Customer Reviews

Live Songs

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fine record. Why it has never been released domestically (save for on vinyl) is beyond me. "Queen Victoria" alone is worth the purchase price. As noted by other reviewers "Don't Pass Me By" stands out as well.

As with most Cohen this is best at "four in the morning, the end of December." Comparable in its power and its rawness to Neil Young's TIME FADES AWAY.

Only the inclusion of a few tracks superior in their studio versions keep this from a 5-star rating - they tend to distract the listener from the finer previously unrecorded material.

This Columbia import has a 'made in Australia' sticker on it, and was the '13.49' version offered in the Amazon catalogue. I have to wonder about the quality of the '17.99' version, because the cheaper one sounds awful compared to my somewhat distant memory of the vinyl issue. This Australian import sounds like it was recorded in a shoebox. I had to wonder if my receiver had suddenly pooped out. But, no. Thus the meagre three stars for an otherwise utterly unsettling masterpiece. Each live version of a previously recorded song improves upon the original. The percussionless band(s) manage to be spare and full at the same time. You catch snippets of Charlie Daniels and Jennifer Warnes before they were famous. And Cohen has never sounded more psychologically naked and unhinged. Try to imagine Dostoevski's anti-hero from Notes From Underground doing punk rock, and you'll get an idea of his vocals. At times, he sounds worn out and sonorous, as in Issac & Abraham. Elsewhere, like in Tonight We'll be Fine, he tears his voice to shreds.

To better illustrate the poor technical quality of this CD, the vinyl version picked up nuances like going from the echoey sounds of the concert hall to the up front sound of the Tennessee motel room of his career defining Queen Victoria. Well, this is lost in the ubiquitous 'shoebox' quality of the CD. I do not blame Cohen; I blame whoever mixed this Australian import.

I used to listen to this a lot late at night when I was single. Sometimes half asleep, Please Don't Pass Me By would get me weeping, it is so bleak and yearning at the same time. Now, some twenty-five years later, with a wife and two kids, I have listened to this whole album save that one track: 13 plus minutes of a magnificent, shimmering, wondrous descent into personal hell. More than a song, it's an ordeal. The finest moment in an artist's long career. Love it!

This CD from the early 70's brings through the early Cohen experience better than any other. It also includes "Please Don't Pass Me By," played, I hear, only three times ever.

This one can be hard to find at times; if you like Cohen at all, you must have it, get it now while it's here.

Live Songs, released in 1973, is a compilation of live performances in London & The Isle of Wight in 1970, and in Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris and a "room in Tennessee" in 1972. The stirring female backing vocals that characterize Cohen's best work are prominent throughout and come from Donna Washburn & Jennifer Warren on the 1972 tracks and from Aileen Fowler & Corlynn Hanney in 1970. The album is one of Cohen's early classics and should be part of every fan's collection.

The brief intro Minute Prologue & the songs Passing Thru, Please Don't Pass Me By & Queen Victoria are rare, if not unique to this album. It would be great if studio versions existed. The prologue expresses something quite meaningful for devoted fans, the yearning Passing Through ("glad that I ran into you") is tuneful and rhythmic, colored by scriptural imagery and a clever pun or two whilst the mystical masterpiece You Know Who I Am gets a delicate & reverential treatment.

Bird On A Wire has a brief spoken introduction in French, something about searching for freedom in the heart of the night, and the lyrics slightly stray from the original in a few places. The centerpiece of the album is the 14-minute long Please Don't Pass Me By (A Disgrace) with its spoken sections and harrowing, almost unbearably painful message. Some very perturbing truths about the human condition are conveyed in this anguished performance. Phew! A more digestible song in the same vein is The Captain on Various Positions.

The sensual track Tonight Will Be Fine is performed up-tempo with appealing fiddle and banjo. I think this more rhythmic version has an additional verse not found on the original from Songs from a Room. In his classical acoustic style Story of Isaac and Seems So Long Ago Nancy are tenderly interpreted and there is also a gentle acoustic instrumental titled Improvisation. Live Songs concludes with Queen Victoria that appears as a poem in his poetry books Flowers for Hitler of 1964 and Selected Poems 1956 - 1968 published in 1969.

These performances have a quality, subtle or raw, that re-interprets the familiar songs in a different light; a side of early Cohen that fans will miss out on if they don't own this album. This rawness of e.g. Please Don't Pass Me By later manifested on the Phil Spector-produced Death of a Ladies' Man to the consternation of many of Cohen's fans, but it was always a part of his musical make-up, as demonstrate here. Live Songs is an exceptional album of great splendor and power, an essential recording in Leonard Cohen's work.

Every Cohen fan will like this rough-edged passionate collection of performances by Cohen in his prime. I've worn out many vinyl copies of this--and now it's time to wear out some CD's.

I first heard this album, in particular, the song "Please Don't Pass Me By", back in ~ 1973. It was on a late-nite FM radio show, on a now non-existent station out of Milwaukee, WI, USA. I'll never forget that song, the emotions it drew out of my soul; shame, sympathy and anger... The whole gamete of emotions that I was capable of feeling!

Leonard Cohen's voice ripped right through my soul, stirring feelings that I found hard to control. The perfect combination of Cohen's voice and lyrics are impossible to describe in this song of Disgrace, only feelings can come close to relaying the affect it had, has, on me. I am so thankful that I was able to find this song on a CD; my Vinyl copy disappeared years ago, lent-out and never found its way back.

I highly recommend this CD to any fan of Leonard Cohen, and to fans of many of the 60's and 70's "Folk" music artists.

The performance is classic. His voice is still young; his deep voiced talking style of singing was still in front of him, for the most part. And -- best of all for fans -- there are songs here that never surfaced on his studio records. I'd buy it again.

This is a great Cd, but not as great as is other live CDs. So if you can't afford to buy them all, I wouldn't start with this one.

I have been a Leonard Cohen fan for many years, but my collection was limited to I'm your man, The Future and the compilation album So long Marianne. Only recently did I fully explore So long Marianne and the earlier songs grew so much on me that I started acquiring all the original albums.

Live Songs is my first "live" album. The sound quality and musical refinement is of course not comparable to the studio recorded albums, but that is not really the point. To me the recording presents the familiar songs (previously released) in entirely new ways. Instrumentation is more bare, with lyrics mostly true to the original. Where it is different, it is different in interesting ways - really adding to the effect of the song and the emotional experience.

The familiar songs that I particularly like is Bird on the wire and Nancy - both to me almost beautiful beyond description.

Songs I like and did not know from other original albums include Passing through which I would have loved as a studio recorded song as well.

I am not very fond of Please don't pass me by (too long and sentimental for my tastes), but I imagine that the song at the live event itself may have been special.

All in all I would recommend the album as it forms part of the overall Leonard Cohen collection, presents well-known songs in interesting new ways and includes enough previously unreleased material (?). I am of the opinion therefore that the album has a place of its own.

There are 3 Live Cd's in Cohen's catalogue...each with it's own strengths (I don't find weakness in Cohen, he is an unfinished project)
This is the 1st one, an import (bought mine in London) showcases Cohen touring about his Songs From A Room album...on 2 separate occasions in 1970 and in 1972..a couple of unreleased poems and the traditional country Passing Through are found besides such classics as The Story of Isaac, Bird On The Wire with laid back minor accompaniment coming from the likes of Charlie Daniels on fiddle and bass..