Country Girl and Jake Thackray documentary

Country Girl is my favourite Jake Thackray track, from the above album. Or LP, as we used to cry them.

I've written about it, and him, in more detail earlier on this blog, but it occurs to me just now that the beauty of this song is that it is both lyrical and mildly bawdy, that perhaps the two sides of his songwriting find perfect balance here. Okay, it probably won't get a BBC studio audience chortling - it's not a straight laff-o-rama - but it celebrates sex, nevertheless, as the more comic songs do, and it bears out his friend Colin Watson's claim that sexuality in his songs is a metaphor for the life force: without the prospect of a "good-looking boyo" what would life hold for the country girl? One line is enough to illustrate the confinement of her life otherwise:

Dressed in her very best clothes that she chose from a catalogue.

Also he's backed only by another guitarist and a bass player: it sounds like it was recorded live, and without the need for him to place his vocal within a slot, as Ralph McTell has suggested was the case when orchestral arrangements were involved, as in the first album.



And - O frabjous day! - the BBC 4 documentary has now been posted on youtube, so I embed it below. Watch it before it's taken away. [Update: it already has been. Pity, as I wanted to see it again.]

And you want to read that earlier post about my precious moments spent in the great man's company, and his importance in my life, click here.