The Same But Different

When I was at school, they taught us history. For the first few years, when you had to do it, it was all dates and stuff, and wars and stuff, and kings and queens and stuff. Then, when you chose to do it, they stopped teaching you about dates and wars and kings and queens, and they took on the noble cause to turn you into a historian. I was about 14, and I didn’t know whether I should nick off PE, or do it in vest and pants because I’d forgotten my kit. So whilst the cause was noble, it was equally thankless.

I don’t really remember that much. We did the Middle East and Palestine for about a year, and I’m buggered if I can remember anything about that. It was well complicated. Still is, apparently.

But I do remember that history repeats itself. Not literally, obviously - there wouldn’t be anything historic then, it would just be going round and round and round. The past would be the future and the future would be the past, and that would be stupid. But man is a predictable beast, and roughly, occasionally, if you look at it with a squint, the same things tend to kind of almost probably happen.

I can’t remember who came up with that little nugget of universal insight. But it was in a book, so it must be true. And one of the reasons it’s true is Jake Thackray and Jeffrey Lewis.

Same but different. Products of their time and environment and context. Traditional to their respective heritage. All of that. I’m not going to copy and paste the biog sections of their websites, you can have a look at that at your leisure (and you really should, because there’s more to both of them than a Wembley-full of charity slags). There are numerous Jake Thackray collections knocking about for cheap, and you can get The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane from here.

So, in no more than 250 words, you see what I mean? (10 marks)



Jake Thackray – On Again, On Again



Jeffrey Lewis – The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song


Tiny Dancer