Ladies Men

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

so i bought death of a ladies man this week, and the fight b/w cohen and spector for supermacy, or for the words and the music to work against each other in such a tense way, makes it an incredible listen, i was wrong about the album.

but listening to let it be again, where something similar should happen, it doenst, its just an ugly, sentimental record.

my thesis was, interesting things happen when

a) spector is allowed to win
b) spector fails to win, but struggles to try.

though the second half of this thesis is disprovable with let it be, and i found for a decade, death of a ladies man an impossible listen...

i dont know what this means, but it keeps reminding me of poptimist, because we keep paying attention to who is behind the curtain (ie the new paris is kind of amazing b/c scott sorch (sp) is amazing), and these two examples seem like an interesting test case of what happens when people with strong, interior voices work together.

why does death of a ladies man work and let it be fail?
why is cohen pleased w. death and displeased with let it be?

(this is the only time that cohen is lush, he went from guitars to casio, and well the beatles were always lush, but differently lush than spector)

(the aesthetics of "lushness". maybe?)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is Cohen pleased with Death of a Ladies Man? I seem to remember reading that he thought the collaboration failed.

Mind you I am no expert on this, as I think it's a failure because it has Leonard Cohen on it.

As for Paris, most of the praise I've seen - from the Lex and Frank K - has been focussing on Paris not on the backroom staff, tho there's usually an acknowledgement she can buy the best. The faint praise or damnation I've encountered has made more of the backroom staff, as if buying the best is somehow an admission of weakness.

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

I do recall Laughing Len saying he wld be happy to work w/ Spector again even after the perceived failure of DOALM (tho this was pre-murder-trial, obv. Actually a rec PRODUCED by Phil from prison might be interesting - he cld be another Burzum!)

Was the Beatles sound 'lush' pre-Sgt Peppers?

[koganbot]

Well, the faint praisers/damners mention the backroom staff but are generally uninterested in saying what the staffers are actually doing - whereas many of us on the teenpop thread, pro or con, were talking about how Paris's voice was used within the arrangements, which presumably was worked out by Paris and her collaborators.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Death of a Ladies Man is much good at all. (Although I now want to go and listen to it again.)

I think Let It Be's failure isn't because of Spector's involvement (maybe compare Let It Be with the re-released un-Spectored version? here there can be PROOF). If DoaLM is Phil v Leoanrd - FITE!, then Let It Be is even more a John v Paul battle. That's where the tension's coming from. The Spectorizing of it's just another part of that.

DoaLM is interesting, but I do consider it Cohen's lowest hour. And I don't think he was ever that pleased with it - certainly most of what I've read suggests not.

WHY I dislike it so (when I am noted Cohen-obsessive) is possibly harder to work out. (Especially when I haven't listened to it properly for some time.) The actual songs are overwhelmed by the chaos that both Cohen and Spector tend towards, I think. Looking at earlier Cohen tracks, there's always been a temptation to break down into mindless warble, but it's been mostly controlled up until DoaLM. (I'm thinking of the end of One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, or Sing Another Song, Boys, or Diamonds in the Mine, or Leaving Green Sleeves.) And in those songs, the chaos is tensioned against the perfect words, or soft backing vocals, or precise, soft guitar. And it works (mostly). But with DoaLM, the chaos and the white noise take over and it's all unbalanced.

[koganbot]

Never heard Death of a Ladies Man, strangely enough. Coincidentally, I was just listening to Anjani's Blue Alert, which Cohen produced. So far (which is probably as far as I get), she comes across as smokey-voiced chanteuse bore whose voice is so thick as to be a parody of smoke. Sample lyrics: "We're saying goodbye/At the innermost door." 'K Anjie baby. Bye.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Geez, I was just reading someone talking about Death of a Ladies Man and how it worked while something similar didn't. Argh. Uh, maybe Dylan's work in a similar period?

Anyway, the argument there, which I agree with, was that Cohen was mocking himself--the title was sarcastic and a little acid, so it became like the lush music was mocking him too, and that created a tension that boosted the whole thing higher than it would've otherwise. The problem with the Wall of Sound is that it needs something holding it up, otherwise it's just a big wash of pretty.

I need to listen to this again, thanks! (A band in my high school did a great punk cover of "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On.")

some more thots

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

the concentration on what the right talent is and the desire to have it suggests what happens behind is as impt or even more impt then what happens with the performance

speaking of the failure of death... it seemed to be an expriment that he was willing to try again

cohen hasnt attempted to erase the text from existence, by letting it drop out of print, or by stripping the arrangements from the work, like paul did with let it be, that says something about his presence

i think that death of a liadies man is really important b/c it moves cohen away from being a protest singer, to something stranger and more prophetic, the synths, anger, loucheness, and fuckability, the anger and destruction of the world, songs like the future, everybody knows, first we take manhattan, etc comes after...so its kind of like the ladies man died and something else was risen (just like let it be was really the death of the beatles)

maybe lush is the wrong word, but there is something (fecund, overgrown, hothouse, gorgeous, campy?) about the four part harmonies, even in she loves me yeah yeah

though his poetics has always had the darkness and the strangeness...

tbc