Leonard Cohen
The Open Air Stage
The Big Chill Festival
Ledbury, Herefordshire
United Kingdom
03 August 2008

Audience Recording
Sony ECM MS-907 > Sharp MD > CDWave > Flac level 8
Front row exact centre, 25 feet from Leonard Cohen!
I bagged a place six hours before showtime.
Recorded by Artery

Disc One
1. Dance Me To The End Of Love
2. The Future
3. Ain't No Cure For Love
4. Bird On The Wire
5. Everybody Knows
6. Who By Fire
7. Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye
8. So Long Marianne

Disc Two
1.Tower Of Song
2.Suzanne
3.Hallelujah
4.I'm Your Man
5.Closing Time
6.First We Take Manhattan
7.Anthem

Notes:

And so ends the Summer European Tour. What a triumph it was. This is about as excellent a recording as I will ever get with my modest equipment. The first song is slightly muffled because a huge number of photographers were allowed in front of the stage for that song only. You can hear the shutters of their cameras going off on the recording. After that, you won't have any complaints.

The whooshing sound in Tower Of Song is a firework rocket being launched from another part of the festival site. It made Leonard visibly jump but you will not hear him falter from his calling. Great version of Tower Of Song.

Before the end of this last show of the tour Leonard skipped off stage like a child leaving Roscoe Beck to conduct the band as they ended the song and took a couple of bows without Leonard. A generous move by Leonard to let the band bask in the adulation they deserved I thought.

I changed minidisks after Closing Time. No music is missing, but Leonard did say a few words as he returned, something like "We've been given the word - just one more song" which piece of Len Talk is missing on this recording. In fact, he played two more songs.