With
jazz in their moniker and punk in their souls, Pat Fish and Max Eider revitalize a
17-year-old musical legacy.
by Wayne Wise
 In 1983,
singer/songwriter Pat Fish's debut
album In Bath of Bacon asked the musical question: "I'm the Jazz Butcher, have
you heard my name?" Seventeen years and 13 studio albums later, most of the world
would still answer with a resounding "No."
A shame, really. Fish is a gifted songwriter
whose band, the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, is capable of working in a wide range of musical
forms, from straight-ahead rockers and heart-wrenching ballads to insightful social
commentary and brilliant silliness. That breadth of style is in evidence on the JBC's new
reunion album, Glorious and Idiotic, as it will be at the band's Pittsburgh
performance this week.
"We seem to be playing up the soulful
side of what we do at the moment," Fish told InPgh in a recent email
interview. "There will be some dark and groovy shit going on as well as the usual
interminable slushy ballads and mindless aggro-fests of yore."
The JBC first emerged during Great Britain's
post-punk, post-New Wave, pre-grunge days; Fish claimed they were a punk band in the
truest sense, in that they played whatever they wanted to without much concern for what
was commercially popular.
In the early days Fish was abetted by
guitarist Max Eider, whose jazz-influenced technique was a signature component of the
Butcher's sound and whose creative synergy with Fish was evident. But when Eider left the
band in 1987 to pursue other projects, the JBC went on without him to produce an
ever-expanding body of work.
Although a fanatical cult following eagerly
awaited every release, Fish labored in near-absolute obscurity. In 1995 the Jazz Butcher
Conspiracy finally disbanded in part because Fish had grown tired of the early songs
his fans considered classics. "We were starting to feel that whatever we did,"
he says, "too many people were just going to keep banging on about stuff that we had
done back when we started out. Those records have developed such an inflated reputation in
some quarters."
The fans, however, would not allow
Fish to rest. Thanks to their shameless proselytizing all through the late '90s and to
the newly realized communicative power of the internet more people started to discover
the Jazz Butcher's music.
Then in 1999, something Fish hadn't expected
occurred: Eider returned after 13 years to reestablish the duo's old creative partnership.
"I was astonished at how easily we
picked shit up again," Fish marvels. "It was as though there had been a gap of
only a few weeks rather than a decade." Part of that, he grants, is that both he and
Eider "are much better guitar players now than we were back in the '80s. Also, we
have no real ambitions for what we're doing now, and no real pressure to 'play the game'
and 'compete,' which makes the everyday experience of going out and playing much more
simple and pleasant."
The new live disc Glorious
and Idiotic is culled from the revived Jazz Butcher Conspiracy's first set of shows,
featuring old favorites as well as new songs. "Here's hoping that folks will like
it," Fish says, "[though] if they don't it's not going to be the end of our
world. We'd be mad to go around having big ambitions or plans for our music at our age. It
would be plain undignified."
As they complete their current 20-city U.S.
tour, Fish and Eider are also working on material for a new studio album due later this
year.
"It feels good to have been remembered
for all this time," Fish says. "Max and I tend to feel that we are now probably
only really talking to a few hundred people around the whole world, but honestly, that's a
few hundred more than we ever had any right to expect." |
