The Jazz Butcher - In Bath of Bacon [1983]

Rocky says: this time it's personal. (You may know we love us The Butch here in the Forest). And it's taken me a long time to get this up here, but (with a little ripping help courtesy Durwood) at long last, our day has come.

That's a photo of my two (yes two) copies of The Jazz Butcher's first LP, In Bath of Bacon (GLALP 002, for you cataloging cats), proudly displayed on my living room coffee table. I just took that picture. Just now. "In Bath of Bacon" was recorded in Aug/Sep of 1982, released March of 1983.

I picked up my first copy sometime circa 1984 or 5, at Wax Trax Records in Chicago, back in the day, around the first time I saw them live, at what was then called the Cabaret Metro (3730 N. Clark Street, across from Wrigley Field). Gaze upon my ticket stub here. I remember they used Roland Jazz Chorus amplifiers and Max Eider sat perched on a stool and they played an encore cover of Sweet Jane. I was leaning against the stage in wide-eyed awe and had just turned seventeen.

I'm guessing I picked up that second copy at one of the Bay Area Amoeba Records, sometime in the late nineties, probably around the second and last time I saw them perform, at the Great American Music Hall, in 1997 (a gig that Butch's site describes as "a flawless night", an assessment with which I wholeheartedly concur -- I was again, fundamentally dazzled).

I say I'm guessing I bought that back around then because it sounds about right, though I don't have a precise recollection of doing so like I do for the first copy, as it was a point in time where I was more in the habit of selling albums for drugs than I was buying them to listen to, and since I already owned a copy, and I doubtless paid a lot more for the second than I did the first, it sort of goes to the point that I consider this a fucking pretty fucking good fucking record -- good enough to require redundancy, of all sorts.

Anyway, last month Durwood wired up an analog wax digitization conversion rig out in his detached former garage-cum-studio, in order to present his parents with some CDs of their favorite albums on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary.

So when I got a chance to get my paws on it last week, I made this my first order of duty. Embarrassing to say that I have not had a turntable in years, say erm, possibly ten.

Sitting down and listening to this again as it got crunched into zeros and ones was a revelatory, goose-bump filled experience.

You know the Butch's thing, I won't try to capsulate it here, just suffice to poorly state that he's all sharp melancholic british whimsy (you know, a sort of Southern Mark Smith), punning wordplay and wry observation, with more than a heartfelt nod to honest pop tunesmanship.

This time around, I thought I heard a wonderful little Jonathan Richman influence that I hadn't recognized before ("Sex Engine Thing", "Big Foot Motel"). I also laughed when I realized that way back in the day I was thoroughly unaware that "Grey Flannellette" was a play on "Warm Leatherette" (-- come to think of it, I didn't know who Mark E. Smith was the first time I dropped a needle on "Southern Mark Smith" either ;-).

What else can I say? Five Quick Things:

1. "Partytime" alone is worth the price of admission.

2. I never noticed how good the guitar playing on the track "Bath of Bacon" is -- ntm the song itself ("The tune just came when I took LSD/The tune just came, meant nothing to me").

3. Side One closer "Chinatown" is fucking priceless: production and arrangement exquisite, its hilarious urgent whispered dark paranoia more prescient than ever: "The Chinese are watching / The Chinese are writing this down" (-- gawd, back when people actually took care to sequence a killer closer at the end of the side of an LP! sigh...).

4. "Always tiny, rarely rude, Kittens are the best friends that I ever knew / Kittens are sweet, Kittens are small, Kittens are only six inches tall" ("Love Kittens")

5. Um, what else? Right: "La Mer" and Side Two closer "Girls Who Keep Goldfish" -- well, they are pretty close to perfect fucking songs, solid tears to the eyes material.

6. and oh yeah, this album is dedicated to Mo Tucker.

HEAR

(superb interview with The Butch here)