HOLY PURPOSE
5 years ago
March 14, 2003 | Michael Bronski talked to a peace activist with the idea of sending the Pope to Iraq in order to stop the impending war.
“Renowned peace and anti-nuke activist Helen Caldicott thinks she has a way to stop the all-but-inevitable war with Iraq: convince Pope John Paul II to join the human shields in Baghdad. Caldicott, who became well known during the 1980s for her anti-nuke activism, is urging people around the world to contact the pope and ask him to travel to Iraq...

“Caldicott argues that ‘[t]he Pope’s physical presence in Iraq will act as the ultimate human shield, during which time leaders of the world nations can commit themselves to identifying and implementing a peaceful solution to this war that the world’s majority clearly does not support.’ The Web site of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (www.nuclearpolicy.org) posts a letter from Caldicott as well as a sample letter to send to Vatican City that argues her case in the most serious terms — ‘your physical presence in Baghdad will prevent the impending slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings’...” Read Full Article

THE TARANTINO TOUCH
10 years ago
March 13, 1998 | Rachel O’Malley imagined what certain classic productions would be like in Quentin Tarantino’s hands.

“1. Oklahoma!
Wait Until Dark at the Wilbur was just the beginning for Tarantino’s stage career. O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R when Quentin plays Curly in this once-hokey musical. Curly is sick of Laurie’s wiles, and by the time they reach the square dance, the shiny little surrey with the fringe on top is wrecked. Curly accidentally blows Laurie’s head off with his .45 when they hit a bump in the dirt road. All he wanted was a little respect.

...
5. Hamlet
This Hamlet is much shorter than Kenneth Branagh’s recent film. Hamlet has Claudius, Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern bound and gagged 10 minutes into the play. An hour later, they’ve been forced to listen to Polonius repeat his ‘To thine own self be true’ speech about six times, and Rosencrantz is pleading to keep his other ear.”

COLD COMFORTS
20 years ago
March 11, 1988 | Ric Kahn reported on the passing of local celebrity-cum-hermit Bill Brit.
“There’ll be no more newsroom phone calls from Bill Britt. God has called the 52-year-old hermit of Chestnut Hill home from the simple wigwam that, standing tall on a small patch of public land near the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, served as one man’s castle for almost 20 years. Authorities say Britt froze to death in the Massachusetts winter.

“For what seemed like half his breathing hours, Bill Britt waged an unyielding battle against bureaucratic bullies who viewed his attempts to be left out in the cold, amid the raindrops and raccoons, as merely trespassing. Like other offbeat souls who choose to live their lives off society’s beaten path, Britt’s campaign to camp out with Mother Nature — frugally financed by the coins collected from turning in discarded bottles and cans — exposed the overbearing nature of the state, which resorted to using the courts,... a cop masquerading as a reporter, and a bulldozer to try and toss out one solitary man, Billy Britt.”

STEVEN TYLER SOCIETY
25 years ago
March 15, 1983 | Surveying the crowd at an Aerosmith show at the Cape Cod Coliseum, Doug Simmons recalled the old days when he was a freak for the band.
“...the group’s bargain-basement Stones show delighted guys like me and my friends. We aped the band’s delinquent image, albeit with less mascara, and marveled at Joe Perry’s kerchunkachunka guitar and Steven Tyler’s gypsy sleaze and ripped-larynx singing. Looking back I have no regrets, but looking across Cape Cod Coliseum’s iceless hockey rink, my nostalgia soured. Were my friends and I this surly? Probably....There was only one difference between the Cape crowd and my crew a decade ago: as a companion said of the 6500-strong mob, ‘If we nuked Iran tomorrow there aren’t three people in this place who would care.’ We would have cared, but only because when it came to war we had Vietnam to wise us up.” Read Full Article

3/13/2008 10:51:12 AM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  

This past Sunday, hundreds and hundreds of people congregated in Allston to celebrate Mr. Butch. “I’ve never seen anything like it in Boston,” said one photographer. People made signs, left flowers, played music, and paraded down the street. Here’s a slideshow of the memorial.

7/26/2007 10:49:23 AM by Nina MacLaughlin | Comments [0] |  

7/14/2007 12:08:45 PM by Nina MacLaughlin | Comments [0] |  

Mr. Butch had tapped into some secret that most of us didn’t know about.

 

The Worcester native once told me he left his hometown because the women there were too repressed. He was a mostly happily irreverent guy who delighted in the constancy of beer and cute BU girls in his favored haunt of greater Kenmore Square during the early ’80s. With his electric guitar, imposing stature, wild dreadlocks, and disdain for material want, he was street royalty and sidewalk philosopher-king ― something like Boston’s version of Paul Bunyan ― encountering the ire of the BU police and emerging triumphant even then from a brief exile in Allston.

 

To me, he was inspiration. As I told a writer a few years ago for the Comment, a BU publication, “[He’s] intriguing because he is so Thoreau-like. He transcends the adversity of life on the streets.”

 

The article went on to note, “But Mr. Butch is a muse less for any inspiring qualities he may possess than for the sheer force of his personality.” The writer, Kenneth St. Onge, quoted me: “One time, I saw him on Commonwealth Avenue. When I asked him what he was doing he said ‘Hey! Want a fish head?’ and pulled a fish head out of his pocket. It’s that mixture of joie de vivre with a little bit of a scurrilous salty quality that makes him a robust character.”

 

We’re all the poorer for the death of Mr. Butch; he reflected that vital quality that enables people to survive and even thrive in the face of all the little slights and mendacity and madness that the world can offer. And though his death is indeed a sad occasion, there was something fitting about it ― coming as he madly hurtled through the streets of Boston.
―Ian Donnis

 

SLIDESHOW: Mr Butch through the years

7/13/2007 1:32:12 PM by Nina MacLaughlin | Comments [0] |  

>>VIDEO: Mr. Butch on life and death, in music and words

UPDATED 7 PM: Mr. Butch's death in a scooter accident earlier today has been confirmed by several sources. A memorial service is scheduled for Monday, July 16, at the adjacent Ritual Arts and Regeneration Records on Harvard Avenue in Allston, both favorites of the deceased. Butch's age is a matter of no small mystery, the most definitive source seeming to have been this piece, but best guesses are that he was somewhere between 55 and 57 years old. Reminiscences have been pouring in throughout the day, and we'll be printing an official obit as well as some personal recollections in the next issue. If you would like to share your memories of Butch for publication, post in the comments section below or email letters@phx.com.

Out of the too-numerous anecdotes we heard today about Butch, our favorite came from Providence Phoenix staff writer Ian Donnis, who in the mid-'80s interviewed Butch several times for the Boston University Daily Free Press. On one occasion, Donnis was looking to interview Butch for the short-lived magazine Streets. At the time, Butch kept his guitar in the old Strawberries Records and Tapes shop in Kenmore Square, and Donnis stopped in looking for him. The manager said Butch had just left to get dinner. Donnis arrived at a nearby Japanese restaurant to find Mr. Butch seated before an impressive spread of sushi -- improbable scenes like this were part of Butch's legend. Butch greeted him warmly and invited him to share the meal. Later, Donnis and some friends took Butch along with them to the Channel to see the Butthole Surfers, with Butch crashing in the van while Donnis and pals went in to see the show. Later, Donnis became separated from his friends -- they'd left without him -- and, without making a big fuss about it, Butch loaned Donnis $20 to get a cab home. To the people who will recall Butch only as a guy who was always looking for a handout, we respectfully disagree: if Butch had little in the way of earthly goods, it was often because he lived so generously, in every sense of the word.

Thanks to local producer/noise musician/photographer Bill T. Miller's definitive web site www.mrbutchshow.com for video and audio of the late Mr. Butch. The clips in the video below were recorded by Miller in 2004 and 2005.

VIDEO: Remembering Mr. Butch: The Kenmore Square folk hero on life and death, in words and music
(Via local producer/noise musician Bill T. Miller's fantastic www.mrbutchshow.com)

>> Mr. Butch at MySpace
>> Mr. Butch at YouTube
>> Mr. Butch at Wikipedia
>> Clips from S.G. Collins's documentary Searching for Mr. Butch

EARLIER TODAY:

The Boston Police Deparment this afternoon confirmed a "motorcycle/scooter" fatality on Cambridge Street in Allston this morning involving a 47-50 year old male. They haven't yet released a name, but some indications -- including some great shoe-leather reporting by the folks over at the Lemmingtrail Board -- are that the victim is the legendary Mr. Butch, who in another era was known as the King of Kenmore Square, but following the gentrification of that area (and the bulldozing of his old HQ, the Rat) moved up into Allston.

Ironically, many Lemmingtrail boarders worried late last month that Butch, who'd somehow come into posession of a Vespa-like scooter and was seen tearing around Allston on it, was a threat to himself and others. There were conflicting reports earlier today that Butch had been hospitalized and released, but the BPD announcement appears to bode for the worst.

Butch has been known to and generally adored by generations of students, rockers, and late-night drinkers. Although he'd been around for decades, his popularity has never waned. His fans were far more numerous than the paltry 621 friends he had on MySpace, and he was voted Boston's "Best Neighborhood Character" by Phoenix readers in 2007 and 2006.

>>UPDATE 4 pm: The Noise board chimes in with definitive-sounding details indicating that Butch is indeed dead, including plans for a memorial service on Monday, July 16 at Ritual Arts in Allston.

7/12/2007 3:05:20 PM by Nina MacLaughlin | Comments [2] |