Carter USM, the final final comedown
Until I was fourteen years old, my definition of a good band was a hot bloke singing songs about lurve. Nik Kershaw, Simon Le Bon, Boy George, Morten Harket, Matt Goss. (Matt Goss?! What can I say, we all have our pasts). Then in the summer of 1991, I went on holiday to Crete and Clare Horwood kindly copied me some cassettes for my Walkman. One of them was 101 Damnations by a band dubiously named "Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine". I think the other side of the tape may have been the Wedding Present, or The Levellers, or maybe even Ride. Whatever it was, it never got listened to. One play of 101 Damnations, and I was in love. Not the kind of teenage crush love that I felt for Morten and Matt but proper oh-my-god-this-music-is-perfect love. Carter were simultaneously like nothing on earth anyone had ever heard before yet simple, unpretentious and catchy. The lyrics weren't just blurb to fit a tune, they were stories, they were puns, they were about serious issues and not at all about lurve or copping off with inappropriate people. They summed up life in dodgy sarf Landan, the life we were just getting to know as we hit our teenage years and flew the nest of Bromley to the dubious streets of New Cross and Lewisham and contended with night buses and kebab shops for the first time.
But you have to see Carter play live for them to truly make sense, and my first experience of Carter was on the 9th November, 1991, at the Brixton Academy. I remember the night well. A mouthy little brat we used to hang around with by the name of Tiernan spat on the steps of Brixton station whilst we waited for our friends. A policeman marched up to him and said "Do that again and I'll make you clean it up with your coat." He was wearing a long black army surplus trenchcoat that was so big for him it dragged along the ground. Once inside the Academy, my friend Jane copped off with a boy called Danny who I had snogged on two previous occasions and was therefore practically my boyfriend. I was so angry that I didn't speak to her for three days and as revenge I copped off with a boy called Kerry who put his hand up my top in front of all my friends, an incident which I would never live down.
All this was forgotten when Carter took to the stage, introduced by the inimitable Jon Fat Beast. Luckily, I don't have to describe this spectacle - I am not sure I could find the words - because it was all captured on the video release "In Bed With Carter". (I think this was the gig before, in June 1991, but the format didn't change much. It still hasn't). http://youtu.be/2CUKm2_YZZo
I'm just going to sum up what a Carter gig is like in a jumble of words. This is a jumble of every Carter gig I have ever been to. Fringe. Guitar. Drum machine. Lyrics about London. You fat bastard, you fat bastard, you fat bastard. Slogan t-shirts. Beer. More beer. A wall of white lights. Inadvisable stagediving. Moshpit. Dropped beer. Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, come home you silly cow. Record bar takings. Singing along with the person next to you. Everyone knows all the words. The greebos, the crusties, and THE GOTHS. Oh my god, they're doing this one, it is my favourite, oh no actually this one is my favourite, or perhaps Bloodsport For All is my favourite. Here comes Sheriff Fatman! Has it finished already? It's only been two hours! I wish... I was... in BRIXTON... I'm a GI, and I'm blue, and my mascara has run and that is obviously because I was sweating in the moshpit and not because I was moved to tears. God I look rough. Shall we go on to the Venue?
In many ways Carter just shouldn't have worked. They were already 30 something in a music scene dominated by 20 somethings and fans who were 10-something, they were not playing on their sex appeal (not that Jon Beast wasn't a handsome hulk of a man, but, well, he was no Mark Keds), they wrote lyrics which must have come across as gibberish to anyone outside the M25 and they made enemies of Philip Scofield and the Rolling Stones. Yet Carter USM, with their stupid name and stupider hair, were the leaders of the indie pack. They have stood the test of time far more than any of their contemporaries and still have a fierce following over 20 years later.
I counted earlier today that I have been to thirteen Carter gigs and four of these were supposed to be the last Carter gig ever. There was one in 1997, when Carter officially split up (having got to that dodgy stage where the fans have got older and stopped going to the gigs, but not enough time has passed for them to become a Classic Band and do Reunions), one in 2001 which was supposed to be a one-off, another in 2007 at which Jon Beast went into great lengths about how this was definitely the last one ever because "we're not the fucking Wonderstuff you know", which was followed by a swift backtrack and more gigs ("never say never again") until this year Carter announced yet another "final gig" and no one really believed it.
And then Jon Beast died.
And then suddenly the "last gig" felt like it really was a final gig, and a send off for a beloved talisman, and a goodbye to our youths.
I wondered how Carter could open the last ever show without Jon Beast. The answer was simple. They didn't. They used the introduction from "In Bed With Carter" that I posted above, complete with ten fat bastards in Jon Beast masks standing in a line inciting the loudest chants of "You fat bastard" I have ever heard.
As for the gig itself, there are a billion reviews online, and all say much the same thing: it was amazing, it was emotional, we danced like lunatics and we will miss Carter like hell. A few of us even confessed to shedding a tear or two as the gig came towards the end. GI Blues got a few people, but the track which got me was Falling On A Bruise. I like the lyrics. "I've spent my whole lifetime falling on a bruise, and if I had the chance to do it all again... I'd change everything". I've certainly fallen on a few bruises, repeated a few mistakes, wished I could change things and get some years back, but I wouldn't change everything. I wouldn't change Carter.
PS. The bloke called Kerry who put his hand up my top in 1991... I saw him post on the Carter Facebook with a spare ticket to sell. He is apparently married with children. I hope he kept his hands to himself this time.
But you have to see Carter play live for them to truly make sense, and my first experience of Carter was on the 9th November, 1991, at the Brixton Academy. I remember the night well. A mouthy little brat we used to hang around with by the name of Tiernan spat on the steps of Brixton station whilst we waited for our friends. A policeman marched up to him and said "Do that again and I'll make you clean it up with your coat." He was wearing a long black army surplus trenchcoat that was so big for him it dragged along the ground. Once inside the Academy, my friend Jane copped off with a boy called Danny who I had snogged on two previous occasions and was therefore practically my boyfriend. I was so angry that I didn't speak to her for three days and as revenge I copped off with a boy called Kerry who put his hand up my top in front of all my friends, an incident which I would never live down.
All this was forgotten when Carter took to the stage, introduced by the inimitable Jon Fat Beast. Luckily, I don't have to describe this spectacle - I am not sure I could find the words - because it was all captured on the video release "In Bed With Carter". (I think this was the gig before, in June 1991, but the format didn't change much. It still hasn't). http://youtu.be/2CUKm2_YZZo
I'm just going to sum up what a Carter gig is like in a jumble of words. This is a jumble of every Carter gig I have ever been to. Fringe. Guitar. Drum machine. Lyrics about London. You fat bastard, you fat bastard, you fat bastard. Slogan t-shirts. Beer. More beer. A wall of white lights. Inadvisable stagediving. Moshpit. Dropped beer. Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, come home you silly cow. Record bar takings. Singing along with the person next to you. Everyone knows all the words. The greebos, the crusties, and THE GOTHS. Oh my god, they're doing this one, it is my favourite, oh no actually this one is my favourite, or perhaps Bloodsport For All is my favourite. Here comes Sheriff Fatman! Has it finished already? It's only been two hours! I wish... I was... in BRIXTON... I'm a GI, and I'm blue, and my mascara has run and that is obviously because I was sweating in the moshpit and not because I was moved to tears. God I look rough. Shall we go on to the Venue?
In many ways Carter just shouldn't have worked. They were already 30 something in a music scene dominated by 20 somethings and fans who were 10-something, they were not playing on their sex appeal (not that Jon Beast wasn't a handsome hulk of a man, but, well, he was no Mark Keds), they wrote lyrics which must have come across as gibberish to anyone outside the M25 and they made enemies of Philip Scofield and the Rolling Stones. Yet Carter USM, with their stupid name and stupider hair, were the leaders of the indie pack. They have stood the test of time far more than any of their contemporaries and still have a fierce following over 20 years later.
I counted earlier today that I have been to thirteen Carter gigs and four of these were supposed to be the last Carter gig ever. There was one in 1997, when Carter officially split up (having got to that dodgy stage where the fans have got older and stopped going to the gigs, but not enough time has passed for them to become a Classic Band and do Reunions), one in 2001 which was supposed to be a one-off, another in 2007 at which Jon Beast went into great lengths about how this was definitely the last one ever because "we're not the fucking Wonderstuff you know", which was followed by a swift backtrack and more gigs ("never say never again") until this year Carter announced yet another "final gig" and no one really believed it.
And then Jon Beast died.
And then suddenly the "last gig" felt like it really was a final gig, and a send off for a beloved talisman, and a goodbye to our youths.
I wondered how Carter could open the last ever show without Jon Beast. The answer was simple. They didn't. They used the introduction from "In Bed With Carter" that I posted above, complete with ten fat bastards in Jon Beast masks standing in a line inciting the loudest chants of "You fat bastard" I have ever heard.
As for the gig itself, there are a billion reviews online, and all say much the same thing: it was amazing, it was emotional, we danced like lunatics and we will miss Carter like hell. A few of us even confessed to shedding a tear or two as the gig came towards the end. GI Blues got a few people, but the track which got me was Falling On A Bruise. I like the lyrics. "I've spent my whole lifetime falling on a bruise, and if I had the chance to do it all again... I'd change everything". I've certainly fallen on a few bruises, repeated a few mistakes, wished I could change things and get some years back, but I wouldn't change everything. I wouldn't change Carter.
PS. The bloke called Kerry who put his hand up my top in 1991... I saw him post on the Carter Facebook with a spare ticket to sell. He is apparently married with children. I hope he kept his hands to himself this time.