Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen...and Ludwig

Well, this is almost too good to be true, given the nature and title of this blog (and my own nature).   PEN awarded its first two songwriter prizes yesterday, and aptly picked Chuck Berry and my personal favorite Leonard Cohen.  Here's a Rolling Stone write-up and incredible once-in-a-lifetime photo (by Rick Friedman)  of Chuck and Leonard.  And there's this:

"In an email read by organizer Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan called Berry 'the Shakespeare of rock & roll' and Cohen 'the Kafka of the blues.'  Cohen, accepting his award, compared Berry's 'Roll Over Beethoven' to Walt Whitman's joyful noise – his 'barbaric yawp...If Beethoven hadn't rolled over,'  he said, 'there'd be no room for any of us.'"  Don't miss the photo gallery, with Keith Richards in the mix.