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I sometimes do “Sophie”, but I always change the “I should like to know” to “would like to know”, and “old Sophie” to “my Sophie”, because I don’t talk like Jake did and I don’t do impersonations. It just makes it a bit more natural for me to sing.
This is you?
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wNh-0Ymm2M[/video]Fantastic performance, well done the pair of you.
What would I have to do to get a copy of that cassette?
I think of it as a companion to “The Little Black Foal”, which at first listen sounds like a picturesque song about life in a rural village – until you listen to it properly, and realise what he’s actually telling you.
I’ve been a member of this site for years, but haven’t posted for a long time. Jake’s lyrics came back to mind this afternoon when “The Kiss” came up on shuffle on the usb stick on my car stereo, and I was reminded just what an astounding word-worker he was. “She was as seventeenish as the month of May” is a line that Shakespeare himself, if he heard it, would wish he had written. “And thus the whisper-whisper went from pinafore to pinafore, every tut-tut more grievous than the well-I-never-before.” That’s practically fireworks.
Anyway, best of luck with your blog, I’ve subscribed via Feedly and will follow with interest.
It seems quite straightforward to me – a song about drowning your sorrows in alcohol because your lover has left you. It might be autobiographical, it might not. The first person plural narration is peculiar.
I had heard that the song was based on an aside from Cider With Rosie, but I haven’t read it. Interesting to see how close an adaptation Jake did – he was far freer adapting Georges Brassens songs.
Talking of which, this blog post has a video clip of Jake singing "The Remembrance", introduced by Alan Plater, to download.
Post edited by: paddybrown, at: 2009/04/07 00:00
Great performance from both of yez. I tried to play it from the tabs at this site and couldn’t get past "brother riff-raff, we were heroes" without choking up. Powerful song.
Another YouTube cover of a song not on the CDs – The Cenotaph from the 2006 Jakefest. Don’t know how anyone could sing that without breaking up.
The Time Has Told Me blog has a bootleg of his performance at the Three Horseshoes Club in Hampstead in 1979, which includes three songs not on Jake in a Box or Live Performance: The Remembrance, The Bull and One of Them.
You can see Jake perform The Bull on YouTube, and I’ve found covers of two of his songs that aren’t on the CDs, Our Dog and Lullaby My Daddio – performed by the same guy, who’s bound to be a regular here.
I’ve found a different except from "C’est un p’tit rien" on another album at allmusic:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:09fuxq80ldhe
And here you can hear the lines that are similar to "Sophie". Not so exact as "One Eyed Isaac" – Jake has an extra note in the first two lines, and the progression of the third line sounds more minor (to me – not a trained musician) in "Sophie" than in "C’est un p’tit rien".
"Sophie" was the first Jake song I learned to play, because I "found" the opening of it just arpeggiating an A and a D minor, and I’d just been listening to "Live Performance" so I recognised it.
You can listen to an excerpt of "C’est Un P’tit Rien" on Allmusic at:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gxfoxq90ldae
Although the bit that sounds like "Sophie" doesn’t seem to be included. The piece is in such a different style and tone that it’s hard to imagine any deliberate plagiarism.
I’ve listened to an except from "La java du diable" on iTunes, though, and while "One-Eyed Isaac" has a gloomier rhythm, the melody’s exactly the same (and Jake could make "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" sound gloomy).
It can happen though. A friend of mine once very enthusiastically played me a new song he’d written and was very proud of. The words were his own, but the tune was "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds, and he honestly hadn’t realised.
That’s a great version of On Again, On Again. Too bad there’s not more footage of Jake performing on there. He did a lot of TV, but I suppose most of it was before home video.
I’ve been trying to learn a few of his songs with the help of this website, but bloody hell there’s a lot of words to remember, even once I get the chords down.
