JAZZ BUTCHER IN A CUTUP AT ROXY

“Don’t forget they only make pop records out of plastic,” the chap who calls himself the Jazz Butcher sang Thursday at the Roxy. The message: no point in taking this too seriously. Yet the Butcher and his three-member group Sikkorskis From Hell demonstrated enough wit to make their music more than just the stuff of good times.

Along with the likes of the Woodentops and Robyn Hitchcock, the Jazz Butcher is part of the growing realm deejay Deirdre O’Donoghue calls the “Ox-Cam” school, for Oxford and Cambridge--having more to do with the music’s cerebral qualities than geographic origins. All share a basic style of Anglicized folk-pop, but where the Woodentops veer toward moody intensity and Hitchcock toward skewed mysticism, the Butcher runs to rum-soaked cheekiness.

The problem with the Roxy show was that there was not enough lunacy. Without that edgy thread to link such diverse material as the wry, jazzy “Partytime” and the hilarious, Cramps-like “Death Dentist,” what is wonderfully eclectic on vinyl came off as disjointed live. At times the song sequence made twisted sense, such as when guitarist Max Eider’s shameless “Drink” (“hope I never get dry before I get old”) was followed with the perky “Rain” (“let the rain wash the shame away”), but too often the set seemed a random hodgepodge.

Though individual highlights were numerous (including encores of Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” and Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane”), it will take a bit more live spark to make the Jazz Butcher the king of rock ‘n’ droll.

The first set was opened by the Clay Idols, a promising young local band that features the driving songs and dexterous (though never slick) guitar of leader Steve Schayer.