I'm not a huge LC fan, but wow, this is GREAT. He's pretty amazing and what a band. Great performances...great arrangements. Just...so well done.

O thanks, DarkForest! I went to his show in Oakland, and without a doubt, it is the best concert I've ever been to.

I already was a huge fan of his, but after seeing him live (finally!), I'm more in awe and respectful than before. He's really amazing. I can't imagine putting on a 3 1/2 hour concert in my 70s, but he did, and wrung everything out of the crowd, and clearly had a good time.

When we got back to Portland, we tried to get tickets to anything nearby, and the closest I could find was in Chicago, the second night, for $250. So getting to "see the London show" makes up for not being able to afford that, I'm looking forward to watching this all again.

I was at the Seattle show. It was the 5th time I had seen him, and, the construction of the ensemble and the show were similar to the other times, but OMG it was so special.

They are not doing identical sets, night to night, but, for the most part, the sets are the same, with some substitutions.

1. Getting tickets, dealing with TicketMaster, and watching them and/or the promoter skim off the best tickets at each price for scalping later was a small sample of Hell. My seats were way back, which prompted me to buy some 10x binoculars, which was a good purchase for just general purposes.

2. WAMU Theater is this sort of open hanger-type space between QWEST and Safeco fields. Apparently, with curtains and different rigging setups, they can scale the size of it. But it's a big concrete structure, flat floor, with creaky bleacher seating in the back 1/3 of it. The good part is that we came over from Winslow so it was close to the ferry terminal, and we walked against the flow of a just-over Mariner game.

3. There were a LOT of people who got there late. .there were no ushers, really, to help people find their seats, and there were a lot of people either texting or recording it on cellphones, which, that far away, seemed dicey.

4. The concert itself was a sample of heaven. They are onstage for nearly 3 hours, pretty much doing song after wonderful song. It's long enough to feel like a lifetime that one wishes one could have had, especially if one has intimate connections with the songs that came up at particular times in one's life.

5. I watched the London concert, afterwards, which was a good thing, in that I went in sorta knowing about it but not really, so every song, especially the extended encores, were revelatory. The last song, with the line "I hope you're satisfied," brought a laugh and a roar from the crowd.

6. Cohen is amazingly energetic, for his age and the hard miles he has put on. This tour started last May and is going into the Fall. I am imagining it's sold out everywhere, and the whole band was still very fresh and seemed to enjoy it all.

7. The walk back to the boat, after Midnight, was a bit dicey through that part of town. But then we ran into a bunch of people at the Ferry terminal who had been there (I can tell by your t-shirt that. . .)so it was great to debrief it all waiting for the boat, then on the boat.

8. If men are pack animals, then Cohen is the alpha male of my particular pack.

A page with different people's photos (none mine) of the Seattle show. . .