If it is true that a serious artist is one with the capacity to go on reinventing who they are in their work, Leonard Cohen unquestionably counts as serious. Not that anyone is likely to think of him as frivolous, exactly. While the famously acid description of his songs as ‘music to slit your wrists to’ is hardly fair, the whole persona, the register of his writing and performing, resists any mood of simple celebration.
In 2022, at the age of 58, Justin Currie – singer, bass-player and main songwriter with the Scottish rock band Del Amitri – faced what might be mildly termed a series of setbacks. In short order his mother died, his long-term partner suffered a catastrophic stroke, leaving her requiring constant care, and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. About the first two there was not much to be done but weep. When it came to the third, Currie decided he would manage the ‘Ghastly Affliction’ (the ‘GA’ as he calls it) as best he could with medication and keep playing music as long as he was able to. The following year his band undertook a mammoth 52-day trek across North America as support act to the 1990s Canadian rockers the Barenaked Ladies.
From our US edition
As all regular readers of Culture Shock know, we cover a lot of the goings on in country music. Not only am I personally a fan of the genre, but it is one of the few remaining subsections of art that isn’t outright hostile to conservative and traditional values. There are music executives in Nashville and the corporate media who would like to subvert the genre away from its roots in telling the stories of working-class people and reflecting on the hardships and joys of a simple American life.
