Release Type: compilation
Released: 1986-04
Label: BigTime
Recorded: Late 1983 -> Early 1986
Catalogue: 10014-1

1. The Human Jungle
2. Southern Mark Smith
3. President Reagan's Birthday Present
4. The Jazz Butcher Meets the Prime Minister
5. Partytime
6. The Jazz Butcher Meets Count Dracula
7. Grooving In The Bus Lane

1. Death Dentist
2. Big Saturday
3. Caroline Wheeler's Birthday Present
4. D.R.I.N.K.
5. Rain
6. Real Men
7. The Devil Is My Friend

John A. Rivers - producer
David E. Barker - producer
Tony Harris - producer
The Conspiracy - producer
Mitch Jenkins - photography
Alastair Indge - photography
Jeff Price - sleeve
Lendon Flanagan - sleeve
Pat Fish - Vocals, Guitar
Max Eider - Guitar, Vocals
Owen Jones - Drums, Vocals
Felix Ray - Bass, Vocals
David J. - Bass, Vocals
Rolo McGinty - Bass on Southern Mark Smith
Kevin Haskins - Drums on Southern Mark Smith
Alice Thompson - Organ on Southern Mark Smith
Paul Taylor - Trombone on D.R.I.N.K.

The Jazz Butcher first appeared in Bohemian London in 1983, clutching a battered acoustic guitar called Lenin and looking for a place to stay. His origins remain unclear to this day. Some say that he swam to safety from the wreck of doomed Liberian supertanker Gonzolo; others that he had been planted by Speznaz to subject the English legal profession. The most credible theory is that he had formerly been hiding out in darkest rural Northamptonshire.. plotting. What was in his mind is only too blatantly set forth within the grooves of this disc: A semi-literate pub-crawl through the swamp of rock's rich tapestry, laced with self-destructive recreational pursuits and maddened by the buzzing of a thousand punk rock guitars. Not that the sound of the Jazz Butcher and his Sikkorskis from hell (for it is they that are likely to relate to your scrambled transatlantic notions of what constitutes Le Pernk). Press him on the subject and he will sputter through the special brew, "of course we're a punk group - because we do what we want to do" fair. As they say, enough. To me, though, the Butcher's axe grinds somewhere along the non-existent fusion between soul music and the sort of dirty pop that failed to make the Velvet Underground famous. Not that this would take into account the skiffy suicide that constitutes President Reagan's Birthday Present , or the bittersweet cushioning that cradels the decidedly neurotic Big Saturday . And Max Eider's D.R.I.N.K. (dedicated to his hobby) is another sack of potatoes altogether. The Jazz Butcher and his group are not in the business of belonging; they are too old and too obstreperous to conform to some attention-seeking image or commercially viable formula. Rather, they bring their not inconsiderable talents to bear on whatever happens to be in the way at the time. The results can only be described as essential.

A message from the Jazz Butcher: Hey, America, I Slept With Your Wife ;;C. C. Dämmerung - Sinful Beat Magazine;;/people/von_dammerung.html

The Varsity The Jazz Butcher (University of Toronto, Canada), Thu, Aug 7^th 1986

The Bell Ringer, Montgomery Bell Academy The Jazz Butcher Bloody Nonsense (Nashville, Tennessee, USA), Tue, Sep 2^nd 1986

The McGill Daily #76 The Jazz Butcher (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Tue, Sep 2^nd 1986

The Catalyst Tasty Cuts from the Butcher (Colorado College, Colorado, USA), Fri, Sep 19^th 1986

The Queen's Journal Jazz Butcher makes music of bloody nonsense (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada), Fri, Oct 3^rd 1986