The Jazz Butcher
Press
Melody Maker
December 03, 1988
December 03, 1988
Melody Maker
Conspiracy Theories
(UK)
December 03, 1988
December 03, 1988
Credit:
C M
Conspiracy Theories
Life is unfair. It is especially unfair to singers and artists.
Pick up a guitar, and you face instant categorisation by
hordes of hacks eager to coin a phrase or spot a similarity.
When The Jazz Butcher began making his records about
singing elephants and drinking a lot, he was immediately
and enthusiastically labeled `eccentric'. While there are
worse introductions (`dodgy goth' being one), four or five
years of this gets tiresome.
"Can we lose the eccentric, please?" says
Pat Fish
, the original
Butcher, with great weariness. "Eccentric is just what
someone calls you. It only takes a couple os geezers thinking
'Ooh, I got an eccentric here,' a couple of bits of lazy
journalism and you're stuck with it. Just because we don't
sing `Baby, baby, baby' doesn't mean we're Robyn Hitchcock. And
cos we play with guitars..."
They get isolated in the floppy fringe, right?
"Well, I can't
help it if I don't know any decent barbers."
Jazzy B's sense of humour is the only thing that hasn't
changed in the whole Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. Everything
else has - the band members (there are now enough ex-JBC
members to people several football teams), the personality
of the band ("less polite, more hooliganish"), even the
music, which has gotten a lot noisier.
"We've decided we're heavy metal," explains Pat. "Well,
that's what we call it, anyway. It obviously isn't but our
idea is to get a more old-fashioned, big guitar noise
together, with beats and grooves underneath. The rhythm
section now is groovier, or funkier or one of those crap
words. It works is all I know."
Their main problem in Britain seems to be that they've been
around long enough for people, who are not of the Butcher
faithful, to be bored with them as if them band had
remained static.
"Why does everything have to be new and exciting?" he
demands, reasonably. "People forget that you can be odd and
interesting."
Matters are not helped by the complete lack of radio
interest.
"We've never had a radio session on the BBC of
any description. We don't even have our records played on
John Peel. It basically just comes down to the taste of one
bloke who's got his head on upside down."
"I don't know, I'm getting a bit defensive. But I'm feeling quite happy and contented."
He should be, because everywhere else, the JBC is doing
fine. The Japanese schoolgirls love him. Anyway, he says, if
the poll tax comes in, he'll leave this ratty island. Brits
beware, you never know what you've got til it's gone
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