Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday January 18, 2022: Songs of Leonard Cohen – The Middle Years

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/54885.html

Theme: Songs of Leonard Cohen – The Middle Years

This edition of Stranger Songs was inspired by the book, Leonard Cohen Untold Stories: From This Broken Hill by Michael Posner, the second of what will be three volumes of Leonard Cohen’s untold stories. From This Broken Hill covers Leonard Cohen’s life from the early-1970s until the late-1980s and the songs of Leonard Cohen on this show were written during that period.

Colleen Rennison- Why Don’t You Try
See the Sky About to Rain (Black Hen)
Holly Near- A Singer Must Die
2018 (Calico Tracks Music)
Leonard Cohen- Lover Lover Lover
New Skin for the Old Ceremony (Columbia)
Tower of Song- Chelsea House #2
In City and in Forest (Tower of Song)
Judy Collins- Take This Longing
Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy (Elektra/Rhino)
Rufus Wainwright & Amsterdam Sinfonietta- Who By Fire
Rufus Wainwright & Amsterdam Sinfonietta Live (BMG/Modern)

Perla Batalla- Came So Far for Beauty
Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (Mechuda Music)
Leonard Cohen- The Window
Recent Songs (Columbia)
Emmylou Harris- Ballad of a Runaway Horse (Ballad of the Absent Mare)
Cowgirl’s Prayer (Asylum)

The Klezmer Conservatory Band- Dance Me to the End of Love
Dance Me to the End of Love (Rounder)
The Once- Coming Back to You
The Once (Borealis)
Jennifer Warnes- Night Comes On
Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen – 20th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
Leonard Cohen- The Captain
Various Positions (Columbia)
SONiA disappear fear- Hallelujah
By My Silence (Disappear Records)

Jamie O'Reilly & Michael Smith- Song of Bernadette
Songs of a Catholic Childhood (J. O’Reilly Productions)

Mad Pudding- First We Take Manhattan
Grand Hotel (Sliced Bread)
Leonard Cohen- I’m Your Man
I’m Your Man (Columbia)
Tom Russell- Tower of Song
Selections from Love & Fear plus bonus out-takes (HighTone)

Canadian Brass- Hallelujah
Canadiana (Linus/Canadian Brass)

Next week: London, Longing for Home.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday February 9, 2021

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs – Episode #1 – was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/50779.html

Today’s show was inspired by the book, Leonard Cohen Untold Stories: The Early Years by Michael Posner, the first of what will be three volumes of Leonard Cohen’s untold stories. The Early Years covers Leonard Cohen’s life from childhood until 1970 and the songs and poems of Leonard Cohen on this show were all written during that period. Click here to read my review of Leonard Cohen Untold Stories: The Early Years. 

Leonard Cohen- fragment of The Stranger Song
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)
Martin Simpson- The Stranger Song
Vagrant Stanzas (Topic)

Nina Simone- Suzanne
To Love Somebody (RCA)
Leonard Cohen- Warning
Six Montreal Poets (Folkways)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Martha Wainwright- Winter Lady
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (Verve Forecast)
Leonard Cohen- Stories of the Street
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)
Perla Batalla- So Long, Marianne
Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (Mechuda Music)

Leonard Cohen- fragment of The Stranger Song
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)

Tex König- Sisters of Mercy
Königsblende (Music Cellar)
Laura Love- Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye
Pangaea (Octoroon Biography)
Leonard Cohen- One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)

Reid Jamieson- Bird on the Wire
Dear Leonard (Reid Jamieson)
Leonard Cohen- The Sparrows
Six Montreal Poets (Folkways)
Judy Collins- Story of Isaac
Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy (Elektra/Rhino)
Leonard Cohen- A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes
Songs from a Room (Columbia/Legacy)

Perla Batalla- Seems So Long Ago, Nancy
Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (Mechuda Music)
Leonard Cohen- Les Vieux
Six Montreal Poets (Folkways)
Crowes Pasture- Tonight Will Be Fine
Edge of America (Crowes Pasture)
Leonard Cohen- The Old Revolution
Songs from a Room (Columbia/Legacy)

Judy Collins- Dress Rehearsal Rag
Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy (Elektra/Rhino)
Laurie MacAllister- Famous Blue Raincoat
The Things I Choose to Do (Laurie MacAllister)
Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen- Joan of Arc
Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen – 20th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)

Leonard Cohen- fragment of The Stranger Song
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)

Next week’s show falls on Mardi Gras Day (February 16) and the show will feature songs from or inspired by New Orleans – including some Mardi Gras songs.

Find me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Leonard Cohen – Untold Stories: The Early Years

Leonard Cohen – Untold Stories: The Early Years
By Michael Posner
Simon and Schuster
482 pages                                                                 simonandschuster.ca

(A slightly different version of this review was previously published by the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.)

By the time I was a teenager in Montreal in the late-1960s, Leonard Cohen – who was 20 years older than me – was already a legendary, if not mythological figure. His first LP, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was released right about the time I was developing a serious interest in both folk music and the contemporary singer-songwriters whose work was somewhat rooted in the folk tradition. So, I began a lifelong relationship with Cohen’s music that has only grown stronger and stronger over more than half a century. And, as a high school and college student, I also read much of his earlier work: multiple volumes of poetry and two novels.

I’ve also had several brief encounters and conversations with Cohen over the years in Montreal and always found him to be exceptionally gracious.

While I’ve read previous biographies of Leonard Cohen, I was anxious to read Michael Posner’s Leonard Cohen – Untold Stories: The Early Years as it’s essentially an edited oral history told through the memories of several hundred people who knew Cohen when he was growing up in Montreal, while he was a student and summer camp counsellor, as a young poet and novelist, and in the first couple of years of his emergence as a major singer-songwriter. The book’s chronology ends in 1970 and two forthcoming volumes of Untold Stories will cover subsequent years. Adding to my interest was that among Posner’s sources are more than two dozen people I know or have known at some point over the years – some of whom (including my cousin, Marilyn Regenstreif Schiff) are people I never knew had a connection with Cohen, while some (like singer Judy Collins) tell stories that I’ve heard directly from them before.

The portrait that emerges over almost 500 pages is of a complex and creative individual shaped by family and circumstance and driven by both spirituality – and a need to find it (the time period of this volume includes Cohen’s brief dalliance with Scientology) – and demons (he is self-medicated with copious amounts of drugs). His transformation from poet and novelist to singer and songwriter is fascinating.

Cohen seems both intensely loyal on some levels and unable to commit on others – particularly in his many relationships with many women, most notably Marianne Ihlen, with whom he had an ongoing, but-mostly-off, relationship through most of the 1960s.

While the stories of Cohen’s many dalliances with women in this book took place in the 1950s and ‘60s, a time of growing sexual freedom and revolution, Cohen sometimes (too often) comes across as predatory in the way he treated women – particularly younger, less experienced women who may have been in awe of him. Reading about some of these encounters is particularly disturbing after all of the #metoo revelations of the past few years.

It’s also interesting to note that some of Posner’s sources had contradictory recollections of the same events and he leaves it to the reader to decide which version is more credible. Of course, given that the events under discussion took place 50, 60, 70, or more years ago, the memories many of the sources will be embellished or diminished by time or, in some cases, wishful thinking.

While the voices of several people who knew Leonard Cohen best in those years – such as his sister Esther Cohen, who died in 2014, or his close lifelong friend, the sculptor Morton Rosengarten – are regrettably absent from the book, it is fascinating (and, occasionally, frustrating) to read the “untold stories” of witnesses who were there for the first half of Cohen’s life. I’m looking forward to Michael Posner’s second and third volumes.

Find me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

–Mike Regenstreif