h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for this top article. I hadn't realised he lived in France - is that where he heard `La Gorille`, do you think? I saw Jake play live in a little arts centre in Norwich about 12 years ago and it was easily the most I've ever laughed at a show. His rendition of `Leopold Alcox` was worth the admission alone.

He was on stage alone with his guitar, a chair on which to prop one foot (guitar over thigh), and a mike stand. Unfortunately the arm of the mike stand was very loosely fitted to the upright and it would swing away from him during songs forcing him to follow the microphone as it went. Spying this, the venue's roadie (18 stone, big boots, combat trousers, leather jacket with sleeves hacked off) slowly and obviously walked through the genteel, seated audience; stood square in front of a quietly put-out Jake and fixed the stand whilst Jake was in mid anecdote. As the roadie lumbered off again Jake piped up with, `Excuse me. Have you got a thread? Only I seem to have lost mine.`

Priceless.

When he was still a teacher he got a job on the building site for the new Leeds University hall of residence in the summer holiday. At the end of the shift the various gangs were supposed to sweep up roughly. There weren't enough rubbish bins. So he used to organise silly competitions for which the prize was first go at the dustbin(after the style of the much later "Whose Line is it Anyway?") He could also re-organise a late night bus queue by making the other queuers (solid Yorkshiremen) take part in even sillier games and forfeit their place in the linr if they lost. A natural entertainer.(Nice article. Thanx for the memories)

Thanks Moadib. I saw him at a local leisure centre several years ago - lots of fun stuff. I "do" a couple of his songs myself, but have to simplify the guitar bits. Castlford Ladies Magic Circle and Sister Josephine always seem to go down well. I'm working on "On again on again on again on again on" at the moment but it's a little sod because of what he does to the words. Also I have to simplify the guitar break that he does between verses.

I would like to add my appreciation to this article. I have enjoyed Jake Thackray's performances. For the benefit of American researchers, I would say his style is comparable to Tom Lehrer.

Musical comment - La Gorille is probably the easiest of Jake's songs to play on a guitar; you can basically get away with two chords, although a friend of mine plays hundreds while I am just doing the two. Flash git! Anyway, the musical style of the song is not Jake's normal style, although the words almost certainly are. So you may be right - he may have picked the song up in France. We'll probably never know!

He was a great fan of the (French) guy who wrote the original and wrote his obituary a few years ago. Both the name and the dates escape me, I rather like the cactus song

Thanks for that.
It took me back to the days when I was young, enthusiastic and eccentric. (I'm now old, boring and odd. And that's on a good day.)
I used to have a selection of "live" radio recordings but made the mistake of lending them
"Le Gorille" by Georges Brassens 1921 - 1981.
If you haven't already, you might enjoy a look at:
[Unsuitable link removed by Moderator]

Like Tom Lehrer, but sometimes with the delivery of Leonard Cohen I'd say. More often with the delivery of Loudon Wainwright III though. One of the few performers to sing in his natural accent rather than in a mid-atlantic one, along with Suggs, Ian Dury, Billy Bragg (mostly), Peter Perrott, Morrisey, et al. He must be getting on now - I remember seeing him on tv over 30 years ago, and he didn't look what you'd call young then. Perhaps he's one of those people who always looks the same age throughout their life, like Bill Wyman. Anyone know when he was born? I only have one album - 'On Again, On Again' which I picked up about 10 years ago in a used record store. It would be a good thing if I had a record deck I guess.....

He'll be using his buspass (hopefully riding a "Country Bus" somewhere

I can confirm that when I saw him a couple of years ago he looked exactly the same as when I first saw him on telly "On the Braden Beat" - many a long year ago.

About 10 years ago I came across a shrink-wrapped copy of Jake's Progress on vinyl in a record store in Times Square in New York. I couldn't believe it - for years I had scoured every store in my home town of Glasgow for Jake's stuff and the best I could find was the Golden Hour of Jake Thackray in Hillhead Library- which I promtly taped - oh those pre-Napster days. meanwhile here in the centre of Manhattan (or as the locals call it - the centre of the world) I found a gem - in pristine condition in the chuck-out section going for the princely sum of $4.00. No matter I had already more than half the songs from it on the afore mentioned Golden Hour record - this was Jake's music presented presumably as he wanted rather than a record label cashing-in. As I listened I realised how I really miss Jake's occasional appearances on Radio Two's folk music programmes. I am sure the BBC must have some unreleased recordings of Jake. I remember a BBC2 TV recording of a performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival probably about 1978. And there have been numerous radio shows on Radio Two as I mentioned. One other aspect of Jake's career sticks in my mind from probably the late 60s. I have a strong image of Jake presenting a schools program - I think it was a nature type show - much in the vein of the old Jack Hargreaves shows. What really caused me (and my brother) to fall about laughing was that mid-way throught the show Jake appeared with his leg encased in a plaster which mysteriously disappeared by the end of the show. I guess the editing/continuity department didn't think anyone would notice. We did.

I love Tom Lehrer's work but I would not say it parallels Jake's. Tom is more of a political satirist whereas Jake is a genuine folk artist and - if you will - a tad more "serious" than Lehrer. The only artist who really is "like" Jake is the late George Brassens - it would not be a stretch to say that Jake has been profoundly influenced by Brassens' delivery, song-writing style, guitar playing and even his singing voice which is very close in character to Brassens.His version of La Gorille is almost identical to Brassens original. This is not to say one is better than the other I would say Brassens is the Woodie Guthrie to Jake's Bob Dylan. It would be nice if Jake re-surfaced but I doubt if he would ever come over here. I am glad he is still remembered and I hope some of this stuff gets to him so he knows his music got through to some of us.

I am resident compere and comedian/singer at the Solihull Folk Club Birmingham.
Jake came up in conversation the other week and i was disturbed to hear he has suffered a crisis of confidence , no longer regarded himself as funny and took up the bottle and is now quite ill.

Can anyone confirm this as we looked to book him but he has no agent any longer.

regards

Stuart Jeffs ( www.theherbs.co.uk)

The article gets my vote.

On last year's brief return to Blighty, I made the big mistake of not buying a CD of Jake's "Greatest Hits". It was about 15 quid and I thought that's too much.

Now all I have to listen to is my memory of Jake singing "Bantam Cock" on the Ester Rancid Show, the voice, the accent, the wink, the exaggerated lip movements as he prouldy elocuted his full bodied accent.

What a stupid .....

Sorry to hear that he hasn't been so good of late.

(-:

From Distant Shores

Such a shame to hear about Jake. I went to see him here in London a couple of years ago. I'd like to tell you how brilliant he was, how witty, incisive etc..... but unfortunately he never turned up.

The whisper then was that he was "unreliable" - a euphemism for all sorts of behaviour. But apart from being sad at not seeing him, I felt really sad that someone so hugely talented should have so little regard for himself.

I first saw and heard Jake when I was a kid - Braden's Week, That's Life etc - I liked him but obviously didn't get much of the humour. Interesting that it wasn't always neccesary to understand what was going on in his songs - he could make people laugh just by looking at them.

The next time I was aware of him was at Glastonbury in the late 80s. I was lying in a tent with my mate Ronnie, (fairly stoned, of course...) when the crappy onsite radio station we were listening to played Sister Josephine. I nearly cried laughing at the lyric (still one of my favourites) and upon returning to the land of the pretty dull set out in search of a Jake Thackray album.

It took me a year, but I eventually found a copy of Bantam Cock in a local record library. They don't have it any more - it was conveniently lost and now resides in a safe place. And no, I didn't deprive anyone else of listening to it - it hadn't been taken out for almost two years.

Apart from that, I never found anything of Jake's - at least until the Lah-Di-Dah CD came out. Wish someone would see there's more of a market for his work... Perhaps this is why he's in such a state at the moment, if that's true. It's hard to feel anything but sympathy for him.

It's good to see there is still a degree of interest in Jake, as this forum demonstrates. The Brotherhood of Jake may be scattered far and wide (not to mention a little thin on the ground) but we all know what we appreciate about him. And how much we appreciate the man himself - although I suspect he wouldn't believe it or give a toss if he knew.

Perhaps that's as it should be - people of the calibre of Jake are doing us a favour producing work of the quality they do. We can only listen, marvel and wonder how on earth they do it. And then thank God that they do...

The word genius is bandied about far too often these days, but if anyone comes close to it, then Jake does. He's certainly unique, if nothing else - hard to think of anyone else who has produced lyrics of such earthy sophistication.

Sorry - I didn't mean to ramble on like this. The trouble is (and I bet you all know this already) that because we are spread rather thin on the ground we have very few people to share our appreciation with. It's a pretty sad indictment of our times that many people now aren't either able or prepared to give enough attention to something that is ultimately rewarding. The short attention span is the curse of our times.

OK, that's it. I look forward to reading more about Jake. And if you haven't already been there, I can heartily recommend Ed Chattoe's website - on it's way to becoming a national treasure.

Just like the man himself...

It's from Isobel and I've never been able to work out exactly what he sings. But someone who visits this messageboard is bound to know and suddenly the tension is killing me. Help me, someone?


I admire those men who know about mathematics
Who calculate and cypher and compute
I used to think that logarithms were things that scuttled about in attics
And serds (?) were little flowers with square roots
But ?? ??


I also can't figure out the pun in logarithms/attics. Knowing Jake, there's bound to be one.

Please don't keep me hanging on. I'm only mortal and Christmas is a bad time of year for the mentally unstable.

Thanx.

Hi,
Never encountered this one but, log = lumber. lumber room = attic??
perhaps not.
Happy New Year (Foolishly expecting that it might be.)

Thanx for the reply... you could be right, yet it doesn't really feel right, if you know what I mean.

Perhaps there is no pun. Perhaps he just lost the plot on that one.

OK - I can rest easy, at last. I found the answer on Ed Chattoe's website - didn't realise he'd updated the lyrics section.

Surds is the word I didn't know. And still don't, except that my dictionary tells me it's an "irrational number".

Whatever that is...

I had to dig very deep into the recesses of my O level maths education to come up with..... absolutely 0. The word 'serds' sounds very familiar, but I couldn't recall what it means, and web searches just kept coming up with organisations who have the initials S.E.R.D. So after reading your post zebidee, I did another search, and discovered that an irrational number is one that "...can't be expressed as the quotient of two integers." [Broken link removed by Moderator]In other words, if you divide one number by another and get a fraction that goes on and on, that's an irrational number. Pi, and the square root of two are irrational numbers because no matter how decimal points you calculate them too, there are always more. Gosh, I sound like such a boffin

I suppose they're the numerical equivalent of fractal graphics. Or perhaps even the means by which fractals are produced. Beyond that, I'm none the wiser.

Thanx for your efforts, though - much appreciated. Hope the new year brings us both more in the way of enlightenment..