The Jazz Butcher - A Scandal in Bohemia / Sex & Travel

this is partial repayment

of a long-standing debt owed to the gozzer

(still working on "rain," my friend)...

(november 1984)

Butch says: The Albatross. Since the recording of Bath Of Bacon (almost two years before this one) we had become a "proper" group. For all that, we still pooled our skills in the studio, and this isn't a bad two weeks' work.

I think that, lyrically, a lot of the songs are a bit trite and immature, and our inability to take ourselves seriously is much in evidence. A record, I feel, of its time. We were young(ish) and cocky and I think it shows. I still haven't learned to sing on this one, which bugs me too. Still, it was cheap and cheerful, and it helped us to meet an awful lot of people.

I was told, incidentally, that if we released this on Glass we could expect a top global sale of 2,000. We released it on Glass and sold about 25,000 copies.

(may 1985)

Butch says: One day's rehearsal in Kevin Haskin's living room, five days' recording and two days' mixing was all it took for us to make my favourite of the Glass records.

Now that the band had done a few dates with decent p.a. systems and stuff, I was beginning to have some sort of a bead on this singing business. Also, having exhausted the initial stick of JB songs (several of the A Scandal In Bohemia tunes had actually been written at the time of Bath Of Bacon, but were rejected back then as needing further development), I was obliged for the first time to write about my life as it was at the time, which was very different to the way I lived when writing the first two records.

Now I was "in a band", had left my day job, had been to Europe... I even started to write songs that were not self-consciously deferential and mocking. Hence, I guess, the arrival of the first recorded "big ballad" in Only A Rumour, where David J. harmonies at the end STILL give me the shivers.

I think that now we had started to learn about actually creating recordings rather than just recording the sound of a bunch of pals fooling around, and the disc does have a nice, unified feel. Credit John A. Rivers for his high-speed mixing job. When I think about it, this l.p. doesn't really have any "great" tunes, in the sense of numbers that people request or whatever, but it has a nice totality, a good, atmospheric vibe. This one I'd actually defend at length if I had to.

rocky says... There are five irrefutable reasons for spending some time with this. They are: "Southern Mark Smith," "Just Like Betty Page," "Girlfriend," "The Human Jungle," and last but not least, "Big Saturday" -- these are all simply buttery good slabs of pure pop confection. Pristine.

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