Double vinyl release of Jazz Butcher favourites, oddities, unheard alternate versions + a live radio session from LA's KCRW - many of which have never been on vinyl. Features extensive liner notes and exclusive artwork. The compilation gathers a raft of indie chart hits, plus a host of truly eclectic Butcher tunes from his early Glass recordings through his time at Creation. ìThe Jazz Butcher is one of the most brilliant incisive pop writers that Britain has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshendî Alan McGee, Creation. This collection compiles an essential alternative world view, tracing pop culture through the kaleidoscope of the ë80s and beyond, filled with a unique brand of wit and wisdom.
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JAZZ BUTCHER
Double vinyl release of Jazz Butcher favourites, oddities, unheard alternate versions + a live radio session from LA's KCRW - many of which have never been on vinyl. Features extensive liner notes and exclusive artwork. The compilation gathers a raft of indie chart hits, plus a host of truly eclectic Butcher tunes from his early Glass recordings through his time at Creation. ìThe Jazz Butcher is one of the most brilliant incisive pop writers that Britain has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshendî Alan McGee, Creation. This collection compiles an essential alternative world view, tracing pop culture through the kaleidoscope of the ë80s and beyond, filled with a unique brand of wit and wisdom.
Butcher Brown
Butcher Brown Presents Triple Trey Featuring Tennishu And R4ND4ZZO BIGB4ND
Concord Jazz
TRACK LISTING
01. Intro
02. Freeze Me
03. Liquid Light
04. Lawd Why
05. Git Along
06. 777 Intro
07. 777
08. 777 Outro
09. Breevin
10. Cusian
11. Unbelievable
12. Outro
BONUS 7” (with Blue Vinyl Edition Only):
Side A: Guitarmy
Side B: Peace
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- Ltd LP
- £24.99
Usually ships within: 2-10 days - Cat Number
- TR492LP
- Release date
- 4 Feb '22
-
- CD
- £12.99
Usually ships within: 2-10 days - Cat Number
- TR492
- Release date
- 4 Feb '22
'My hair's all wrong / My time ain't long / Fishy go to Heaven, get along, get along,' he sings, to a ticking-clock beat in 'Time', rhyming its title with 'a one-way ticket to a pit of Council lime' in just one of many existentially charged moments on a record whose songs were written throughout the last seven years of Fish's life before his untimely passing in October 2021, aged only 63. 'Self-knowledge, urgency,' he wrote as a comment to this song in his private notes to the album's producer Lee Russell, 'He'd been around the block. and knew he was on the last lap.''We had closure," Russell remembers, "We had worked together for three months, and then on the last day I drove him home. And for the first time we hugged and said goodbye, and that was it.'
Recent years have seen a long overdue re-appreciation of The Jazz Butcher catalogue, all the way back to that astonishing 11-album run of the first 13 years of their career, now celebrated and handily compiled in a series of box-sets after decades of shameful neglect.
Founded in Oxford in 1982 by Pat Fish and prodigious guitarist Max Eider, the band that would become synonymous with its leader embodied an anti-rockist, semi-ironically jazz-conscious indie aesthetic before the word had even been invented. In a world of po-faced poseurs this "Southern Mark Smith" proved that it was possible to be both smart and funny, erudite and unpretentious, the latter sadly to the detriment of his fame.
But, as so often the case, his underratedness only seemed to fuel his sharpness as a writer throughout his later years. It was not for want of material that he allowed a 9-year-gap to open after the penultimate Jazz Butcher album Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers appeared in 2012.
'It was a big thing for him that a record company come and ask you to make an album,' says Dhiren Basu, Fish's Northampton housemate who became, next to bass player and musical confidante Tim Harries, a sounding board for plans and ideas. 'That was something that he felt really, really strongly about. As a close friend said, the people he really admired were Lou Reed, Syd Barrett, John Cale and Kevin Ayers, and they were all people who did not bend for anything. There was a sort of ambition to be an English dandy and that uncompromising nature of just saying: This is what I'm here to do.'
It's no coincidence that a continental label, Hamburg's Tapete Records, should put out The Highest in the Land or that Fish can be seen at the gates of Paris's Eurostar terminal Gare du Nord on the cover shot of the album. Between moving personal songs like 'Never Give Up' or 'Goodbye Sweetheart' and more opaque ones such as the title track (the mysterious 'Black Raoul', by the way, is Pat and Dhiren's cat), much of this album is imbued with righteous ire at the isolationist path taken by the UK in recent times.
'Running on Fumes' and 'Sebastian's Medication' may be the sharpest analyses of the state of Brexit Britain yet committed to song. 'The gammons are all whining for some kind of reclamation but they don't know what they want to reclaim,' Fish fumes in the latter, 'How the hell are you supposed to leave a continent?' Meanwhile, the former stands as an angry state-of-the-nation address, drawing parallels to the Weimar Republic by evoking Hermann Hesse and Mackie Messer, musically cloaked in a Dylan reference suggesting there is indeed blood on the tracks. By contrast, 'Sea Madness' tells the heart-warming tale of an immigrant in tribute to Turkish George, a legendary presence on the Northampton music scene.
'Pat was an internationalist,' says Dhiren Basu, 'I think he felt far closer to Europe than his own country. He was always very political, as with most thinking people who've got a sense of justice. He was always going to be an intellectual left-winger.' It is not without irony that a career that began in witty defiance of the Thatcher years should end under the shadow of the Johnson era. Certainly, The Highest in the Land sounds as relevant to today as A Scandal in Bohemia did to 1984.
Likewise, in musical terms, it feels like the closing of a circle, based around live recordings by a core band of Fish, Dave Morgan on drums and Tim Harries on bass, augmented by an array of musicians including founder member Max Eider.
While Pat Fish's death may have come suddenly, he had previously been undergoing extensive treatment for cancer, the subject of mortality hanging heavily over the writing process. When recordings began at Lee Russell's Dulcitone studios in rural Northamptonshire in June that year, Russell was 'under the impression that this would be his last record. And it was only when we started making it that I found out he was free of cancer. But he was not delusional. We all go through life acting like it's going to last forever, but that's a lie, and Pat was cleverer than the rest of us. He actually was facing it. He was in no mood to compromise his life in any way what- soever, you know, he was sitting at home waiting for his coffee to brew, and he just went. He didn't have to stop smoking or drinking or taking drugs or doing gigs. He missed one live stream, and that was it. He was still Pat Fish. He was still the Jazz Butcher.'
TRACK LISTING
1. Melanie Hargreaves' Father's Jaguar
2. Time
3. Sea Madness
4. Never Give Up
5. Amalfi Coast May 1963
6. Running On Fumes
7. The Highest In The Land
8. Sebastian's Medication
9. Goodnight Sweetheart
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- 4xCD Box Set
- £31.99
Usually ships within: 2-10 days - Cat Number
- FIRECD565
- Release date
- 12 Nov '21
- Format Info
Ltd edition Bookback CD.
Ltd edition Bookback CD.
Includes over a dozen indie chart hits including ‘Southern Mark Smith’, ‘Girl Go’, ‘The Human Jungle’, ‘16 Years’ plus a host of truly eclectic Butcher tunes from his early Glass recordings through his time at Creation.
This collection follows the much-praised ‘The Wasted Years’ covering his time at Glass and ‘The Violent Years’ at Creation expanded CD sets. An essential alternative world view, tracing pop culture through the kaleidoscope of the ‘80s and beyond, filled with a unique brand of wit and wisdom.
“The Jazz Butcher is one of the most brilliant incisive pop writers that Britain has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend” Alan McGee, Creation.
“Northampton’s cheekiest troubadour is best known for his twisted, obsessive songs. Tunes which focus a little unhealthily on dead authors, dead actors, elephants, tigers, chickens and Mark E Smith.” Louder Than War
TRACK LISTING
Disc 1 - A Sides
1 Southern Mark Smith (Original 45)
2 The Jazz Butcher Meets Count Dracula (B-side Of Mark Smith)
3 Marnie (Miaow Mix)
4 Roadrunner (12" Version)
5 Real Men (12" Version)
6 The Human Jungle (12" Extended Mix)
7 Hard (12" Version)
8 Angels (12" Version)
9 Spooky (12" Extended Mix)
10 New Invention (12" Version)
11 Girl Go (12” Mix)
12 We Love You (the Great Awakening) (12" B-side)
13 Sweetwater (Australian 7" Single)
14 Sixteen Years (CD Single Version)
Disc 2 - B Sides
1 Rain (Roadrunner B-side)
2 D.R.I.N.K. (Roadrunner B-side)
3 Water (What A Nice Way To Turn 17 Compilation)
4 The Jazz Butcher Meets The Prime Minister (Real Men 12" B-side)
5 Death Dentist (Human Jungle B-side)
6 The Devil Is My Friend (Human Jungle B-side)
7 South America (Distressed Gentlefolk CD Only Track)
8 Grooving In The Bus Lane (Hard 12" B-side)
9 Partytime (Hard 12" B-side)
10 Mersey (Angels 12" B-side)
11 Blame (Spooky 12" B-side)
12 Excellent! (Girl Go 12" Version)
13 President Chang (Von Daemmerung Remix)
14 Vodka Girls (Abus Dangereux Magazine Compilation)
15 Truck Of Fear (Sixteen Years CD Single Version)
Disc 3 - C-Sides (Or Bottom Of The Barrel)
1 Conspiracy (12" Version)
2 Forever (Conspiracy 12" Version)
3 Peter Lorre (Conspiracy 12" B-side)
4 Big Old Wind (Conspiracy 12" B-side)
5 City Of Night (50,000 Glass Fans Can't Be Wrong Compilation)
6 Vienna Song (Hard 12" B-side)
7 Lost In France (Gunfire And Pianos Compilation)
8 The Hairbrush And The Tank
9 Thing (Hard 12" B-side)
10 Rebecca Wants Her Bike Back (Angels 12" B-side)
11 Almost Brooklyn (New Invention 12" B-side)
12 May I? (Speedy Gonzalez 12" B-side)
13 Affection (12" Version)
14 Over You (Speedy Gonzalez 12" B-side)
15 Girls Who Keep Goldfish/Sweet Jane (Marnie 12" B-side)
16 Cowgirl Fever (Marnie 12" B-side)
17 Knocking On Heaven’s Door (Speedy Gonzalez 12" B-side)
Disc 4 - Seaside
(Live On KCRW, Santa Monica, December 1989)
1 New Invention (Live KCRW Session 1989)
2 Chickentown (Live KCRW Session 1989)
3 Angels (Live KCRW Session 1989)
4 Bad Dream Lover (Live KCRW Session 1989)
5 Burglar Of Love (Live KCRW Session 1989)
6 Girl Go (Live KCRW Session 1989)
7 Mister Odd (Live KCRW Session 1989)
8 The Jazz Butcher Meets The Prime Minister (Live KCRW Session 1989)
9 Moscow Drug Club (Live KCRW Session 1989)
10 Caroline Wheeler’s Birthday Present (Live KCRW Session 1989)
11 King Of Joy (Live KCRW Session 1989)
12 Looking For Lot 49 (Live KCRW Session 1989)