
October 20, 2017
October 20, 2017

CAUTION - This is a robotic translation of the original French publication
Featuring ‘Bath Of Bacon’, ‘A Scandal In Bohemia’, ‘Sex And Travel’ and ‘Distressed Gentlefolk’.
If a single record was missing in the anthology anthology of Indie Pop 1979- 1997, written by Jean-Marie Pottier in 2015 (The Word and the Rest), it would be In Bath of Bacon, the first album of the collective at absurd name The Jazz But-dear ("the butcher of jazz"). In Scandai in Bohemia (1984), Sex and Travel (1985) and Distressed Gentlefolk (1986) could have done just as well. The literature on one of the most endearing and underrated groups of his time struggles to designate an indisputable work. But from our point of view, it is In Bath of Bacon (1983) that carries in it all the diversity, the daring, the irony and the freshness of the shameless musicians by the singer and leader Pat Fish, Patrick Huntrods for the 'civil status.
Everyone will be able to make their opinion with the release of The Wasted Years, a box of four CDs that brings together these records, the first act of a rehabili-tation company that will unfold over two years. Fire Records began this work by publishing last year the thirteenth album of Jazz Butcher, the highly regarded Last of the Gentleman Adventurers, ending twelve years of silence.
"Wasted" is an adjective not easy to translate into French. "Spoiled", "wasted", even "screwed up" are his well-understood synonyms. "The ruined years", that sounds like a provocation to qualify the four years of association primitive between Pat Fish and guitarist Max Eider, seen in hindsight as the top of the band.
In this genre, nothing surpasses the haunting surrealist tale La Mer, taken up by the Little Rabbits in 1991. Sung in French in the text, located halfway between the children's song, the psychotropic journey and the irreverent homage to Trenet, she almost alone justified the reissue of one of the most beautiful follies produced by London in the 80s.
Cédric Rouquette