Leonard Cohen

MUSIC The Handsome Family may be the best country act that you've never heard on mainstream country radio. The husband-wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks specialize in the sort of dark, yet wryly funny tales that sound best backed by an acoustic guitar or a pedal steel twang. While albums such as 2000's "In the Air" put the group on the map with vivid songcraft, its most recent release "Scattered" puts songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles through the Handsome Family's warped lens.

After a years-long touring hiatus, the wittily morose singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen returns to U.S. stages. Catch him and other artists at these upcoming shows across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses. Nokia Theatre Leonard Cohen, April 10 (Mon.) Club Nokia Puscifer, April 4 (Fri.); Pennywise and Pepper, June 3 (Sat.

Life is terrible. The world hates you. Even your mother and father have forsaken you. But at least there's someone who's more misunderstood than you. "Safe in your place deep in the earth/That's when they'll know what you were really worth," sings Nick Drake in "Fruit Tree," one song among hundreds addressed in "This Will End in Tears," writer Adam Brent Houghtaling's detailed survey of sad songs. Formatted as an artistic encyclopedia, the book runs from singer (and former USC professor)

This year Interscope Records has a little surprise for us under the tree: Arriving amid the good cheer, the caroling and the mistletoe comes gangsta rapper Chief Keef's studio debut, "Finally Rich. " Landing a week before the big day, the 17-year-old Chicago thug offers infectious odes to nihilism and tirades against haters that are as simple-minded and catchy as they are brutal. Musically, however, the album shimmers with power, which makes the dozen songs feel even more dangerous. Apparently unintentional is Keef's placement of a song called "Hallelujah" near the beginning of his album in the week leading up to Christmas.

Most musical legends have a horde of imitators nipping at their legacies, but there will never be a new Leonard Cohen. Sure, a young pretender could copy Cohen's ground-glass growl, or whip out a Bible and some volumes of European poetry and nail his reference points, but the fullness of meaning that Cohen's songs achieve is nearly impossible to emulate.

If Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff hadn't reached out their hands to introduce themselves in a Philadelphia elevator 45 years ago, the music world might have been denied one of its richest partnerships. The production and songwriting team was the architect of the "sound of Philadelphia" and a rich vein of pop-soul hits in the 1970s. The two men are being inducted Monday into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, part of a class with Madonna, John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, the Ventures, the Dave Clark Five and Little Walter.

The revelation that Richard Eamer makes $17.5 million per year as CEO of National Medical Enterprises and the second in command, Leonard Cohen, makes $8 million per year was certainly eye-opening and mind-boggling information. Though capitalism seems to be the best of all systems, and we in the United States are fortunate to have all that we do, there should be a social and economic conscience. Salaries of this magnitude are just not ethical or healthy in light of the current status of medical costs in this country.

Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen may never see the $9.5 million a court ordered his former business manager to pay after she failed to respond to allegations of stealing from his retirement savings, Cohen's attorney said. An L.A. Superior Court judge granted the 71-year-old Cohen, known for reflective songs such as "Suzanne," a default judgment Monday. He claimed in a lawsuit that Kelley Lynch siphoned $5 million from his personal accounts and investments, leaving him about $150,000.