Due to family commitments I will be closing this site in the near future.
The entire experience of creating and developing Butterboxmedia has been a joy, and while music continues to captivate my senses, priorities now lay elsewhere.
I extend my sincere thanks to those regular readers who encouraged me with this project. As soon as I have the time to play the role of data monkey, I will transfer all my writings over to my blog entitled: www.thekitchenhand.blogspot.com
- Peter Thornton
June 2008
“Spread legs not lies”
- Slogan on a tee-shirt
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Despite the misleading title, this album couldn’t be further away from the glossy blues lite of its Dire Straits namesake.
In fact, Temple Of Soul is the side project of none other than ‘The Big Man’ Clarence Clemons - long-time saxophonist and right hand man to Bruce Springsteen - along with top session musician friends Vernon “Ice” Black, TM Stevens and Narada Michael Walden.
As might be expected from such a line-up, there’s no shortage of killer musicianship and top notch production values, but there are surprises along the way that mark this apart from the standard hot-licks hobby band. “Ode To China” is a sensual slow groove featuring an oriental lead trade off between tenor sax and erhu, while opener “Anna” might catch you completely off guard with a high-NRG disco stomp that wouldn’t sound out of place in a modern night club.
Clemons trademark growling sax and basso profundo vocals are all over the album, but it’s clear from the tight performances and the songwriting credits that this is a group effort. A band doing what they do best; kicking back, and having fun.
In loving memory of E Street organist Danny Federici, 58, who died Thursday, after a three-year battle with melanoma.
- Peter Thornton April 2008
Despite what journalists and columnists would have us believe, really interesting news does not happen every minute of every day, nor is the most interesting aspect of any reported story the fact that some awful hack actually bothered to turn up and cover it.
- Peter
I may have a face for radio, but you, sir, have a brain for television
- Crusty The Clown
“Thinking about the way technology is changing the music business is boring. The music business is boring. Radiohead is boring. As long as I can get the music I want when I want it, and play the music I like with the people I like, I don’t care about the rest.”
- David Marchese
Brooklyn, New York
After overcoming a fear of growing old and realizing that he wasn’t going to burn out or fade away, his politics evolved into clear, terse statements which have made Neil Young a household name for over thirty years. From the earlier, bruising musical synergy of his fruitful partnership with a bunch of hard-bitten rockers going by the name of Crazyhorse - that’s still going strong today - we’ve heard him scale cathartic heights in primal guitar improvisation linking coffeehouse folk and electric rock’n'roll, which became a template for his extremely inspiring live shows.
why things have slowed down to snail’s pace at BBM. The answer, briefly (because spare time remains in rather short supply), is work.
Of course, I welcome the break and have almost become blissfully uninterested in pursuing my little niche in the world of citizen journalism and user generated content.
The good news is that I still have a few more rants left in me; the Rock and Roll Monster takes many forms.
See you soon!
- Peter
February 2008
Disclaimer: Only to flood you with a torrential downpour of unseemly and marginal content.
Way back in its unformed infancy, BBM got frightfully charlie about the old end of year list. But now that my remedial writing class for the digitally distracted has finished for the year, boy-oh-boy, now I can wrt lk ths!!!!!!!!!!!!
Man, like I don’t mean to be a frostypants Mcgoo about everything, but the constantly perpetuating pyramid scheme of culture over music continues to throw up stuff to be shamed before the world during 2007. Come on! It’s a point that’s at least relevant to Radiohead fans. And you haters who disagree can back off. Remember this: the Eurovision Song Contest is still doing it old school.
That said, what artists would you consider examples of your respective philosophies? Just joking, I mean, even Tony Soprano sang along to Steely Dan’s Dirty Work now didn’t he? Clearly it’s a breakdown in the educational system.
So with no further a-doo (or fringe philosophy) I shall commence my list of ten best albums for this year. Remember now, it’s one-a-day.
For all their acclaimed “Britishness” The Smiths never exuded that most British of traits: “reserve.” Instead, they trumpeted their achievements loudly and immodestly. Although it would be naïve to overestimate the cultural importance of The Smiths, there is no doubting their cult credibility. Theirs is a body of work that has not noticeably dated and still impresses by its sheer quality.
A short story of joy and Christina Amphlett - by Peter Thornton
I can’t remember whether I had heard or heard of her before that moment, but it was the first time I had seen her. I was jolted from head to toe. I had a “thrill feeling” in my chest and tears almost came to my eyes. I was mesmerized, flabbergasted, and astounded. This was something else! Something entirely new. She seemed both innocent and dangerous at the same time. I don’t fully understand what she represented to me. Her persona in 1980 was, in my mind, somehow linked with that of Marilyn Monroe and with the Marlon Brando portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
I loved Devo from the very first time I saw them way back in the ’70s. They were a band that had to be seen to be understood. Their point was about loss of individuality, which was played out in a spirit of sarcastic tribute that satirised mass consumer culture by using, among other things, asinine motivational slogans.
This is a very different album from Musicology and 3121. It’s as if Prince has listened to those voices who were complaining about a lack of strong melodies in his recent work.
The title track is a strong opener with an organic, and - pardon my early Sunday morning pun - earthy sound to it. Neatly arranged and minimalistic, it still maintains a very “full” (vocal layering) sound.
Words by Andrew Vietze republished courtesy of Popmatters www.popmatters.com with thanks from Butterboxmedia
This is what it would have sounded like if the shoegazers ever made it to the arenas. Glasgow’s Twilight Sad clearly know their Bloody Valentines from their Slowdives, and on their debut full-length, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, they borrow a little bit from each. But they’ve also been paying attention to their anthemic brethren in Idlewild and Frames. The quartet’s combination of bombastic choruses and wall of noise crescendos probably won’t get them beyond clubs and theaters to the big stages—at this point they’re still a tad too experimental for the masses—but on songs like “I’m Taking the Train Home” it’s easy to imagine them in front of a swaying crowd of thousands (eyes closed and glowing cell phones in hand), rocking the arena with their delay pedals set to stun.
Words by Phil Hebblethwaite republished courtesy of The Stool Pigeon with thanks from Butterboxmedia
In Liverpool’s Metropolitan bar, in a wide column that looks out to the street, is a gigantic photo poster of Pop Levi’s face and shoulders. He’s topless and wearing huge, bug sunglasses in which you can see the lights used for the shoot. If a young Sonny Bono or Lee Hazlewood had been more attractive, they would have looked like this. Pop’s famed hair – he used to model his mop – and manicured beard are all perfectly in place. It’s a striking image, but an alarming one. You see it and you immediately think, “Wow, this motherfucker is truly in love with himself,” and, although it’s unlikely he gave the photo to the bar himself, you guess that he doesn’t mind people admiring him when they’re in for a drinky.
After 2004s Good News For People Who Love Bad News, Modest Mouse stood teetering on an MOR precipice. Lead guitarist and vocalist Isaac Brock, unable to honestly inhabit his familiar persona—a compelling jumble of working-class bluster, wounded vulnerability, and drugged madness—spent the album groping for a new context from which to speak. The best song on that album, and the tune that encapsulated Modest Mouse’s identity crisis, was the “smash-hit” single “Float On.” Riding an endless stairstep progression, Brock strung together a series of disaster scenarios—“I backed my car into a cop car the other day”—that magically resolved themselves with the inevitability of the chord progression: “Well, he just drove off, sometimes life’s okay.” It was as if Brock was learning, in his tender late-20s and to his eternal surprise, that sometimes—though not often—things don’t go completely to shit. It was also the most surprising moment on the album, pointing to crossroads for Brock and for the band, away from their comfortable pocket of Midwestern teenage existential angst towards something new, possibly scary.
Words by Garry Mulholland. Republished courtesy of The Stool Pigeon with many thanks from Butterboxmedia.
STRAIGHT AFTER INTERVIEWING BECK HANSEN, I meet up with another music journalist for a cup of tea. He asks me what I’ve been up to, and I tell him I’ve just met Beck at London’s SoHo Hotel.
“And what was that like?” He asks.
“Well, it was okay. But it was frustrating. It just felt like we were getting somewhere, and then it was over.”
“Ah,” says my smart journo friend. “Much like listening to his records, then.
Luke Turner upon the release of his 2006 album, Jarvis. Interview republished courtesy of The Stool Pigeon with many thanks from Butterboxmedia
Like many people who reached their early-to-mid teens in the mid-nineties, Jarvis Cocker was something of an icon to me – not merely for Pulp’s glorious pop, or the lyrics of young romance, sexual confusion and the quiet confusion of small town life, but for the way Jarvis and his band existed. Those awkward clothes we aped, a certain confidence and disdain through difference, felt like a manifesto on how the wonky can survive. I still remember the sleeve notes to the “Common People” single: “There is a war in progress in ’95. Don’t be a casual(ty)” it might have come from the pen of a marketing man for all I know, but to the 16-year-old me that sentence was gospel.
1 Loney, Dear - Loney, Noir [SubPop;2007]
Sweden’s Loney, Dear—nee Emil Svanängen—is the newest product of one of the most musically fertile countries as of late. His infectious pop—equal parts shambling rawness (bass), mellow introspection (vox), and sugary precision (percussion)—falls in line with the work of predecessors Tobias Fröberg and Nicolai Dunger, and, in many respects, supersedes it.