San Francisco Bay Area residents should count their blessings; not every metropolitan area was rewarded with two stops on Leonard Cohen [ tickets ]'s tour.

Having performed three nights at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland back in April, the acclaimed Canadian singer/songwriter decided to spend Friday the 13th at the HP Pavilion in San Jose (located about 50 miles south of the Paramount). It was the last night of Cohen's tour and he certainly made it count.

Wasting no time, Cohen literally ran out to center stage and, joining his nine-piece band, launched into his regular opener, "Dance Me to the End of Love." When it was all said and done, Cohen had performed a 29-tune show that stretched over two healthy sets and three multi-song encores. The show clocked in at right around three-and-a-half hours.

Not bad for a 75-year-old rock 'n' roll recluse, whose previous North American tour came back in 1993. Sixteen years is a long time to wait for the chance to see one of the most important artists of the last 50 years, and the fans at HP responded to each and every song like they were being offered a piece of pure pop-music gold.

And they were--not a single tune performed during the evening was anything less than fantastic.

The first thing that gets you is the voice--so impossibly deep and rich that it's hard to reconcile in your head that it's actually being uttered by a human. Those distinctive pipes, which were seen as a hindrance at the start of Cohen's career, make everything that comes out of his mouth sound important. Indeed, he could simply recite the menu of a Chinese restaurant and it would translate like divine poetry.

Fortunately, Cohen doesn't need to resort to such endeavors. His body of work as a songwriter stands tall next to that belonging to anybody you want to mention. Other scribes, most certainly, have larger batches of well-known songs at their disposal. When it comes to owning a collection of finely crafted, insanely literate tunes, however, nobody stands eye to eye with Cohen. And, no, I'm not forgetting about Bob Dylan.

If you hear a Cohen track--any Cohen track--and don't find a lyric that leaves you in awe, then you weren't really listening. The depth to his songwriting is astounding, touching upon a nearly full range of emotions with each set of lyrics. In San Jose, I "discovered" lines that somehow I'd missed in songs that I'd heard dozens of times. For instance, I've always thought "Chelsea Hotel" was an overrated tune, finding it a bit too cocky and trite to stand among Cohen's best. This time around, however, the song floored me, as I embraced the humor in the line "You told me again you preferred handsome men/ But for me you would make an exception" and found the power in the anthemic "We are ugly/ But we have the music."

Dressed in a snazzy suit and dress hat, an outfit that looked borrowed from Cary Grant's closet, Cohen was in great spirits and full of energy throughout the night. Sticking closely to the song list--but not necessarily the song order--found on this year's epic two-CD concert set, "Live in London," Cohen wowed the fans with faithful renditions of "Everybody Knows," "The Future" and "Bird on the Wire" in the first set, "Tower of Song," "Hallelujah" and "I'm Your Man" during the nightcap. His performance grew even stronger during the encores, as if Cohen correctly reasoned that the last night of a tour was no time to hold anything back, and he poured himself into "Famous Blue Raincoat," "Closing Time" and, finally, "Democracy."

The latter, which hails from the 1992 album "The Future," is one of the most memorable songs written about the U.S.A. in the last 20 years (and, yes, how ironic that it was penned by a Canadian). Now, Cohen isn't a guy who spends much time explaining his music in concert – but he made an exception for "Democracy," a tune that has been dubbed by some as overtly political.

"It's not about this administration," he said to the crowd. "It's not about the last administration. And it's not about the administration to come. It's about you and me."