Ray Padgett

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

I haven't read many titles in this series, because nothing could top Joe Pernice's Meat Is Murder iteration, and I am much more interested in a literary fiction treatment like Pernice's than what usually seems to boil down to long magazines article in book format. I haven't looked into the new books in the series for a long time, but when I saw this on NetGalley, I decided to give it a shot.

I have been a Leonard Cohen fan for half my life (and it would have been longer if only I'd known who he was before I was in my early 20s), and I love a good cover song / tribute album. I was pretty interested in the history of tribute albums from the 1980s through the present, especially the process of how the artists and songs are chosen. Other aspects of the music business interest me less, and the final 25% of the book didn't grab me because it had a lot of details about financing and how the industry has changed in the digital age. But where the book sticks to the high points -- Leonard Cohen himself, his songs, his reaction to people's covers, the cover artists and how they feel about Cohen's music -- all that was great, and I am glad I read it. I recommend it for fans of Leonard Cohen and fans of any of the artists who have covered his music.… (altro)

Various Artists' I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen by Ray Padgett is an interesting addition to the splendid 33 1/3 series for a number of reasons, and it works on multiple levels.

As a Cohen fan from way back I was interested in this book as a way to understand what the various artists involved in the project thought. While there is plenty of that here it was not as extensive in that respect as I expected. Surprisingly, that turned out not to bother me because the book more than made up for it by being so interesting in other related areas.

One of those areas is the history and reception of tribute albums over the years. I found this very interesting and made me rethink many of my opinions about them. I still ended up at about the same place, I don't care for most tribute albums, but I do have a greater appreciation for what they sometimes are and usually try to be.

While there is a big difference between an album of covers and an album that purports to be a tribute album I, as a listener, started thinking about covers in general. That can be problematic in some cases, for instance, when you go back to when there was a clear separation between songwriters and performers. Even if the songwriter became a recording artist (Carole King for example) does one consider every performance of a King song a cover even if it was written prior to her solo singing career?

But even aside from those issues, the idea of a cover leads to two possibilities that can be good and one that is almost always a disappointment. Namely, an artist can choose to try to cover the song as close to the original as possible, allowing for key changes or slight changes for genre, or they can choose to completely take over the song and make it their own, which might make it barely recognizable as a cover of the original. Either of those options can have wonderful results. The third option is when an artist can't seem to decide between the two and ends up not doing any justice to either the original or their own creativity. And therein lies the problem with many tribute/cover albums, the songs are all over the place and the album doesn't hold together.

I admit that my favorite part of the book may well have been the chapter on Julianna Hatfield. I was a fan back in the day and admit I had lost track of her career. This was a refreshing interview and also served to refresh my interest in her music.

I recommend this to fans of Cohen as well as any fan who wonders about the popularity, or lack, of tribute albums. It is an engaging read and offers a lot of insight into the making of this particular album as well as the genre (?) itself.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (altro)