ACHING WHERE I USED TO PLAY: LEONARD COHEN AT THE ALBERT HALL

When Leonard Cohen's band took the stage at the Albert Hall last night, I thought I'd wandered into a production of the Three Penny Opera, like one I saw in Montreal some thirty years ago. Then Leonard himself entered, in his current-trademark hat, which he took off for the crowd with a look of surprise, like a 74 year old grandfather who's walked into his surprise birthday party at a restaurant on Blvd. St. Laurent, 'oh, are all these people here to see me?' Of course, they were, and it was the kind of crowd of long-time fans, the bed-sit warriors grown old and obviously successful enough to afford the tickets, that was going to love whatever Leonard gave them, but as an admirer more of Cohen the writer than the performer, I have to say, he gave them far more than they asked him.

As the evening went on, he would occasionally smile wryly; as if he still marvelled at the way his career path as a struggling Montreal poet and novelist got turned around when he picked up a guitar to impress the girls who weren't impressed by his poetry: one gets the sense that he's never totally left that Canadian poet behind. So when he sings on his knees, which is probably some yoga things that gives him more energy or more wind, you get the sense of a singer who's somehow penitent, and that helps you enjoy his success even more. Even if he hadn't skipped off stage at the end of each set, and each encore, he played with enjoyment, his band was tight behind him, and if every gesture was obviously well-rehearsed, it didn't make them any less sincere, or appreciated. My wife, entranced by his songs since hearing 'That's No Way To Say Goodbye' in New Zealand as an eight year old, raised on Leonard, as it were, hung on every note, and in a way, I should not have been surprised that I found the show so good, because a bootleg cd I have of a 1993 live show is one of my favourite boots of all time.

Some of the band has been with him a while; bassist and leader Roscoe Becke co-produced Jennifer Warnes' 'Famous Blue Raincoat', which you might say launched the Cohen revival. Guitarist Bob Metzger was on that 1993 bootleg. But the real star of the show was Javiar Mas, playing laud (the Spanish oud, or Cuban loud) and 12 string guitar, and adding a dramatic touch to the sounds that echoed Mexican and Greek music, as well as Spanish. He was also wearing a fedora, and it made him look like second runner-up in a Tom Waits lookalike contest. But it was only when Mas was playing that you got the sense you might be hearing something that wasn't note perfect like every other performance on the tour. And one of the keys to Cohen's late-career rebirth has been Sharon Robinson, his backup singer and co-writer; like Lou Reed calling for the 'colored girls' to sing, she adds life to Cohen's vocals, and did a solo of 'Boogie Street' that was powerful. Joining her on backup voals were the British Webb Sisters, whose more folky voices provided a nice mix. Their encore duet of 'If It Be Your Will' , playing harp and guitar, was somewhere in that alt.country/new folk range. The mix worked well, even if the synchronised gymnastics were underwhelming.

I came to Cohen first via Judy Collins' fabulous 'In My Life', which I heard at 17, played to me by a Smith College date who was trying to seduce me, which shouldn't've been that hard. Maybe I got distracted by the songs. To that point, my tastes were mostly Motown, Stax, Blues Project, Butterfield, Byrds, Beau Brummels, Kinks. While I liked Cohen's songs, I was generally satisfied with other interpreters: I was, however, floored by the novel Beautiful Losers, and by some of his poetry too. In fact, I pretty much ignored his records from the early 70s through my Montreal years, until, like so many other people, 'I'm Your Man' reminded me of what a good song-writer he could be, and what happened when he finally found a style that suited his words as songs. That style isn't really the electric beat, it's more of a torch-song approach, much closer to Serge Gainsbourg than Bob Dylan.

But maybe it's a generational thing that I responded more than Kirsten to 'Chelsea Hotel', which now seems less clever and more touching to me, although I might be indulging in nostalgia for Janis Joplin and that way of life. Certainly I love the way 'That's No Way' moves both me (Judy Collins version or his own) and my wife equally, despite our coming to it from such different places. On the other hand, my all-time favourite is 'Dress Rehearsal Rag', which is even too depressing for Cohen to perform, or at least it has been for the past few decades, so maybe I'm more of a bedsit romantic than I'll admit. Of course, Judy Collins is the only singer who can make a song about a wrist-slicing junkie sound beautiful, but I love Cohen's own version too. Last night, even though I realised I really did admire many of Kirsten's favourite songs, and had a few of my own I hadn't realised I liked so much, for me the highlight of the evening was Cohen's reciting the poem 'For Those Who Greeted Me', from which his song 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' is adapted, especially the verse he used as a refrain:

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat.
I´m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique -
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep.

There were a couple of moments when it could have gone all nostalgic; after all, half the crowd was there figuring they will never get another chance to see Leonard in concert. I've followed that logic with Elliott Carter's 80th and 90th birthday concerts, and I'm figuring on attending his 100th too. This was not a Frank Sinatra 'farewell' tour, with ol blue eyes going through the motions and providing mere hints of the songs his adoring fans remembered. Leonard Cohen went through the catalogue, re-interpreted some, revisited others. He stuck the songs that might have been construed as goodbyes, or looking back, in the beginning of his sets, and he ended on a bang, with a final encore of 'Democracy Is Coming To The USA' which took on a certain resonance given the last election, and which was greeted with a roar. Listening to 'the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor' earlier in the night, I wondered if we shouldn't see Leonard more politically. On the other hand, you know you're getting old when you find yourself nodding along to 'I ache in the places that I used to play' .

People forget that Cohen there was never a 'young' Leonard Cohen the singer; he'd already has his young career as a precocious writer. He tends to get associated with the Beats, and for good reason: watching last night's concert could provide an illustration of the kind of 'beatific' that Kerouac or Ginsberg had in mind. 'Beautiful Losers' could be the archetypical Beat title; my memory says the novel has a little bit of that feeling, some magic realism (very early on; Canadians were as good as Latin Americans at that) and some classic North American fictional tropes. But before that second, and last, novel, the young Cohen was at first a rather formal poet, working in rhyme and meter, before his poetry merged into his songs. The later freer verse is good, but the early songs benefit from that formalist poetic. And I was reminded of all this last night.

It was one of the best concerts I've been to in ages, and it reminds me of just how good a song-writer Leonard Cohen is. That he became such a good performer too is simply a bonus. But the feeling I left the Albert Hall was one that somehow joined my younger self to my older one, if I can be allowed to show just how soppy Cohen can make me. Or anyone.

INTERNATIONAL RUGBY BOARD TO CANADA: DROP DEAD!

In the summer of 2007, I wrote, but couldn't sell, an article on the hypocricy of the International Rugby Board, whose 'world' (sic) cup forced minor countries (like the US or Japan) to play two matches in four days, then wait two and a half weeks to play another two matches in four days, while the bigger countries played a comfortable game each weekend. Then when they did play they were greeted with refereeing that interpreted the laws with far more leeway for the big nations, and much more strictly for the minnows. The inevitable result: lopsided matches that produced the sickening 'well-played' from the winners and our English commentators....

Last night Wales beat Canada by a 'disappointing' 34-13 before 55,000 fans at the Millennium Stadium (Australia was equally disappointed to beat Italy 30-20). But according to yesterday's Guardian, the Canadians had asked the Welsh for a small cut (50p per ticket) of the gate, which would have amounted to some £27,500, to help fund Canadian rugby, which, with a small playing group stretched over a huge country, has immense problems trying to put together elite and national teams. The Welsh, of course, said no, although (or perhaps because) they have to fork up £500,000 to get the All-Blacks to play them. That may seem a lot, but they will gross some £17 million from their four autumn internationals.

What makes it worse, is that Wales is touring Canada next summer, with the Canadians picking up all their expenses within the country. But the Welsh still have to get there, so they applied to the IRB for a grant from a contingency fund supposedly intended for 'developing' rugby nations, and got £70,000 to pay for their airfares. I suppose the argument was that paying for them to go to Canada would somehow help the Canadians more than giving the Canadians money.

Given that the rugby 'world' is rather pathetically limited to about eight first-class 'countries' (England, Scotland, and Wales count as three nations), which includes poorly-funded Argentina, whose game is amateur, and Australia, where it runs a poor third to league and Aussie rules among football for men, the IRB's intense focus on making more money for the big boys is shameful, but given their track record, hardly surprising.

Meanwhile, on a happier note, the NYTimes reports of an inner-city Washington DC school who field an all-black rugby team, (you can find it here) competing with the schools in the affluent suburbs. It woulod be encouraging to know that, were any of them to progress to the international level, their team, the US Eagles, would be treated about the same way they were when they first hit the all-white suburbs....

LEAH MAIVIA DIES; PASTED JACKIE PALLO

I had been hoping to write a proper obituary of Leah Maivia for the Guardian, but since they decided not, I'll mention here why I thought she'd interest a British audience. Leah's death attracted the most publicity because she was the grandmother of Duane Johnson, better known as 'The Rock', the star WWE wrestler turned actor.

The Rock came from a wrestling family; grandad was 'High Chief' Peter Maivia, a legendary wrestler and promoter of NWA Polynesia in Hawaii after his wrestling days. When Peter died, Leah took over the promoting, making her the first woman to run a wrestling territory in the days when regional promotions were the business.

But in the 1960s, apparently no one had told her about the business, or at least that the wrestling wasn't real. Peter Maivia was touring Britain, where the biggest British heel, Jackie 'Mr TV' Pallo was his cheating opponent. Famously, one night as Pallo was giving him a beating, Leah, at ringside, got so incensed she climbed into the ring and gave Pallo a REAL beating, rather embarrassing for the British star. What's interesting is that Pallo also had a side career as an actor, and, in an episode of the Avengers, was accidentally kayoed by Honor Blackman and said 'I've never been knocked out by a lady before' or words to that effect.

IT SIMPLY ISN'T CRICKET...

In the Guardian last week, there was a piece by cricket writer Moss,S rather predictably excoriating 20/20 cricket, particularly when turned into fun by Indians or fiananced in the West Indies (where, were Joel Garner growing up today, he would be playing basketball) by American millionaires. You can read it here.This prompted a couple of interesting letters last Saturday, which you can read here.

Here's my reply to the first of those letters (equally unsurprisingly, unpublished):

John Dallman (letters 1/11) makes two errors of fact and as a result one of supposition in his theory of Allen Stanton's motives in spending $100 million on cricket. He claims baseball is not a major sport outside the United States. In fact, it is the most popular sport in Japan, Cuba, Taiwan, Venezuela, and several other countries, and its list of first-class nations compares very favourably with either cricket's or rugby's. He also apparently has never heard of the next most important American team sports, basketball, whose reach, if not impact, surpasses football, and ice hockey, whose reach is worldwide among winter sports nations.

This ignorance leads Dallman to conclude Stanton sees a market for cricket as an international sport in the US. If soccer, hugely successful in the US as a participant sport, and for the US in international play, cannot attract a public either at the stadium or on television, why would any sane businessman conclude that the US public is desperate for America v India cricket matches?

Perhaps a better motive might be that Stanton, like me, simply enjoys the game, which is basically baseball played in two dimensions, or three if time counts as a dimension. But if I am wrong and Dallman is right, I would happily accept a small portion of Stanton's $100 million to lead cricket's assault on my native land.

In reality, I'm afraid David Fine's letter the same day is more apposite. In a few years English cricket's paleolithic rulers will no doubt be staging their own 20/20 tourney at Lords. It will be sponsored by the UK taxpayer, whose money will have been channelled to Lords via the bailouts of merchant banks, all of whose traders will sip free champagne in their luxury boxes while cursing arrivistes like Stanton for spoiling their game.

WHY OBAMA WON

In a line exorcised from my weekly Friday Morning Tight End column at nfluk.com (find it here) I mentioned that, since the Washington Redskins lost their last home game before the election, the incumbent party lost as well, meaning (and this is the bit that was edited out) this election was decided by the Steelers, rather than the stealers. You know what I mean.