The Butcher Shop - Pump Action (1990)

Although recorded in 1988 and 1989 the roots of The Butcher Shop EP and LP go back to 1983. When the great american band The Gun Club arrived in Australia to tour in September 1983 they were without guitar player Jim Duckworth and drummer Terry Graham, apparently leaving the group just before the others ( Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Patricia Morrison and Kid Congo Powers ) departed for Australia. Taking up the suggestion of the local promoter, the band hired Spencer P. Jones and Billy Pommer Jr. as their replacements. It was a great tour, the band was on fire, and nobody was disappointed. Being a friend of Spencer I too fell in with this bunch of pirates, and Spencer, Kid and I became fast friends. We promised ourselves that one day we would record something together…A year later Kid wrote me a letter saying The Gun Club were grinding to a halt and that I should get on a plane and come to London as soon as possible so we could start a new band. This was the ill fated Fur Bible, and to cut a sad story short I lasted three months in London before returning to Australia. The Fur Bible broke up, and Kid went on to join Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. Years Passed. Then in mid 1988, The Bad Seeds toured Australia and so, briefly the trio of Spencer, Kid and I were reunited. A midnight to dawn recording session was quickly organized. Billy came on board to play drums and phil Clifford of local group Box The Jesuit played bass.It was a pretty wild and fucked up session, filled with whatever it took, to get us to the end of the night, and by 6-am, producer Tony Cohen had smeared the tapes with three slabs of filthy proto-grunge (a term nor widely at the time, not even by us). We called ourselves THE BUTCHER SHOP. The night ended and we all went out seperate ways…Early next year the “Hard for you” EP was released on Bleck Eye Records…Another line-up of the Butcher Shop came together later in the year to play a few shows, record an album and generally have a good time hanging out and making a racket. Friends of mine Lachlan McLeod and Pete Hartley joined on guitar and drums. This line-up of The Butcher Shop (Phils, Pete, Lachlan and me) actually all lived in the same squat together, known as “The Gunnery”, so many hours of jamming was no logistical problem for us. The Album “Pump action” was recorded with Phil Punch at his studio Electric Avenue in late 1989, it took two days to record and two to mix. It was released on Black Eye Records in 1990.