The Jazz Butcher

The Jazz Butcher was the vehicle of prolific singer/songwriter Pat Fish, an archetypal British eccentric whose sharp observational wit and melodic gifts navigated the group through over a decade of constant lineup shifts, stylistic mutations, and even a series of name changes, which found the band performing variously — and apparently randomly — under such titles as the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy and the Jazz Butcher & His Sikkorskis from Hell. 

In late 2015, Fish announced that he’d struck a deal with Fire Records for an extensive series of Jazz Butcher reissues; the first title in the series was a new edition of ‘Last of the Gentleman Adventurers’, which arrived in early 2016. A box set containing the Jazz Butcher’s first four albums on Glass Records (‘In Bath in Bacon’, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘Sex and Travel’, ‘Distressed Gentlefolk’) titled ‘The Wasted Years’ was issued in late 2017. Early the next year, Fire released ‘The Violent Years’, which gathered up their first four albums released by Creation Records between 1988 and 1991 (‘Fishcotheque’, ‘Big Planet Scarey Planet’, ‘Cult of the Basement’, and ‘Condition Blue’).