Bawdy – Jackie Leven shocks Scandinavia (Garage, Bergen, April 10, 1997)

Report on Leven's solo concert at the basement club Garage in Bergen on 10.04.1997, combined with quotations from conversation. Aizlewood describes the coarse stage stories with which Leven introduces songs such as “In The Greenwood”, and notes a changed Leven: slimmer, better dressed, country life in Hampshire with Deborah Greenwood, reduced commitments at the CORE Trust. Leven calls his career “spectacularly unsuccessful” and openly admits two legends to be a “scam”: the whisky “Leven's Lament” was only a small bottling of a respected whisky, and Bob Dylan's co-authorship of “As We Sailed Into Skibbereen” after a shared train journey was invented. Bergen, where Leven allegedly played his first professional gigs in 1966, had taken Fairytales For Hardmen to number 40 in the Norwegian charts. Two hours solo, no encores, with requests from the audience; “Marble City Bar” is about a suicide attempt in Ireland, “Desolation Blues” is dedicated to the late Q writer John Bauldie. Leven announces a return with the reunited Doll by Doll in the same year and the album Injured Women: The Leven Report, and talks about lost self-esteem since his heroin addiction. Tone: amused and admiring.