- HISTORY -
| FOREWORD to "I Shot The President" by Ian Burgoyne
The album you are listening to is by a guitar group called Jazzateers. The music isn't new – it was mostly recorded between 1983 and 1987 (that's after New Romantics and before New Psychedelia). We were a guitar group who liked being a guitar group – when we played live people who liked it, liked it and those who didn't, didn't. We were either ahead or behind the times – I still don't really know which. We liked Neil when he was Young, Brian when he was Wilson and Glasgow was the city we grew up in. We didn't travel all that far – but we knew the world from comics, movies and records. Jazzateers didn't play live a lot – but we always wrote songs. Some of those songs are on this album and you may have heard a couple before – others, though, you most definitely won't have. Some I even have trouble remembering and I helped write most of them. I hope you enjoy it - I did. Thanks to Keith, Colin, Michael, Grahame, Matthew, Douglas and Stephen. IAN BURGOYNE DON'T
LET YOUR SON GROW UP TO BE A COWBOY In It Came From Memphis, Robert Gordon's inspiring trawl through the backstreets of Bluff City, the writer recalls a maxim coined by Memphian musician-producer Jim Dickinson: "The best songs don't get recorded, the best recordings don't get released, and the best releases don't get played." If Glasgow has any similarity with Memphis (and let's not stretch the analogy too far) it is that the city also has its own examples of Dickinson's aphorism. The Glasgow music scene of the mid-Eighties, when the songs on this album were recorded, was epitomised by Faustian managers and opportunists with bad clothes sense trying to nuzzle their way toward the corporate teat. The most intriguing music was made by those who, through bloody-mindedness, dissolution or a basic inability to give the industry what it wanted, remained undiscovered by the public. Certain Glaswegian groups – and here, for example, the rawness of James King And The Lone Wolves springs immediately to mind – passed into local legend, their reputations smouldering on, at least with those lucky enough to have experienced them in one of the city's many sleazy dives. Another such band was the Jazzateers, who pretty much satisfied two-thirds of Dickinson's requirements. Formed by guitarist Ian Burgoyne and bassist Keith Band in 1982, they recorded their Alan Horne-produced debut album, Lee, for Postcard Records shortly after the label's high water mark. On vocals were the smoky-voiced Paul Quinn (another well-kept Glasgow secret) and the Rutkowski sisters, Louise and Deirdre. In a sign of things to come, the album was never released.
By the time the group's second album, Jazzateers (tracks 1 - 9 on this collection), was released in 1983 by Rough Trade Records, they had found another tall, deep-voiced singer, Grahame Skinner (although Quinn can still be heard on backing vocals). Known as The Gun Album because of the Warholian Walther P38 which artist/designer David Band (Keith's elder brother) had put on the sleeve, it proved to be a muscular affair, boasting argumentative guitars that were charged to the bone, and a vocalist with a rocket in his pocket. The vocals were sulky, reminiscent of Johnny, Jimmy and the Dum Dum Boys. Even if these guys weren't entirely clear where they were going, they knew exactly where they were coming from. It was inevitable that the ecstatic critical response to this album in combination with the group's perverse nature, would lead to another fracture… and the Jazzateers' revolving door spun one last time. In came six-foot-two-two-eyes-of-blue throaty vocalist Matthew Wilcox, guitarists Mick Slaven and Douglas MacIntyre and a new batch of crisp, catchy songs. The collection of new tunes made up the group's final album, Blood Is Sweeter Than Honey. Inevitably, it was never released and the majority of those songs can be heard here for the first time (tracks 10 - 18). Frustratingly, for a group of such obvious talents, there was still no sign of commercial acceptance. It came as no surprise when, one Friday the 13th in 1987 while on stage in Glasgow following a broken bass string and a shambolic, improvised version of Garageland, the musicians simply gave up and walked off. A cycle which had begun five years earlier with a scrapped recording – perversely – of Donna Summer's Wasted, produced by Giorgio Moroder's co-writer Pete Bellotte (featuring singer Alison Gourlay and guest guitarist Edwyn Collins), was now complete. Despite the many changes in personnel, the recordings on this collection remain surprisingly consistent and dynamic, due largely to the Band-Burgoyne axis and a spirited what-the-hell mentality. Two brand new recordings of old songs (tracks 10 & 11) – recorded as a bonus especially for this collection – show the Jazzateers organisation as vibrant and anarchic as ever. The Jazzateers are dead – long live the Jazzateers! ALLAN CAMPBELL |
