Leonard Cohen - Angels At My Shoulder. Live 1993 (2013) LP

The majority of the music featured on this CD was broadcast from Leonard Cohen s most recent hometown , Los Angeles, at the Complex on 18th April1993. As Leonard remarked: Los Angeles is a terrific place to live; because uh, well it s, it s right on the edge of destruction. The ground itself is trembling. The landscape is about to blow apart. The social fabric is about to tear, and many novelists have documented the fragmentation of the psyche. So it s a place right at the edge of things where everything is about to fall apart, and it s a very nourishing place for that reason. This superb concert marked the beginning of an extensive series of European, North American and Canadian concerts, dubbed The Future World Tour , which culminated on 30th July at the Royal Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia. This CD includes three additional songs broadcast towards the end of the tour on 12th July from Austin City Limits, in Austin, Texas (subsequent to 1993, Cohen would not tour again for 15 years - until he began a massive and highly acclaimed world tour in 2008). The band on the 1993 tour were Bob Metzger (guitar and steel pedal guitar), Jorge Calderón (bass), Bill Ginn (keyboards), Paul Ostermayer (keyboards, saxophone), Bob Furgo (violin, keyboards), Steve Meador (drums), with backing vocalists Julie Christensen & Perla Batalla (aka my Angels ). This set is weighted firmly towards more recent material with just two numbers drawn from Leonard s 60 s catalogue, Sisters Of Mercy (from Songs of Leonard Cohen 1967) and Bird On The Wire (Songs From A Room 1969); the 70 s is represented exclusively by There Is A War (from New Skin For The Old Ceremony 1974). 1984 s Various Positions is recalled by versions of Coming Back To You and Dance Me To The End Of Love . Three numbers are taken from the The Future (1992), the album the tour was ostensibly promoting - Democracy , Waiting for the Miracle and the title track. The remaining three songs performed live here are all drawn from The Future s predecessor, I m Your Man (1988) - the title track, the groundbreaking Then We Take Manhattan and the aching balled Ain t No Cure For Love .