Legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen died on November 7, 2016, one day before the 2016 Presidential Election, but the world didn’t find out for several days after. On January 24, 2017 (shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump and the succeeding Women’s March), New York City finally paid tribute to the Poet Prince of Montréal with a concert featuring dozens of singers, songwriters and musicians, including Richard Thompson, Josh Ritter, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Amy Helm, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Elvis Perkins, Holly Miranda, Joan As Police Woman, Delicate Steve, and many more. It was an evening the Village Voice called “a loving, thoughtful tribute to Cohen’s life in music and poetry.” The live album features highlight performances from this nearly three-hour marathon concert, which the Voice also hailed as a “carefully constructed, expertly structured production.”
To simplify my life considerably, I'm going to combine the "reviews" of all six Stage releases into a single entry, even though they were released individually. Also, to save a lot of time and effort, I'm not going to give complete track listings of the twelve discs, or do song-by-song reviews (hey, we're talking over 800 minutes of music here, give me a break). If you need to know the track listings, they're probably available through an on-line music sales site like CDNow, or an information site like the All Music Guide. There's probably a few other Zappa sites that list them as well. Maybe one day when I have the time, I'll come back and expand this section to really cover all twelve discs in detail. Until then, I'll just give some general facts and opinions, focusing on highlights and material unique to the Stage series.
The 3-DVD boxed set I Got the Feelin' - James Brown in the '60s would be more accurately titled as James Brown in 1968. Its programs are mainly centered around Brown's activities following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, with particular focus given to the legendary concert the Godfather of Soul performed in Boston the day after the civil rights leader's assassination, and the bulk of the performance footage on the concert discs come from that specific year.
Pinnacle's second CD is a quantum leap above the first. This is melodic Progressive Rock having musical hooks and natural sounding time changes. In 1997, guitarist/synth player Karl Eisenhart and drummer Greg Jones met in an East Pennsylvania coffee house where Karl was playing an acoustic gig. After clicking personally and musically, they began playing together and performing, first as Dread Pirate Roberts and then Landslide. By 2002 they draft bassist/multi instrumentalist Bill Fox and the trio begin covering progressive staples by Tull, Rush, Yes as well as the Police.