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aliasmacalias
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/10/30 22:27 Hi Richard

I find Black Swan to be an annoying song some days (though not everyday, other days I thing its a very good song). What annoys me is the narrator going down the boozer to get drunk and lament the loss of his squeeze - along with all the other blokes down the boozer getting drunk because their squeezes have left them too.

Of course they don't have the wit to consider that had they spent less time down the boozer drinking there is a chance that things might have been different....

Mind you its a lovely tune and great one to play and sing if you get it right.

Ian I got boogie, boogie, in my socks
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claresdad
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/10/31 15:03 RICHARD RHYS DAVIES wrote:
Pretty damn cryptic there - are you saying Jake was a TV???

I keep checking back on my posting re "The Black Swan" and the dark undertow in Mr. Thackray's work but no comment. I guess his stuff is damn jolly almost all of the time but I stick by what I said about the gravitas underpinnimg this great work. (The Blacksmith and the toffeemaker comes to mind - what a beautiful piece)

No comment?

What the old curmudgeon is refering to was his performance at the Jock fest that was held in Sept 2005. There was a camera man who took quite a lot of footage and interviewed several of the performers. Unfortunately most of this was not used.

I know that the prog was about Jake but I feel that there ought to have been a section showing those who are keeping the music alive. A lot has been achieved since a lot of met in York in April 2003. Who would have thought that there was enough interest to get a prog on the telly, never mind the various cd releases.
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RICHARD RHYS DAVIES
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/11/01 06:36 Fair point on Black Swan .Perhaps it is so strong because it highlights the blindnes of solace and / or grief. When you're stuck in it (always amplified by being drunk) you cant see anything. And worse you don't want to (which the song gets too). That all said if Jake's work all had this heavy heady exterior I'd probably find it too much. (Like Scott Walker)
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Malcy
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/11/01 10:54 I've always found this such a powerful and tragic song for exactly this reason. You have to assume the "Go to bed early, girl" verse is directed at the lost lover, but that isn't really clear. It's a different part of speech in that verse, as in "Go to bed", "Your life is your own", rather than the universal third person "She's gone" of the rest of the song. If it wasn't for the second verse mentioning a girl who seems to be still alive, you could easily construe the song as being sung by someone bereaved, the grief is so all-encompassing and final. Eranu !
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Paul
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/11/01 11:08 RICHARD RHYS DAVIES wrote:
That all said if Jake's work all had this heavy heady exterior I'd probably find it too much. (Like Scott Walker)

Whilst Jake justly gained renown for the humour in so many of his songs, he certainly seems not to have rated the likes of The Lodger (which he dismissed as 'rubbish' to one friend), and was embarrassed by Sister Josephine and Bantam Cock ('silly, silly'), often saying that he wanted to get them out of the way when he was performing. Jake had a much deeper, more serious side to his songwriting (One of Them, Side by Side, The Remembrance etc. etc.), and one has the sense of a man who felt increasingly imprisoned by the expectations of the audience that knew him from the telly. Some of his more serious songs certainly can make one feel uncomfortable: One of Them caused Jake problems when audiences misunderstood his point and thought that he was being racist, while The Prisoner ('have you seen dead children?') is very unsettling. What I think is remarkable about Jake's writing is that the range of it defies easy pigeonholing.
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KeithD
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 Re:Jake on the Box - BBC4 6th Oct 06 - 2006/11/01 13:34 RICHARD RHYS DAVIES wrote:
Perhaps the Yorkshire post writings or people who knew the guy in the 80's can shed some light. Were there demons and trouble or did Jake just decide he'd done his bit or felt he had dried up?


Surprised no one else has responded to this, Richard. Maybe I'll say something wrong here and so prompt a correction from Ian W or someone.

Jake seems to have always lacked self-belief. He didn't seem to feel he deserved the plaudits, the applause, the adulation. He often dismissed his songs, as Paul notes. He was always a nervous performer, hated large audiences and was happiest performing to a small group with whom he could chat and feel at home - become more a member of the group, less the exalted performer "on the poster outside" full of bullshit. He also had something of a drink problem, possibly in response to those self-doubts, possibly not; and, while it didn't often interfere that much with his performing, it didn't help.

Anyway, it seems that he just got to the point where the terrors of performing outweighed the pleasure, and he just stopped. He never came back. He also seems to have stopped writing at the same time, as no treasury of unperformed songs has surfaced. He seems to have just stopped being Jake the singer/guitarist/songwriter and become a different Jake, one he was happier being.

Now over to those who knew him.

Post edited by: KeithD, at: 2006/11/01 14:20
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