Comments on: Jake in a Box and on the Box

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 18:53:21 +0000

In, at – doesn’t always have to make a lot of difference. Still, it seems you have excuse to return if and when you like.

By: harry b

harry b — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:26:51 +0000

I shouldn’t mislead, ben. It is your Iffley Road, but I was never at Oxford. I spent my later secondary school years there (Peers in Littlemore, now in speical measures I understand, I left in 1981), and my mum continued to live there for many years afterwards (and my dad still does). So I would have wandered down the Iffley Road into, rather than out of, town.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:14:12 +0000

Or late even. You were early…

Assuming it’s the Iffley Rd I know.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:13:01 +0000

I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but maybe my problem is being at Oxford 20 years too early…

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:48:36 +0000

A small correction: Leonard Cohen is from Montreal. Very different from Mordechai Richler (who was precoccupied with it), but that Jewish, Anglo Montreal experience oozes through all the adult layers.

By: harry b

harry b — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:22:21 +0000

Thanks for reading through bob—I’ve had this post more or less in mind for you ever since the 70s rock post I did, though I noted your tastes earlier than that. Of course, I had to get the CDs first. Jake is very wry, sometimes very rude, occasionally sentimental, but always, I find, delightful. I love all the Brits you cite there and previously, and some (Davies and Harper eg) are better at their best than jake was. But there is so little Thackray that falls much short of his best—almost every song on the collection is one I’m delighted to listen to.
Oh, and by admiring your musical taste I do not mean to be casting aspersions on your political orientation which I nearly always find just about right, too. (I know we disagree about things, but I, at least, always regard those as disagreements about details, the way we might, I don’t know, disagree about whether One of those days in England is better than When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease).

dave mb: he died a while ago, a few days before Joe Strummer, in fact, and if I believed in aan afterlife (which I don’t) I’d like to think of them writing together.

By: Dave MB

Dave MB — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:40:47 +0000

I heard Jake at a Folk Club in Cambridge (UK) in 1982—sorry to here he’s gone.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:10:19 +0000

Thank you for the kind words and the recommendation. I had not heard of Jake Thackray. I looked Thackray up on AMG and they surround him with stars. He looks to be to my taste.

America has a few such troubadours:David Ackles, Townes van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, Minnesota’s Peter Himmelman, John Hiatt, Tom Waits. Pete Seeger & Doc Watson. But I suspect we have too much money, too large a stage, too much energy, maybe not enough history. Maybe too many influences, like the blues. Socialism has never gotten a foothold here, compassion and humility are not our best developed virtues. We kill our poets.

There is Something about England, ya know. Something too big for such a small island, that overflows. I was going to link to something warmer & sunnier: “Streets of London” or “One of Those Days in England” or something by Ray Davies or Billy Bragg, but I gush huh.

Thank you.