> Wed, 24 Mar 93
> frendli${cats}.UCSC.EDU
> since at least a year ago there was a twin bill on dollar
> night at the local venue (The Catalyst) of The Best Kissers
> in the World along with The Butchers.

Yes, I've wondered about The Best Kissers In The World, too. Arik, I even saw an advert for that double bill with the Butchers (in San Francisco, I think), which set me wondering harder than ever. I've not been able to find out anything about either band, however. Perhaps one of the American correspondents has an idea what's going on.

> Mon, 21 Jun 1993
> Rick.G.Karr[at]-remove-gagme.chi.il.us (Rick G. Karr)
> I held the belief for a long time that
> Distressed Gentlefolk was the zenith of the _original_ JBC (I know
> there were lineup changes in there, but the main strength
> of the band seemed to me to be the interplay between Max and
> Pat). After the split, I was thoroughly impressed by The
> Best Kisser.

Post-Eider Revisionism? Whoa! It's true that over the years since he left the group I've been practising really hard on the guitar, to the point where I've just about reached the general sort of standard that Max displayed back on Bath Of Bacon. You know, you discover things on a guitar and you sort of think "Oh, YEAAAH - I see what he was up to..." So now and again (check the intro to Ben , for example) I do "impressions".

But, yeh, obviously that kind of guitar playing was kinda special to the JBC, so if we can still have a bit of that sort of thing on our discs, even though Max isn't there to do it, well, of course that's nice. (Check Peter Crouch 's solo on Girls Say Yes , for another example I've just thought of.) And it...well...it hardly suggests that I want to bury or disavow the Eider sound, and I certainly wouldn't slag it off. So I'd argue that post-Eider Revisionism (or PER, as we call it here at the Submarine Sound Facility) was hardly a factor in the band's scheme of things. Perhaps it was more a perceived thing among listeners.

I shan't expect ever to master Max's jazzy style of playing, though. His playing became so good that I felt his pop sensibilities were getting kinda buried in the jazz thing. It was leading him to write and play a different, more sophisticated kind of music than I'm comfortable with. I like listening to it, but it's not for me to make. And that, of course, is how we came to stop doing it. But, as a writer, I was never really interested in pursuing too jazzy a line, so it's not suprising that that element of things came to a halt with Max's leaving. There was a bit of friction/ugliness during Max's last few months in the band, most of it related to stupid things like paying van drivers, and hardly interesting to discuss. Max was smart enough to move before things became impossible and get on with his own thing. It's only bad luck in business that his record didn't do better. He was sunk by a crooked Californian Record Company run by a crooked Australian. The JBC were actually about three hours from signing with the same people at that time. We never signed, and escaped to Creation Records. It's a lottery, this game.

There are no huge great dark lurking things about the Butcher/Eider collaboration. We did it for fun (often probably having too much fun at the expense of the paying public - I was there) and when it looked like it wasn't going to be fun anymore we stopped.