Millions of years ago, dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
Today the Galileo Space Probe orbits mighty planet Jupiter.
The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy first appeared in June 1982
in the back room
of the Black Lion in Northampton.
They finally drank the bar dry in a small town
in Mallorca on
the 20th August 1996.
On the achievement of this ambition, the most
deconstruction-resistant beat group of our times
finally has the grace to call it a day.
What they leave on this disc is a collection of some
of the more popular tunes from their long and chaotic
association with the Creation Records label.
The first take of the "Condition Blue" sessions:
four desperate men in a haunted room.
Alex Lee's fuel-air blasts and some two-wheeled
cornering from Mister Paul Mulreany drive this heads-down squalid
tale of bad people doing bad things.
Written at Basement Fish, the JBC's secret
central London base, about the man
next door. Neither Mister Odd nor
Harry, the proprietor of the basement
are with us now. God rest their souls.
Inspired by a photo in a sixties college
yearbook and written in a Texas motel
room, this owes a large musical debt to
L.A. band Downey Mildew, which the Butcher
somehow thought he could
make up by shouting, "Hey, Charlie"
over the guitar solo.
One will appreciate that a few years have
passed since this was written. He is
Bicycle Bloke now. One day he will
hear this tune and the Butcher will be
toast: "Bicycle Kid - the jumped up
B-side that ruined my life."
In 1987, Alex Green and the Bucher toured
France for a month in a small car with a
crazed and almost totally blind Parisian
punk rocker and a tour manager called
Captain Dogboy. It is an indication of
their state of mind that they actually
considered using this title. Five minutes
of squelching noises, basically.
Blind drunk and totally broke, the JBC bite
the hand that feeds them. Careering
unsteadily towards thirty, with the
Thatcher thing beginning to bite, the
Butcher goes into one, and a sinister
man called Iain O'Higgins commit the
resultant din to tape.
One week into the Nineties and the JBC hit a
creative peak in a Norfolk farmhouse.
Just back from a mad American tour,
shocked at the seriousness of Kizzy O'Callaghan's
illness, their personal lives in chaos,
they go for commercial suicide and
accidentally make their best album
in years. Spooky.
A lunge at the Serge-coloured pervy corner,
this may or may not be inspired by an
anti-Vietnam War poster. Features one
of the Bucther's more graceful lyrics
and the first recorded contribution of
dangerously moody guitarist and
owner-of-all-the-beer, Peter Crouch.
Czech underground techno band The Black Eg
caused something of a fuss when they
accused the Butcher of stealing this tune
from them, even going so far as to call
the JBC and Creation Records "pig"
on
the radio. The tousands of AC/DC fans
sampled here have also lodged expensive
royalty claims, which means thet the
Butcher will have to work until he is
over a hundred years old just to pay
them all off.
Two snapshots from the US tour of 1992,
specifically a splendid night at
the Sweetwater Springs Saloon, Los Osos,
Ca. involving a giant refrigerator full of
Jaegermeister, and a twenty-four hour
binge in New Orleans. More romantic
than it probably sounds.
The bleached-out sound of a post-hysteric
Butcher with real submarine noises
from Rosemary Davis' World Of Sound resonating in the Richard Formby Flotation
Tank. Try to imagine the Sound Of Philadelphia
filtered through a
schizophrenically diassociative
hangover on a freezing morning
thousands of miles from home.
December 1989: high in the hills of Southern
California a dazed JBC tucks into
speciality ice-creams in a cowboy bar.
It is Tuesday. Like elephants, the JBC do
not forget. They agree that this would
make a fine soundtrack for a film of
their bus driving down a long, straight
desert road somewhere in Spain.
We're right in the middle of the 1991
firestorm here. Alex Lee (Gibson 335) and
Richard Formby (sixties science-fiction Vox affair)
do battle in a darkened room full of toxic fumes.
Lix is standing on a chair.
The rest of the JBC are doing their nuts
on the sofa. This is all that is keeping them going.
There is a place outside of space and time,
visited by the illuminated and the
terminally schizophrenic alike. Here,
where all is spread out below, there is a
sound at once soothing and disturbing.
It is the sound of the inner circles of
Richard Formby's mind, and is it
captured for you on the closing minute of this, the JBC's
own spooked misappropriation of the Petula Clarke
classic, "Downtown".
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