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Set:
[unknown setlist]
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(no known recording)
comments: this concert was performed during the late fall 1970, possibly after Canadian thanksgiving (october 12), on a sunday evening, so possible dates are october 18, 25 ; november 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 ; december 6, 13, 20, 27.
Review by
an audience member:
I was a graduate student at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the early 1970s, and during my first year there, sometime in the late fall of 1970, Cohen gave a concert in the gymnasium in the Student Centre. Here are a few things I can recall. He was backed up by one or two female vocalists, and some instrumentalists too I think. He performed in an all-black outfit, maybe just slacks and turtleneck. He looked tired and a bit haggard. There was a full audience and the concert unfolded in a curious way -- he seemed to be losing interest after a few songs and claimed that the crowd was not giving him the vibes he needed (not said in those exact words). I thought he was going to walk out. I think he may have started to. The audience was a bit rowdy and impatient with his antics. Then gradually the audience (probably entirely made up of students from the campus) started responding more, and he did this thing where he was seeming to be revived by this response, and so he gave the audience the feeling that they had somehow given him the life and energy to go on. It was a very nervy thing to do, sort of playing Tinkerbell, and the atmosphere that resulted was quite amazing. And then the performance started getting a lot better. I was at the exit when he left at the end, I remember a sort of minibus, maybe a Volkswagen minibus, that he and the band climbed into and took off.
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