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)

The Jazz Butcher - Bloody Nonsense

Fulfillment of a long-standing promise to Gozzer

made possible by the good offices of Processed.


I've sung the praises of Butch before:

you know, a classic British eccentric,

a real Southern Mark Smith.

~~~

AMG puts it this way:

This record is a greatest hits collection,

drawing many of its numbers from the mid-'80s albums

A Scandal in Bohemia and Sex and Travel.

Track selection here is

excellently representative of the artist,

a highly-varied clutch of Butcher's best work.

The ordering of songs is well-considered

and the sound quality is excellent.

This is an excellent introduction

for those unfamiliar with the work of this talented songwriter.

~~~

Rocky says:

Perfect slight lazy summer pop

Without a care in the world and a puckish thumb of the nose.

This is a fresh raw rip straight from my 12" vinyl purchased @ Wax Trax in '86.

Aside from "The Human Jungle", "Southern Mark Smith", sublime "Partytime"

My favorite reasons for this record are "Big Saturday", "Drink", and "Rain"

Give 'em a spin and listen to the digitized needle crackle.

Laid-back goldbricking absurdist boho frippery

never sounded so godawful good.

Whimsy, ma'am?

HEAR

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.

Hear