Raincoat

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.”

Cynics who perceive many super-groups as nothing more than bloated extrapolations of, at times, perfectly mundane musical components, can back up their assumptions with Armageddon's eponymous debut from 1975. The first and final spawn of the would-be-super-group featuring former Yardbird vocalist Keith Relf, erstwhile Captain Beyond drummer Bobby Caldwell, ex-Steamhammer guitarist Martin Pugh, and Relf's Renaissance partner, bassist Louis Cennamo, the album contains a meager five tracks – four of which extend beyond the eight-minute barrier due to bouts of arguably unnecessary, self-indulgent waffling. On the other hand, this was the '70s, people, and of course this sort of excess was par for the course, back then.