Laughing Lenny's on his way back to New Zealand.
Yep, Leonard Cohen returns to New Zealand for three concerts in December.

I was there for both of his previous tours and thought both were equally stunning. So I've been checking out tickets for the Auckland show on December 21.
The first thing that you can't help but notice is that, damn, they're expensive. The best seats cost $204 and the rest $146. Someone is going to make a fortune from this little jaunt. Cohen concerts are almost invariably sold out, so there'll be a lot of dosh slopping about somewhere.
The second thing that becomes clear when you look more closely into tickets is that to get the best possible seats you should probably investigate one of the 'pre-sales”. This is advice that it is now too late to follow, as the pre-sales have finished, but lemme explain.
I don't for a minute suggest that there won't still be great seats available – after all Vector is a very large arena – when tickets go on sale to the 'general public” on August 12. But, by the time this happens, many people will already have tickets. Actually, it's all been rather confusing.
If you are a Leonard Cohen Fan Club member, which basically means someone signed up to the Leonard Cohen forums at his main fan website, there were advanced tickets on sale for two days, starting July 31. A password to access these was posted on the website forums.
Email confusion
Then on July 30 the promoters, Frontier Touring Company, sent out an email announcing a pre-sale for their members, starting August 8, at 9pm. There was a link in the email which gave you a password. Then, and this is the confusing bit, Frontier sent out another email on August 2 which announced the same pre-sale. Only this one had a different password listed. As of the date of writing this, I still haven't worked that out.
Even more confusing is that the link in the second email sent you to the Ticketmaster site (where you actually get the tickets), and there it said: 'pre-sale starts August 6, 11am”. Hmmm...
It turns out that the pre-sale starting on August 6 was yet another different pre-sale, this time for Visa card members. Oddly, despite being a Visa card user (and quite a heavy one at that) I'd heard nothing about it from the good folk at Visa. That pre-sale needed yet another different password. Fortunately, it was easy to find with a quick bit of Googling.
A hefty cost
But, remember how I said that the tickets were somewhat on the pricey side? I guess the extras hardly count when set beside a $200 ticket. But this little notice pops up when you buy:
'A compulsory Arena Land Levy not more than $2.75 applies to each ticket”.
And: 'A handling fee of $8.00 per transaction applies”. And: 'A payment processing fee of no more than 2.3% applies to purchases by credit card, debit card or gift card”.
And: 'In addition a delivery fee may apply depending on the mode of delivery selected”.
Remember the good old days when we were all told that ordering things on the internet would save us money because of the lower fees? Could someone possibly have been telling porkies?
A silver lining
On the bright side, if you get tickets you can be rest assured that the sound in the notoriously sound-challenged Vector Arena will be pristine. This has long been a concern there, and it's an especially irritating one when you've shelled out so much money for a ticket. (I must confess I'm still angry at how bad the sound was there for the last Bob Dylan concert).
But Cohen's sound guru has an unusual and impressive fix for sound problems.
He uses only mono sound for the entire concert, and the same mix that you hear from the front of the stage is run through dozens of reinforcement speakers that are placed throughout the venue.
His aim is that everyone in the room will have as close to the same perfect sound, as possible.
And he does a very good job at it.
Anyway, I've got a ticket now.
It's a shame about having to mortgage the
house to get it.