Hey everyone — this is the final posting on the Old Ideas blog. For more Leonard Cohen tour blogs, follow my very own blog here.
Manchester Evening News Arena; MEN for short, which always made me titter. Oh but now it has an even grander name: Phones 4u Arena. (Tumbleweed rolls by.) We ended a tour-leg here in November of 2008. I recall loading our gear into a sea container; the local crew chief wasn’t pleased… READ MORE
Today started off fairly well; I woke after a half-decent night’s sleep, the venue was within walking distance from the hotel, and it was one of those days which elicits an unhelpable, ‘Wow nice day,’ phrase. Yes it was all well until I was struck on the head with loose lighting truss.
It took a while, but we got here. Traveling overnight from Zurich to Calais, we waited two hours for a crowded ferry and after a 90-minute sail, we bounded over the white clichés of Dover. A few hours later we hit Bournemouth, checking into a haunted hotel. It felt like my room was in another city, it was so far from reception, but there was a friendly, curiously dressed man awaiting me outside my door… READ MORE
After Oslo we stopped for a day-and-a-half in Hamburg, sunny with a comfortable temperature, staying in the same hotel as before the July 14 show. In the wee hours of Friday morning we drove to Zurich, arriving 1 p.m.-ish, checking into a weird hotel. Modern, shared between two buildings, it had lots of empty space in which 20th century ghosts might appear and gnaw one’s ankles.
Hello there,
This is a quick reminder that No Ideas the blog will rest in peace at the end of August. The extant articles shall remain until such time as they do not, but all further LC tour postings (as well as personal musings and muttering) will continue on Writing Man, my other WordPress blog. It’s the same platform, different address, that’s all.
It’s an easy transition if you want to follow along, and if you don’t want to, that’s OK.
All are welcome, all are free.
Peace and über-metta,
—LB
The Winning Team landed on their feet at oh you’ve heard it all before: we get somewhere, we set something up, a bunch of stuff works, we line-check it, eat something, huuuuuegh! The final word of the previous sentence is the only phonetic assembly I can muster that remotely resembles an exasperated sigh. READ MORE…
It was a fairly easy morning for The Winning Team in Odense. We are playing outdoors in a park, on a temporary stage, and most departments loaded in last night, leaving backline and video things until this morning. Arriving on site at a positively leisurely 10.15am… READ MORE
And — we’re back. When Mallorca ended I must admit, I was torn between staying forever and getting the hell out; I think I was becoming acclimated to the great yellow ball and skin-sizzling heat. But with a schedule to keep we flew to Stockholm where the temperature was around half that of Mallorca. At 18ºC, it was cloudy and a bit rainy — magical. Waiting for us was our hotel, a very nice place I’d love to have spent a few days in. Nearby was an Indian restaurant where Dan and I wolfed delights and chucked back mega-sized Kingfishers; following the exercise in deliciousness, we discovered a pub with pinball machines. We did not play pinball.
Fast-forwarding to the following day, today, The Winning Team finds itself in the Globe, a cozy arena that seats approximately, oh I don’t know, a billion… READ MORE…
I have yet to master the typographical equivalent of an exasperated sigh, but if I could, I would employ its power to precede the statement, ‘Dear baby Jesus it’s warm.’ It feels hotter and certainly more humid than yesterday; thank the Roman gods we set everything up already… Read More
As someone mentioned around lunchtime today, there have been performances at the Pula Amphitheatre for around two millennia; you would think they’d get it right between then and now. Built by the Romans before Jesus played guitar, it is
“the only remaining Roman amphitheatre to have four side towers and with all three Roman architectural orders entirely preserved.”
No Ideas 