A strange moment, on Friday night. Sitting somewhere quite close to the roof of the O2 Arena, it seems to me as if several thousand people are singing, simultaneously, in a scarcely-audible whisper. Onstage, Leonard Cohen and his extraordinary band are playing “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, with a softness, precision and clarity that I can rarely recall hearing at an arena show.
Burt Bacharach was joined onstage by guest vocalists Adele, Beth Rowley and Jamie Cullum at the opening night of the BBC Electric Proms in London last night (October 22).
Now that the India vs Pakistan cricket has finished, I can turn my attention to a blog. We've also just spent an hour dipping into the Radio 1 birthday album, which features 40 of today's Top 20 habitues covering 40 years of hits. Some grim moments here, as you might imagine: Robbie Williams does "Lola"; our era's pre-eminent power trio The Fratellis having a crack at "All Along The Watchtower"; Razorlight's particularly masochistic "Englishman In New York".
