This is enjoyable on about eight different levels for me.
That was great! When my wife was about 8 months 3 weeks pregnant with my daughter we endeavored to go out and do a few things that would be off the table for a while after she was born. We ate a few nice meals and saw two shows. The first show was Leonard Cohen at a small stadium type venue. You know just an intimate show, you and six thousand other people. It was an amazing show. I'm into early Cohen, my wife is into late. She said the early Cohen classic "The Partisan" was the best number of the night, it's my favorite song of his. I wept at it. My wife had to go about two hours into the show, we missed 45 min to an hour of performance. I was ok with that, it was an amazing experience even if it was cut a little short. The other show was Aloe at a hole in the wall club, eight blocks from our house with some of the best sound in Portland. Capacity is around two hundred people. There was just as much energy in that little club as there was in the stadium. Aloe wasn't all that big yet, his first album had been out for a bit and he had a song as the intro to some TV show. His band was decent but not amazing. I had listened to that first album a ton. It's a great album but one thing it doesn't show off is his falsetto. He's got a great falsetto. The entire show he was teasing bits and pieces of Al Greens Love and Happiness. I'm sure that he was going to encore Love and Happiness but it was standing room only and after about 14 songs my wife was exhausted, she had to bail. I never heard him knock some Al Green out of the park but I'm sure he was about too. He's a fantastic singer, such confidence and poise, just super cool cat. I probably posted this right around the time my daughter was born, how come so many subway performances just kill?
I saw Leonard Cohen twice at the Fox theater in Detroit. He played for 3+ hours both times with no set break. I would say that seeing him ranks amount my favorite cultural experiences of my life, not just concerts. I would say that I love the period of his career that spans various position/I'm your man/the future the most, but he made music that I love from the beginning until the end of his career.