2. Leonard Cohen – “First We Take Manhattan”
In March we visited New England for a week, catching up with friends and family. While in Amherst, Massachusetts my girlfriend picked up the The Essential Leonard Cohen so we had something to listen to in the rental car. This track stood out among the pack for me, even though I’ll always associate Leonard Cohen with Pump Up The Volume and Samantha Mathis. Even though it’s about West Germany in the 1980s, something about it made me think Cohen was really channeling his inner super-villain. When he says, “You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline,” I imagined Lex Luthor singing deeply in a cocktail bar to a distraught Clark Kent. Then, oddly enough, the song was played a few months later over the credits of Watchmen that spring. Kismet (daughter of Nevir) in action?
There is a blip version of “First We Take Manhattan” here.
It is also the second track in my 2009 Retrospective mix on 8tracks.com.
