The Jazz Butcher

The Jazz Butcher served as the creative outlet for the prolific singer and songwriter Pat Fish, a quintessential British eccentric whose keen observational humor and melodic skills guided the ensemble through frequent personnel changes, genre shifts encompassing jangle pop, jazz, punk, cabaret, sophisti-pop, and quirky novelties, plus repeated rebrandings. Regardless of the musicians involved, the prevailing musical approach, or the moniker employed, Fish’s compositions and recordings blended hilarity with heartbreak while proving simultaneously intricate and straightforward. Spanning the ensemble’s 1982 lo-fi debut In Bath of Bacon, the expansive pop of 1989’s Big Planet Scarey Planet, and later efforts such as 2000’s Rotten Soul and the posthumously released 2022 album The Highest in the Land, which confirmed that Fish’s abilities remained undiminished, the Jazz Butcher catalog supports placing him among Britain’s foremost musical eccentrics.

Born Patrick Huntrods in London in 1957 and raised chiefly in Northampton, Fish began performing during his late-’70s philosophy studies at Oxford, leading the short-lived Nightshift. A later group called the Institution merged with its competitors, the Sonic Tonix, forming the core of players who would populate the Jazz Butcher orbit. Fish invented his Butcher alter ego in 1982 and promptly recruited Oxford acquaintances for a band sharing that name; from the start the roster fluctuated constantly, though guitarist Max Eider quickly became a reliable presence. The Jazz Butcher’s varied 1982 debut In Bath of Bacon, featuring early skewed pop tracks such as “Love Zombie” and “Sex Engine Thing,” functioned essentially as a Fish solo effort, yet by 1984’s folky A Scandal in Bohemia the lineup had settled to include ex-Bauhaus bassist David J. After the 1984 singles compilation The Gift of Music, the Jazz Butcher returned the next year with Sex and Travel, an eccentric collection moving from punk (“Red Pets”) to cabaret (“Holiday”).

Once David J departed for Love and Rockets, the remaining quartet—Fish, Eider, bassist Felix Ray, and drummer O.P. Jones—adopted the name the Jazz Butcher & His Sikkorskis from Hell, issuing the 1985 live album Hamburg and the following year’s EP Hard. Stripping away the rhythm section, Fish and Eider next created the 1986 Conspiracy EP under the credit “Jazz Butcher vs. Max Eider,” previewing the move to the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy banner for Distressed Gentlefolk. Eider soon left for a solo path, prompting Fish to collaborate with guitarist Kizzy O’Callaghan on 1988’s Fishcotheque, their initial Creation release.

For 1989’s Big Planet Scarey Planet the lineup expanded to include bassist Laurence O’Keefe, saxophonist Alex Green, and drummer Paul Mulreany. The same musicians recorded 1990’s Cult of the Basement, though recurring shifts soon reduced Fish to working largely alone on 1991’s Condition Blue and 1993’s Waiting for the Love Bus. Reuniting with David J, who produced 1995’s understated Illuminate, Fish chose to retire the Jazz Butcher name and staged a farewell London show at year’s end. He later played drums with the Stranger Tractors, yet rejoined Eider in 1999 for a Jazz Butcher Conspiracy U.S. tour. The live set Glorious & Idiotic followed in 2000, with Rotten Soul appearing that autumn.

Although Fish ceased issuing new material, he performed occasional concerts and returned to the studio in 2012. Funding the project via a crowdfunding campaign that succeeded within a day, he self-released the new Jazz Butcher album Last of the Gentleman Adventurers in October 2012. In late 2015 Fish arranged an extensive reissue program with Fire Records; the first title, a fresh edition of Last of the Gentleman Adventurers, emerged in early 2016. A box set titled The Wasted Years, compiling the band’s initial four Glass Records albums (In Bath of Bacon, A Scandal in Bohemia, Sex and Travel, Distressed Gentlefolk), arrived in late 2017. Early the next year Fire issued The Violent Years, gathering the first four Creation albums from 1988 to 1991 (Fishcotheque, Big Planet Scarey Planet, Cult of the Basement, Condition Blue). The subsequent volume, 2021’s Dr Cholmondley Repents: A-Sides, B-Sides and Seasides, gathered singles and miscellaneous tracks from 1983 to 1994 plus an unreleased 1989 radio session. Fish died a month before the November release. He had been composing music beforehand, working with a small circle of musicians including longtime associate Max Eider on understated songs that tackled subjects such as mortality and Brexit with his characteristic insouciant wit. The Highest in the Land appeared on Tapete Records in early 2022, providing a fitting conclusion to an extraordinarily singular career.