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I like all leonards songs ,some better than others naturally, but queen victoria from live songs is one i really cant stand ,would be interested to know if anyone likes this odd song?

I like it. The only song I cannot stand is Jazz Police.

I love both.

I can't stand Why Don't You Try. I think it's not honest, the voice in it.

I love Queen Victoria, though it took a year. I like his faux english accent and desolate delivery but mostly I just love the distilled precision of the poetry leading up to one of the best last lines ever:
""confusing the star-dazed tourists with our incomparable sense of loss"

I like "Why Don't You Try" too. It is as honest as any man trying to seduce someone on the rebound. It got my sister over her crappy marriage.

I don't like Jazz Police or First We Take Manhattan but I'd like them more if the rest of the album wasn't so good. Four fans, sixteen opinions, it is healthy.

I think Queen Vicky is actually verry funny, I mean :"my farther and all his tobacco loved you" or "will you spank her with a mechanical corset"

I think Jazz police deserves a better recording, like the one famous blue cheese made. This song song is actually also rather funny, with its Jazz chords and Jazz movements.

Peter

Did you hear live version? I like it, the Austin City Limits 1988 version is quite good, and the song much more approachable.

yes I have a live version on First we take L.A. and I think also on the bootleg called warm reception. I agree that these versions are much better than the one on IYM. I actually think that Jazz police could have been a just big hit as First We Take Manhatten if had had a better arrangement...but I maybe wrong.


Peter

Oh, I like "Jazz Police" a lot! It is funny, too, it is wonderfully ironical, and all the more so because some of the musical arrangement and the strange harmonies almost remind me of what certain modern classical composers do in their choir pieces, like Pärt or Taverner...

This is the only song that I skip when listening to on cd. I keep trying it but I keep reaching for the "next button"

The only Cohensong I skip is leaving greensleeves, not because I dont like it, I love it, but because the love of my life left me with that song playing in the background. Now two years later, I still cant listen to it. So...don't listen to Cohen if you are about to break up, you might loose a great Cohen song also

Peter Danielsen(drunk.....)

"The cradle of the best and the worst for me is " Coming back to you and Jazz Police "

peter danielsen wrote:The only Cohensong I skip is leaving greensleeves, not because I dont like it, I love it, but because the love of my life left me with that song playing in the background. Now two years later, I still cant listen to it. So...don't listen to Cohen if you are about to break up, you might loose a great Cohen song also. Peter Danielsen(drunk.....)

Peter, I sympathise with you. Parts of Leaving Greensleeves are incredibly poignant:
"Now if you intend to show me disdain
Don't you know it all the more enraptures me?
For even so I still remain
Your lover in captivity."

I have the same situation with Paper Thin Hotel, and am looking forward to the time I can sing along with Leonard:
"I stood there with my ear against the wall
I was not seized by jealousy at all
In fact a burden lifted from my soul
I learned that love was out of my control"
and:
"It's written on the walls of this hotel
You go to heaven once you've been to hell."

Can't wait.

I always skip Jazz police and, I did mostly with Queen Victoria.

Recently I lay in bed with my girlfriend, and I had put on live songs. She is not a Cohen fan.

When we were just having a pause in our conversation, Cohen started to sing queen Victoria - with the effect, that my girl-friend fell into a lauging fit...

This one takes a while to grow on you. However, it's become one of my favorites from live songs. The lyrics are great. The last verse is pretty powerful. I bet it'd sound a lot better now if he recited it in his low baritone like he did "A thousand kisses deep" on his tour this year.
It's funny, the last song on the Led Zeppelin 3 album is similarly odd and reviled by most, but has become one of my favorites as well. (There must be a few other Zeppelin fans out there who know what I mean).

Re "Jazz Police". We used to have a 5-CD player and would fill it with Leonard's CDs and put it on random. It was a game for us to see how long it would play before "Jazz Police" came up, then we would lose the game.

Actually, I've come to like Jazz Police over the years, although I don't understand it.