tour there (it was actually her 3
rd last show); Sarah Brightman, Ozzie Osborne, and a whole bunch of other ‘names’ have performed there and now Elton John is doing two shows in February. Tickets for EJ go on sale today and will sell out in a nano-second. Keep in mind that this is a city of about 400,000 on a big day.
The problem is that no matter how small the arena is people behave differently than they do in a theatre which is why we hesitate before committing. If we go to a concert we actually want to hear the performer. We had great seats for Cher, who had 13 semi trucks of gear with her including the chandelier that she sailed in on and the mechanical elephant which opened the second half. But we had a party of three women in front of us who had had far too much to drink and were loud and obnoxious. The oldest of them, the mother it seemed, eventually fell down the stairs and they left, after telling us to f*** o** when we asked them to pipe down. Not that we were happy she fell but we were happy they left.
All this is to say that we girded our loins and went to see
Leonard Cohen last week, his second time at the Savon in 6 months. He’s 76 so we figured we better make the effort, not that he’s a favourite for either of us but he is Canadian and an icon.
We had seats on the floor, row 17, and the arena was sold out of course. I was a little worried about being on the floor assuming everyone would be standing through the whole event which seems to happen in arenas. At about 8:04, for an 8:00 start, LC dances onto the stage with 9 musicians, to thunderous applause; no warm-up act. About 9:20 I figure he’s maybe doing a 90 minute show with no intermission, he’s getting on in years don’t forget. At 9:35 he called the intermission and started again at 10:00! At 11:25 he had just finished Closing Time but said, “I just want to do one more song”, and the show finally closed at 11:35. That’s 3 full hours of concert and he’s looking as though he could keep going forever! Reading a review of an Oakland CA show he apparently did 3 hours and then a 40 minute encore. If that’s what Zen Buddhism does, bring it on. Plus he had fabulous musicians with him
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/band2008.html ; most notable for me was Javier Mas but every one of them was outstanding.
Willie Nelson was my previous benchmark for giving good value in a concert (25 years ago so don’t take this as a recommendation) and Kenny Rogers was the worst at 45 minutes after an hour long warm-up act. Leonard Cohen is now the king forever. And even better, the audience stayed in their seats and behaved as though they wanted to hear every sound. Granted his music is meditative,( he’s a better poet than singer in my opinion) rather than dance music which helped to ground people in their seats but they could have been standing and swaying rather than sitting.
All in all, if you have the opportunity and any feeling for Cohen as a poet, musician, or oddity, he is a trouper!
