Actually, given a show that had been thoroughly rehearsed and buffed before the opening gig you wouldn’t expect there’d be a whole lot different about the performances either.
So how the heck do you do it?
The answer lies in Cohen’s post-concert routine. Within about ninety seconds of the end of I Tried To Leave You (with a bit of variation according to the actual venue’s backstage configuration) Cohen, accompanied by his tour manager and producer Ed Sanders will be in the limo heading back to the hotel. As a rule he won’t even mention the show (and, on the basis of what appears above, why would he?) But along the way there’s going to be the occasional night when something out of the ordinary happens.
According to the story, the twelve tracks here represent nights when something out of the ordinary did, as it turned out, happen. Without the video footage, of course, it’s hard to define what made these dozen performances special, but research indicates Lover, Lover, Lover was played in front of a fifty-thousand-strong Tel Aviv crowd in September 2009, while Hallelujah (from the Coachella Festival in California in April 2009) was performed in front of the entire crowd at a festival where multiple stages are the go and had been in operation until just before Leonard hit the stage. There’s an indication of the crowd size towards the end of the audio, and one presumes there’d be more evidence on the DVD version.
The London O2 Arena show on 13 November 2008 that provides That Don’t Make It Junk and Famous Blue Raincoat would, I guess, be another big crowd spectacular.
In the end, really, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a fan you’ll more than likely be happy to have these tracks packed away along with everything else in your Leonard Cohen playlist (or whatever) and what’s on offer here differs from the studio versions (well, after forty years you’re not going to be reprising the 1969 Songs From a Room version of Bird on the Wire are you?)
One for the fans and completists? Definitely. There are plenty of fans out there, many with completist tendencies and an artist who doesn’t have a huge back catalogue.
And for everyone else? Worth a listen. At least...