"Along with Alan Moore and Rockingham Castle, Pat Fish remains a Northamptonshire institution. Boozer, intellectual and troubadour, Fish has released an entire canon of Jazz Butcher albums since the early eighties and has intermittently reformed the JBC to critical plaudits.”

Erik Morse, Spacemen 3 & the Birth of Spiritualized

“Pat Fish, the Jazz Butcher, is one of the most brilliant incisive pop writers that Britain has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend.”

Alan McGee, Creation Records

---

Born in West London at a time that left him just too young to be a hippie and just a little too old to be a punk, Pat Fish grew up in an era where the Bonzo Dog Band appeared on children’s television, Syd Barrett was on Top of the Pops and the Adult World was represented in shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. Disappointment was an inevitability.

Fish failed to “get” the glam rock thing (probably too much of an excitable wee football fan) and found that the seventies drove him down some fairly obscure musical paths before punk rock came along to save the day. By then, however, all those mad little songs by Eno, Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen, John Cale, Peter Blegvad and Tony Moore were already locked up in his head.

Fish started making records under the name of the Jazz Butcher in 1983 and nobody has quite succeeded in putting a stop to this yet. He has recorded for Glass Records, Creation Records, ROIR of New York and Vinyl Japan of Tokyo. Overall he has written and released fifteen albums of original music, three live albums and innumerable singles and compilations.

In 2016 Fire Records issued the album Last of the Gentleman Adventurers, originally released as a fan-funded project in 2012. In 2017 Fire will be undertaking a major re-issue programme, making several Jazz Butcher albums available once again on vinyl, CD and digital formats.

With the Jazz Butcher, Fish has toured worldwide. As a solo artist, recent shows include Hamburg, Dortmund, New York City, Tokyo, Brussels and London, as well as his adopted home town of Northampton where he still regularly turns out with his acoustic guitar to support visiting artists.

He likes collaborations, too. Apart from his lengthy association with Northampton-based digital hooligans Wilson over the years 2001-2009, Fish has recorded and appeared on stage with David J, Spacemen 3, Bristol’s The Blue Aeroplanes, German band M Walking On The Water, French indie art rock band Chelsea Paris and acclaimed Los Angeles shoegazers, The Black Watch.

The thing about Pat Fish is that he is not tribal about music. Some people know him from his friendship with Spacemen 3, others for his fondness for Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth; some know him because he has worked with members of Bauhaus, others regard him as a “classic” independent songwriter in the vein of Pete Astor or Dan Treacy. Fishy just fetches his acoustic guitar and his notebook and heads for the railway station.

His current inspirations: as always, the Velvet Underground, Alex Chilton, Peter Laughner, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Kevin Ayers, John Martyn, Davy Graham and many, many more.

Do you like your melodies sweet and your humour as black as pitch? Would you take a chance on something simple, intimate and direct from an artist who is on record as saying “What I do is not entertainment” but who regularly induces little bursts of outraged laughter from the audience? Do you want to see the real thing? You should maybe go and see Pat Fish.

Plus

SHORT STORIES: Formed in 2007 in Bristol, England by Tim Rippington and Stephen Miles. Tim and Stephen were at school together, a year apart but sharing the same musical values that made them firm friends. After school, the two went their separate ways – Tim spent the next twenty years playing in various indie bands such as the Flatmates, the Five Year Plan and later the Beatnik Filmstars. He also ran his own recording studio for five years, and produced records for, amongst others, the now legendary indie label Sarah Records. In 2003 Tim formed a new band Forest Giants, who made four great LPs before folding in 2007. In the meantime, Steve became a school teacher, dabbling only briefly in music with a spell as drummer for Bristol indie band Modesty Blaise.

In 2007 the two met for the first time in 20 years, and discovered that they still had much in common and The Short Stories were born. Since then several albums and singles have been released which can be heard here, https://theshortstories.bandcamp.com/
Credit: pat