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Pam wrote:
Is everyone’s like that, or have I got a unique version?
Mine’s the same. I’ll bet the line or two — who knows how much? — of missing text is lurking underneath the picture at the top of the column, at least in the designer’s file.
Alan
Posting only for the second time in over a year of membership . . .
I just got the new CDs, shipped over to New York from Amazon as a birthday present to myself. Utterly amazing, manna from heaven after so many years of having Jake so poorly served on CD. (Not to mention that I never did get that elusive vinyl copy of "Jake’s Progress," despite years of searching the bins of every record store on London and getting close on e-bay once.)
Having "Live Peformance" on my CD walkman certainly helped during the long clean-up of leaves and branches that followed a quick visit last weekend from the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. And it reminds me that a Thackray concert could be a magnificent event, even if it took place before he’d written such classics as "Sister Josephine" and "Jolly Captain," and given us "The Gorilla." (Let alone the apotheosis of the "On Again! On Again!" album.)
It was particularly pleasing to find that so many of the outtakes and unreleased tracks were of such a high quality — very few songs indeed that were markedly below his usual standards, pun intended.
"Jake in a Box" does raise some questions about JT’s recording career, and I’d be very interested to know if anyone has the answers — a quick look through the forum archives hasn’t elucidated me, but I’ll apologize in advance if I’m rehashing old ground. As it were. I’ll put these questions into new threads.
I have one comment and one complaint about the set, however. Putting all the solo recordings from those 1967 Abbey Road sessions onto the same CD made perfect sense. Otherwise, the general chronological order seems, er, logical, although it does force both "Jake’s Progress" and "Bantam Cock" to be split between two CDs. (An alternative approach would have been "Last Will and Testament" and "Jake’s Progress" on CD1, "Bantam Cock" and "On Again! On Again!" on CD2, and all the extras on CD3, but that also has it drawbacks.)
My niggle is that the research, information content, and commentary in the booklet are outstanding and immensely valuable, but they’re let down by several lapses in proofreading. For example, poor Victor Diggeby-Pratte, er, I mean Lewis-Smith is given his hyphen and then deprived of it within four lines of the credits. But more seriously — and in the forlorn hope that you don’t think these are merely the ravings of a terminal pedant — "The Prisoner" is given two different recording dates, and "Little Thomas Haverly" doesn’t get one at all. Since these are stand-alone outtakes, this information matters a little more to devoted Thackrayist. Might have been worth a closer look.
Ah, just minor stuff — a mere gnat’s nibble that in no way detracts from the magnitude of the achievement.
Alan B.
Posting only for the second time in over a year of membership . . .
I just got the new CDs, shipped over to New York from Amazon as a birthday present to myself. Utterly amazing, manna from heaven after so many years of having Jake so poorly served on CD. (Not to mention that I never did get that elusive vinyl copy of "Jake’s Progress," despite years of searching the bins of every record store on London and getting close on e-bay once.)
Having "Live Peformance" on my CD walkman certainly helped during the long clean-up of leaves and branches that followed a quick visit last weekend from the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. And it reminds me that a Thackray concert could be a magnificent event, even if it took place before he’d written such classics as "Sister Josephine" and "Jolly Captain," and given us "The Gorilla." (Let alone the apotheosis of the "On Again! On Again!" album.)
It was particularly pleasing to find that so many of the outtakes and unreleased tracks were of such a high quality — very few songs indeed that were markedly below his usual standards, pun intended.
"Jake in a Box" does raise some questions about JT’s recording career, and I’d be very interested to know if anyone has the answers — a quick look through the forum archives hasn’t elucidated me, but I’ll apologize in advance if I’m rehashing old ground. As it were. I’ll put these questions into new threads.
I have one comment and one complaint about the set, however. Putting all the solo recordings from those 1967 Abbey Road sessions onto the same CD made perfect sense. Otherwise, the general chronological order seems, er, logical, although it does force both "Jake’s Progress" and "Bantam Cock" to be split between two CDs. (An alternative approach would have been "Last Will and Testament" and "Jake’s Progress" on CD1, "Bantam Cock" and "On Again! On Again!" on CD2, and all the extras on CD3, but that also has it drawbacks.)
My niggle is that the research, information content, and commentary in the booklet are outstanding and immensely valuable, but they’re let down by several lapses in proofreading. For example, poor Victor Diggeby-Pratte, er, I mean Lewis-Smith is given his hyphen and then deprived of it within four lines of the credits. But more seriously — and in the forlorn hope that you don’t think these are merely the ravings of a terminal pedant — "The Prisoner" is given two different recording dates, and "Little Thomas Haverly" doesn’t get one at all. Since these are stand-alone outtakes, this information matters a little more to devoted Thackrayist. Might have been worth a closer look.
Ah, just minor stuff — a mere gnat’s nibble that in no way detracts from the magnitude of the achievement.
Alan B.
It’s an old thread, but I”m new around these parts . . .
My favorite Jake line is the much quotable:
"If you must put people on pedestals, wear a big hat!" (The Bull)
(I wonder what brought that to mind, he mused, while watching reportage of the Republican convention.)
But if you go for poetic effect, is this a good place to bring up Jake’s brilliance with internal rhymes?
"There’s no such one-caress-and-leave-me-breathless woman,
No such tender godsend friend as you." (To Do WIth You)"Chick of the bric-a-brac, pick of the vicar’s knick-knacks." (The Jumble Sale, cited earlier in this thread as a source of great lines)
. . . and assonance:
"Lapwing shivers in the dripping thicket." (The Rain is on the Mountainside)
Yes, I know, it’s cheating to get in four favorite sentences, but start as you mean to go on, I say. Want to hear the eight discs I’d take to a desert island?
Alan
