Showing posts with label Leonard Cohen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leonard Cohen. Show all posts

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Inspiration of the Year - Irish Lass Kaylee Rogers Steals Hearts with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah - Merry Christmas

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The best feel-good story of the past year, in which the highs and lows have cancelled each other out, is the remarkable story of the ten-year old Irish Lass from Northern Ireland, Kaylee Rogers.  It seems the parent of a school friend quietly slipped into the viral world a recording from a Special Needs choir performance at the school last Christmas that stunned the world.

There are so many amazing aspects of this story.
 

First there is the incredible singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen from Canada who wrote an amazing Jewish song, 'Hallelujah.'   Cohen died barely a year ago, November 7, 2016, a month before the ten-year old performed her version of Hallelujah in concert for the first time.


Cohen released his song 'Hallelujah' in 1984 and slowly it became popular, until 1991 when the first of 300 other artists released a version of the Cohen sleeper, and it became a monster hit.  The song was voted one of the top 50 songs of the 1960’s and the 20th Century and Cohen’s YouTube version has logged over 100 million views.


Then the lyrics of the magical Cohen composition were changed from a Jewish to Christian song, and the result was even greater magic.   The altered lyrics were originally devised by a Christian rock band called Cloverton in 2014, who had their video taken down on YouTube due to a copyright infringement claim by Sony. However, the lyrics are now being used to cover the song by the choir and Kaylee, and a good thing too.

Kaylee Rogers, a ten-year old Special Needs student from Northern Ireland, has autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.  She could barely talk or communicate at age six when she began attending the Killard House Special Needs school in Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland.

She began singing as a way to build her confidence.  In barely a year over 7.2 million people have seen the video though no CD was made, it was just a school concert after all.

As reported at the time:

"When she took to the stage in her Killard House uniform an amazed silence engulfed the room. The next four-and-a-half minutes were pure magic as she sang beautifully to an entranced audience and brought grown men to tears."


We salute Kaylee Rogers for her courage in fighting autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and battling her way back from the silence in the tomb of autism.  What an amazing profile in courage and determination.

To then go and have the strength and courage to sing the lead part in a school Christmas concert last year, which thanks to the Internet and YouTube have been seen by over 7.2 million people, is simply astonishing.

Please listen to her magical performance.  The Kaylee lyrics appear after the song since few people know there is a new version of the song.  Please double click the screen for a full screen version.



Kaylee Rogers Video 
Double click for full screen



Hallelujah
Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: LEONARD COHEN
Hallelujah lyrics © Sony/ATV Songs LLC, Music Like Dirt, Bad Monk Publishing, Tunecore Digital Music, Universal Music Mgb Songs, Sony Atv Music Publishing France, COPYRIGHT CONTROL (NON-HFA), UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUB INC, EMI CHRISTIAN MUSIC PUB OBO HILLSONG, SONY/ATV SONGS LLC OBO BAD MONK PUBLISHING, KOBALT MUSIC PUB AMERICA OBO MASTER MISTRESS MUSIC LLC




Christmas version of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'

The alternative lyrics were written by the Christian rock band Cloverton
Roisin O'Connor  22 December 2016


A 10-year-old girl from Northern Ireland has gone viral after a video of her singing a variation on Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' for her school choir performance was posted on Facebook.
Kaylee Rodgers, from Donaghadee, County Down, has autism and ADHD, and began singing as a way to build her confidence.
The video of her singing the Killard House school choir's version of 'Hallelujah' has attracted more than 100,000 (now 7.2 million)) views from people around the world.
It was originally posted by parent Nichola Martin, who was proud of her son Blake who also took part in the choir. 
Kaylee told ITV that she was excited just to be singing, but that it was also "amazing" that the video had received so much attention.  "I just loved doing it," she said. 

Colin Millar, head teacher at Killard House, said: "For a child who came in P4 and would really talk, couldn't really read out in class, to stand and perform in front of an audience is amazing.
American Oscar winner Susan Sarandon Kaylee fan 
"It takes a lot of effort on Kaylee's part."
The alternative lyrics sung by Kaylee were written by contemporary Christian rock band Cloverton, who are based in Manhattan, Kansas. 
Their version - which was posted on YouTube in 2014 but muted due to reported copyright issues with Sony Columbia - sparked a debate at the time over whether it was disrespectful to change Cohen's lyrics to suit a Christian message, since Cohen was Jewish.
Cohen's opening lyrics: "Well I heard there was a secret chord/That David played and it pleased the Lord/But you don't really care for music, do you?" were changed by the band to: "I've heard about this baby boy/Who's come to earth to bring us joy/And I just want to sing this song to you," and so on for the duration of the song.
Frontman Lance Stafford told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time that "no disrespect to Leonard Cohen was meant".  "When we rewrote the lyrics, I had no idea Leonard Cohen was Jewish," he said. "We didn't perceive it as a song celebrating Jewish culture or written for Jewish people."

Leonard Cohen died in his sleep aged 82 after a fall in the night on 7 November 2016, after a career spanning five decades. He released his 14th studio album You Want It Darker on 21 October of the same year.



Northern Ireland singing sensation Kaylee wows black tie Boston ball with rendition of Hallelujah
Kaylee Rogers sings at the Boston Winter Ball

By Brett Campbell
February 16 2017


A singing schoolgirl from Co Down has stunned an American audience at the Boston Winter Ball after she stole the show with a live performance of Hallelujah.
Kaylee Rogers (10) received a standing ovation when she reduced those attending the lavish ceremony to tears.
When Kaylee moved to Killard House in primary four, she struggled to talk and read out loud in class because she has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but it quickly became apparent that she had no problem singing.
The primary seven pupil captured hearts around the world in December when a video of her singing in the school's Christmas concert went viral.
The recording of her adaptation of Hallelujah has been viewed by millions of people online.
Principal of Killard House, Colin Millar, said Kaylee's cover of the Leonard Cohen song evoked a lot of emotion in the grand ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel.
He said: "When she took to the stage in her Killard House uniform an amazed silence engulfed the room. The next four-and-a-half minutes were pure magic as she sang beautifully to an entranced audience and brought grown men to tears."
Mr Millar described the audience's reaction as "the perfect tribute to the angelic voice of this 10-year-old Killard House pupil".
The Boston Winter Ball caters to socially-minded young professionals in the city and has established itself as one of the most anticipated events in its social calendar.
The beneficiary of this year's ninth annual black tie event was the Corey C Griffin Foundation, a charity which supports philanthropic causes, particularly those that serve young people.
Mr Steven Greeley, a friend of the Griffin family, was one of the many people around the world who watched Kaylee's video at Christmas. He believed she represented the guiding principles of the foundation so he quickly contacted the school to arrange for Kaylee to sing live at the ball.
The Corey C Griffin Foundation was launched in the summer of 2014 when 27-year-old Corey Griffin died in a tragic accident in Nantucket - a small isolated island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts - just a day after he had raised $100,000 (£80,300) for his Boston College friend Pete Frates' initiative to raise money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Pete, who was diagnosed with the disease in March 2012, is credited as the person who started the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and Corey has been referred to as the co-founder of the phenomenon which went viral on social media during the summer in which he died. Boston businessman, Arthur S DeMoulas, was recognised at the event and received an award celebrating his focus on philanthropic work.
Executive director of the Corey C Griffin Foundation, Melissa Bowman, said: "Mr DeMoulas greatly admires Kaylee's courage and perseverance to overcome adversity and sharing the evidence of that through her beautiful voice was one of the highlights of the evening.
"We understand that she hasn't performed publicly outside her school in Northern Ireland and we were delighted to welcome her to the United States to share her talent here."
Kaylee, who is normally very shy, has been growing in confidence through singing and has been praised by her school principal for embodying the ethos of the special needs school in Donaghadee.

Killard House Special School

  
Killard House Special School choir singing Hallelujah

Kaylee Rogers


After coming across this video on Christmas day, I just have to share it.  Kaylee is a special child.  She has autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, but when she sings…be prepared to be touched by an angel!   It brings tears to my eyes every time I listen to her rendition of the song, such was the power of little Kaylee’s voice and interpretation of the lyrics of Hallelujah.
I have a young niece who can’t speak at all, even at 5 years old, but is such sweet and mild-tempered girl and such a joy to all of us.  Seeing the milestones that Kaylee has achieved even with her disorders, I am heartened to know that En En may one day be able to overcome her own disorders, to learn to speak and do things on her own like Kaylee does, and perhaps unleash her special ability.
This Christmas-themed remake of Hallelujah consists of lyrics by American Christian rock band Cloverton.

Welcome to the website for Killard House School in Donaghadee.

Killard House School is a co-educational Controlled School providing for children and young people with additional special educational needs. These include Moderate Learning Difficulties, Speech and Language Difficulties and Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Here at Killard House we provide education in a friendly, happy, supportive and caring environment with regard for the personal well being of our pupils.

We promote the personal and social development and a feeling of self-worth for all of our children and young people. The school is based upon good relations between children and young people, staff and those with parental responsibility.


Killard House School embraces an inspiring school motto of ‘Together We Can’ and the school prides itself with providing personalised multisensory learning experiences for the pupils in a safe and caring family environment. In fact everyone in the school refers to it as the ‘Killard House family’.
The school was founded over fifty years ago in Newtownards and in 2009, it relocated to the Donaghadee High School site. It provides education for over 200 pupils aged 3 to 18 years as well as providing Outreach Support for 30 pupils, aged between four and 11 years of age, as part of the South-Eastern Region (EA) support for Special Educational Needs in mainstream schools (Speech and Language and Moderate Learning Disability).
The school consists of a Nursery, Primary and Post-Primary Department along with 6 Social Communication Units (P1 - P7) providing a specialised programme for pupils on the Autistic Spectrum. The Primary Department also provides education for pupils with moderate and complex learning profiles in eight MLD classes P1- P7 aged pupils. The Nursery classes are two daily  sessions a morning session and afternoon session  with 4 pupils in each session.
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Friday, November 11, 2016

CPT Spirits in the Sky - Leonard Cohen - Beloved Canadian Poet, Singer, Songwriter, and Legend

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Yesterday we lost another of the most prolific songwriters and storytellers in music in Leonard Cohen, whose haunting songs became better known than Leonard.  He will be missed but his difficult life path and his beautiful contributions to music history will never be forgotten.

Leonard Cohen - So Long Marianne
(Double click for full screen)



Yesterday, November 10, the following message appeared on the Leonard Cohen website.




Leonard Cohen
It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away.

We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.
A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date.  The family requests privacy during their time of grief.
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C’est avec une profonde tristesse que nous vous annonçons que le poète, auteur-compositeur et artiste légendaire, Leonard Cohen est décédé.

Le monde de la musique a perdu un de ses visionnaires les plus prolifiques et vénérés.

Une cérémonie aura lieu à Los Angeles dans les prochains jours.  La famille souhaite vivre le deuil en toute intimité.

The following tribute to Cohen by The New York Times says it all.



Leonard Cohen, Epic and Enigmatic Songwriter, Is Dead at 82
Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who abandoned a promising literary career to become one of the foremost songwriters of the contemporary era, has died, according to an announcement Thursday night on his Facebook page. He was 82.

Mr. Cohen’s record label, Sony Music, confirmed the death. No details were available on the cause. Adam Cohen, his son and producer, said: “My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records. He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor.”

Over a musical career that spanned nearly five decades, Mr. Cohen wrote songs that addressed — in spare language that could be both oblique and telling — themes of love and faith, despair and exaltation, solitude and connection, war and politics. More than 2,000 recordings of his songs have been made, initially by the folk-pop singers who were his first champions, like Judy Collins and Tim Hardin, and later by performers from across the spectrum of popular music, among them U2, Aretha Franklin, R.E.M., Jeff Buckley, Trisha Yearwood and Elton John.

Mr. Cohen’s best-known song may well be “Hallelujah,” a majestic, meditative ballad infused with both religiosity and earthiness. It was written for a 1984 album that his record company rejected as insufficiently commercial and popularized a decade later by Jeff Buckley. Since then some 200 artists, from Bob Dylan to Justin Timberlake, have sung or recorded it. A book has been written about it, and it has been featured on the soundtracks of movies and television shows and sung at the Olympics and other public events. At the 2016 Emmy Awards, Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” for the annual “In Memoriam” segment recognizing recent deaths.

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah
(Double click for full screen)


Mr. Cohen was an unlikely and reluctant pop star, if in fact he ever was one. He was 33 when his first record was released in 1967. He sang in an increasingly gravelly baritone. He played simple chords on acoustic guitar or a cheap keyboard. And he maintained a private, sometime ascetic image at odds with the Dionysian excesses associated with rock ’n’ roll.
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At some points, he was anything but prolific. He struggled for years to write some of his most celebrated songs, and he recorded just 14 studio albums in his career. Only the first qualified as a gold record in the United States for sales of 500,000 copies. But Mr. Cohen’s sophisticated, magnificently succinct lyrics, with their meditations on love sacred and profane, were widely admired by other artists and gave him a reputation as, to use the phrase his record company concocted for an advertising campaign in the early 1970s, “the master of erotic despair.”

Early in his career, enigmatic songs like “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire,” quickly covered by better-known performers, gave him visibility. “Suzanne” begins and ends as a portrait of a mysterious, fragile woman “wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters,” but pauses in the middle verse to offer a melancholy view of the spiritual:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water,
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower,
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him,
He said “All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them.”
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open,
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.


In 2008, Mr. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which described him as “one of the few artists in the realm of popular music who can truly be called poets” and praised him for having “raised the songwriting bar.” In 2010, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammys’ group, gave him a lifetime achievement award, praising him for “a timeless legacy that has positively affected multiple generations.”

Wearing a bolo tie and his trademark fedora, Mr. Cohen dryly made light in his acceptance speech of the fact that none of his records had ever been honored at the Grammys. “As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I’d get a Grammy Award,” he said. “In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest.”

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up in the prosperous suburb of Westmount. His father, Nathan, whose family had emigrated to Canada from Poland, owned a successful clothing store; he died when Leonard was 9, but his will included a provision for a small trust fund, which later allowed his son to pursue his literary and musical ambitions. His mother, the former Masha Klonitzky, a nurse, was of Lithuanian descent and the daughter of a Talmudic scholar and rabbi. “I had a very messianic childhood,” Mr. Cohen would later say.

In 1951, Mr. Cohen was admitted to McGill University, Canada’s premier institution of higher learning, where he studied English. His first book of poetry, “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” was published in May 1956, while he was still an undergraduate. It was followed by “The Spice-Box of Earth” in 1961 and “Flowers for Hitler” in 1964. Other collections would appear sporadically throughout Mr. Cohen’s life, including the omnibus “Poems and Songs” in 2011.

A period of drift followed Mr. Cohen’s graduation from college. He enrolled in law school at McGill, then dropped out and moved to New York City, where he studied literature at Columbia University for a year before returning to Montreal. Eventually, after a sojourn in London, he ended up living in a house on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote a pair of novels: “The Favorite Game,” published in 1963, and “Beautiful Losers,” published in 1966.

“Beautiful Losers,” about a love triangle all of whose members are devotees of a 17th-century Mohawk Indian Roman Catholic saint, gained a cult following, which it retains, and eventually sold more than three million copies worldwide. But Mr. Cohen’s initial lack of commercial success was discouraging, and he turned to songwriting in hopes of expanding the audience for his poetry.


“I found it was very difficult to pay my grocery bill,” Mr. Cohen said in 1971, looking back at his situation just a few years earlier. “I’ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I’m very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I’m really starving.”
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Within months, Mr. Cohen had placed two songs, “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” on Judy Collins’s album “In My Life,” which also included the Lennon-McCartney title song and compositions by Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Donovan. But he was extremely reluctant to take the next step and sing his songs himself.

“Leonard was naturally reserved and afraid to sing in public,” Ms. Collins wrote in her autobiography, “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music” (2011). She recalled him telling her: “I can’t sing. I wouldn’t know what to do out there. I am not a performer.” He was “terrified,” she wrote, the first time she brought him onstage to sing with her, in the spring of 1967.

Leonard Cohen - Suzanne
(Double click for full screen)


Later that year, after being signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond, the celebrated talent scout who also signed Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Cohen released his first album. Its simple title, “Songs of Leonard Cohen,” and its cover, a portrait of the artist gazing solemnly into the camera, matched the music, which was spare and unembellished, in stark contrast to the psychedelic style that then prevailed.

The record began with “Suzanne,” which was already being performed by folk singers everywhere thanks to the popularity of Ms. Collins’s version. It also included three other songs of great impact that would become staples of Mr. Cohen’s live shows, and that numerous other artists would record over the years: “Sisters of Mercy,” “So Long Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”

His second album, “Songs From a Room,” released early in 1969, cemented his growing reputation as a songwriter. “The Story of Isaac,” a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac, became an anthem of opposition to the war in Vietnam, and “Bird on a Wire” went on to be recorded by performers including Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.


In 1971, Mr. Cohen released “Songs of Love and Hate,” which contained the cryptic and frequently covered “Famous Blue Raincoat,” but after that his production began to tail off and his live performances became less frequent. He released three more albums during the 1970s but, amid bouts of depression, only two in the 1980s and one in the 1990s.

The quality of his songs remained high, however: In addition to “Hallelujah,” future standards like “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “First We Take Manhattan,” “Everybody Knows” and “Tower of Song” date from that era.
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Mr. Cohen, raised Jewish and observant throughout his life, became interested in Zen Buddhism in the late 1970s and often visited the Mount Baldy monastery, east of Los Angeles. Around 1994, he abandoned his music career altogether and moved to the monastery, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk and became the personal assistant of Joshu Sasaki, the Rinzai Zen master who led the center, who died in 2014. He took the name Jikan, which means “silence.”

During the remainder of the decade, there was much speculation that Mr. Cohen, rather than merely taking a sabbatical, had stopped writing songs and would never record again. But in 2001, he released “Ten New Songs,” whose title suggests it was written while he was in the monastery. It was followed in 2004 by “Dear Heather,” an unusually upbeat album.

In 2005, Mr. Cohen sued his former manager, Kelley Lynch, accusing her of defrauding him of millions of dollars that he had set aside as a retirement fund, leaving him with only $150,000 and a huge tax bill and forcing him to take out a new mortgage on his home to cover his legal costs. The next year, after Ms. Lynch countersued, a judge awarded Mr. Cohen $9.5 million, but he was unable to collect any of the money.


The legal battles may have soured Mr. Cohen’s mood, but they did not seem to damage his creativity. In 2006, he published a new collection of poems, “Book of Longing,” which the composer Philip Glass set to music and then took on tour, with Mr. Cohen’s recorded voice reciting the words and Mr. Glass’s ensemble performing the music.

In 2008, Mr. Cohen hit the road for the first time in 15 years for a grueling world tour, which would continue, with a few short breaks, through 2010. He was driven, he acknowledged, at least in part by financial necessity.

“It was a long, ongoing problem of a disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation,” he told The New York Times in 2009. “I didn’t even know where the bank was.”

Combined with a pair of CDs and accompanying DVDs recorded in concert, “Live in London” and “Songs From the Road,” the constant touring, before audiences often larger than those he had enjoyed in the past, clearly eased Mr. Cohen’s financial problems. Billboard magazine estimated that the 2009 leg of the tour alone earned him nearly $10 million.

Over that three-year period, Mr. Cohen performed nearly 250 shows, many of them lasting more than three hours. He seemed remarkably fit and limber, skipping across the stage, doing deep-knee bends and occasionally dropping to his knees to sing.
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The shows were not without incident: During a show in Valencia, Spain, in 2009, he fainted, and early in 2010 one segment of the tour had to be postponed when he suffered a lower back injury. He recovered, however, and in 2012 he released “Old Ideas,” his first CD of new songs in more than seven years, and embarked on another marathon tour.

That pattern of extensive touring and recording continued into the decade. In 2014, for instance, Mr. Cohen released a CD of mostly new material, “Popular Problems,” as well as a three-CD, one-DVD set called “Live in Dublin.” His final studio album, “You Want It Darker,” was released in October 2016.

Mr. Cohen never married, though he had numerous liaisons and several long-term relationships, some of which he wrote about. His survivors include two children, Adam and Lorca, from his relationship with Suzanne Elrod, a photographer and artist who shot the cover of his 1973 album, “Live Songs,” and is pictured on the cover of his critically derided album “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (1977); and three grandchildren.


To the end, Mr. Cohen took a sardonic view of both his craft and the human condition. In “Tower of Song,” a staple of live shows in his later years, he brought the two together, making fun of being “born with the gift of a golden voice” and striking the same biblical tone apparent on his first album.

Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter, but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of song.


“The changeless is what he’s been about since the beginning,” the writer Pico Iyer argued in the liner notes for the anthology “The Essential Leonard Cohen.” “Some of the other great pilgrims of song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper.”
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Friday, April 11, 2014

What a pleasant surprise

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Scene from Coltons Point
Every now and then we need to stop absorbing all that swirls around us and sit back and enjoy something fun.  The following is a video of an actual Irish wedding in which no one including the bride and groom knew the priest was going to break out in song.

Ironically Father Ray Kelly chose one of my favorites the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah and wrote new lyrics where appropriate for the couple.

Enjoy.

When I first saw this there were under 2 million hits and by the time I posted it within 24 hours there were almost 12 million hits.



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