VIA PRESS RELEASE | “I got a strange view of the world from ‘60s kids TV because anarchists and drug addicts ran it,” says Pat Fish AKA The Jazz Butcher as explanation for his slew of albums, singles and EPs that emerged between 1983 and 1995, a mere 12 years of madcap creativity part of an ongoing foray into the business of show.
Thankfully, the weirdest moments are placed next to the most commercially-accessible tunes—end to end—on Dr Cholmondley Repents, a new collection named after an imaginary Butcher album hallucinated by Melody Maker’s Mick Mercer back in the day.
Dr Cholmondley Repents gathers single A-sides; the contenders, the would-be radio sweethearts and indie chart toppers; along with witty and whimsical B-sides, tangential 12-inch strums (the C-sides) and an excellent session for celebrated Los Angeles radio station KCRW from 1989 (Seasides – geddit?).
The collection is littered with many a pop culture-assaulting observation; the cast includes Dracula, Gaddafi, drunks, tigers, Herbert Lom movies, various book titles transformed into a chorus, Arding And Hobbs’ department store, doctor crocodile, the prime minister, the Moors murderers, and many more.
No subject matter is refused, it’s played out by four generations of Butchers that included a couple of Bauhaus escapees and some Woodentops among others. “Pat is positively Wildean!” attested part-time Butcher David J.
If you thought The Jazz Butcher’s albums, lovingly collected on The Wasted Years covering his time at Glass and The Violent Years at Creation, were an eclectic trip into the psyche of a man schooled in literature with the TV turned up too loud, then you’ve only vaguely come to terms with this chameleon-like enigma—Dr Cholmondley Repents is way out there.
There are covers to further fill in the blanks—Velvets, Richman, Dylan, Pavlov’s Dog—and of course, we all have brain space for ‘Southern Mark Smith’, ‘Girl Go’ (“If Noel Gallagher had written ‘Girl Go’, it would have been a number one, no question.” Alan McGee), and ‘16 Years’ with its anti-Tory rant; but it’s the rabble rousers of ‘The Devil Is My Friend’ (an unintended anthem in Canada), the brutish and short Rebecca of ‘Rebecca Wants Her Bike Back’, the real men of ‘Real Men’ whose medallions become entwined on the bus, and the Soft Boys-loving heroine of ‘The Hairbrush And The Tank’ that prick the imagination as their individual soap operas spin out of control.
