Forgetful Heart: Dylan and Cohen and Love – Barb Jungr at Crazy Coqs, Live at Zedel, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Barb Jungr, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan. Three names that hovered in my musical consciousness. At the peak of the popularity of Dylan and Cohen my musical interests lay in other directions. Other than hits like ‘Blowing in the Wind’, my acquaintance with Dylan came from performers like Bettina Jonic who juxtaposed Dylan and Brecht/Weill in her disc The Bitter Mirror. More recently Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ was reinvented by various artists, and The Girl From The North Country introduced the joy of Dylan to many like myself who were intrigued by his compositions, but deterred by his vocal style.
Barb Jungr has had an enviable career, though one could say it was never mainstream, as she veered between cabaret, theatre and various intriguing projects. Her name surfaced from time to time, though her performances evaded me. Envisaging a voice akin to the likes of Lenya and Piaf, Jungr is nearer to Nina Simone in her emotional involvement. Asked to review her set at Crazy Coqs I trawled You Tube and was bowled over by her warmth and intensity, range and musicality. And her sense of humour.
Thus to her set at Crazy Coqs. Alone on stage with her pianist Jenny Carr, Jungr opened by telling us it was so long since she’d been on stage she’d almost forgotten what she did. But she hadn’t lost her relaxed stage presence, almost like singing for old friends in her living room before launching into Dylan’s ‘Love is Just a Four-Letter Word’, sung with emotional abandon and impeccable phrasing. This was as cheerful as it was going to get, she commented, as her exploration of love through the words of Dylan and Cohen was going to prove a “challenging evening”, following with Cohen’s ode to his love and muse, ‘So Long, Marianne’ and ‘Happens to the Heart’.
Dylan’s ‘Isis’, in her words “weird”, received a semi operatic treatment, before we heard his ‘Forgetful Heart’, and Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. For anyone not familiar with the material, the Dylan tracks are more immediately accessible, the poetic imagery and narrative of the Cohen dense, and a read of the lyrics and repeated listening certainly pays off.
Jungr has a way of inhabiting this music, her body language as uninhibited and as expressive as her voice. As her brother-in law tells her, “these songs are not for the fainthearted”. Her reading of ‘I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself To You’ was hauntingly beautiful, matched by Carr on the piano. ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ was given an upbeat dramatic interpretation, quite different to Cohen’s monotone interpretation, before she ended with ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’.
An engaging, intense, funny evening, if you’ve never seen Jungr before, catch her while you can. I am just glad I did. And hope I can again.
Leon Ferguson
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