Article Response: Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine

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http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk/carter.html

And 'guilt' too.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 20 September 2002 15:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Good on both the band and on guilt. :-) I always liked them, never loved them, but still think "After the Watershed" is one of the best singles of its time, if only for the sense of sweeping and building arrangement, mock rock opera/epic that just gets bigger and bigger but has a winning mid-song break down to near silence. It's perhaps their parochial puns that did them in for many, though it strikes me as no less a problem as "A placebo, my libido."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 September 2002 15:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Sentimentally enough, the first thing I liked about TE as a writer was a sense of critical generosity, an acknowledgment that everyone has their Renoirian reasons, and a reluctance to put the obvious polemical boot in. (I think he said something reasonable about Sarah records in a 80/90s britpop overview. I'm not a particular fan, but I appreciated the gesture). So I liked this article, yes! More ambivalence in pop writing!

Re: Carter: There is nothing new under the pun. (At the time, as far as I was concerned, the battle lines were drawn between preening MM aesthetes and lumpen NME carthorses [as immortalized in an infamous Kingmaker/Suede review {by a future NME editor!}] - today I can see a charm in their dogged individualism.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:06 (twenty-three years ago)

an infamous Kingmaker/Suede review

I still love that review, it was SO over the top. In reality both bands probably just played normal sets and went home (though to be sure Kingmaker were not much compared to Suede in general).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:09 (twenty-three years ago)

tom is a very good writer. i have little else to say, since i don't think i've ever knowingly heard carter usm, but i wanted to keep this at the top since the article responses seem to be getting less and less lately.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:45 (twenty-three years ago)

also tom, please don't put my piece up over the weekend since no one will see it, ha ha.

(plus, i have another new one for you, if you want that too.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:45 (twenty-three years ago)

haven't read the article yet, but carter make me think of queen, i never knew why anyone ever liked them. thoughts after i've read the piece...

― gareth (gareth), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

They were open and admitted Queen fans, so why not?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:58 (twenty-three years ago)

it strikes me as no less a problem as "A placebo, my libido."

It's "MOSQUITO"!! I've not heard The Carters either, but, really, Tom does write well.

― A.V. Alexandre (Keiko), Friday, 20 September 2002 21:01 (twenty-three years ago)

I like 'placebo' better, actually, though you're right. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 September 2002 21:42 (twenty-three years ago)

**One simple answer to start with: Carter did a specific thing nobody else was doing, which made them popular, but that was all they did, so people got bored. They were two men with keyboards, a drum machine, and a guitar. The drum machine hammered out a bass-and-beats pattern; the keyboards provided a melody line and the guitar thrashed away in sympathy. The vocals were sung/shouted in an angry South London bark and it very shortly became clear that almost every Carter track - especially the singles - was issue-led or political**

A-hem! A-ahem!

I read about a band in South East 23
I thought it was me I thought it was me
Riding around on a 68 bus
I thought it was us, I thought it was us
I phoned Steve Lamacq and said who do you mean
He said Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
Boldly going where we've already been
that's Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine

("Carter, They're Unstoppable" - I,Ludicrous. From the album "Idiots Savants")

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Monday, 23 September 2002 08:06 (twenty-three years ago)

OK, "Carter did a specific thing I Ludicrous were also doing but they did it better" - happy now Dr C? ;)

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 23 September 2002 08:11 (twenty-three years ago)

oh alright;) (huff, grump....)

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Monday, 23 September 2002 08:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Good stuff. Haven't heard much Carter's, but the meditation on guilt, etc., and on the plight of the "one-trick pony" is well done.

― wl (wl), Monday, 23 September 2002 08:59 (twenty-three years ago)

you see that i ludicrous song is undermined by the phrase "i phoned steve lamacq", now, isn't it?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 23 September 2002 09:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Steve Lamacq was no foe of Carter alas.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 23 September 2002 09:11 (twenty-three years ago)

i just meant the "we are so crusty we make street ppl look like sleek plutucrats" vibe is shaken a bit, when yr on phoning terms with the grand boss of everything

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 23 September 2002 09:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I liked this actually, I remember my brother coming home with Sheriff Fatman on vinyl and whatever age me (8? older maybe?) thinking it was great. He was home this weekend and also liked it alot.

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 23 September 2002 09:28 (twenty-three years ago)

great article. i really liked carter: their earnestness, their make you jump up and down songs. i brought my little brother along to one of their gigs, it was his first gig ever and they had a huge effect on him. he won jimbob's ponytail in a competition years later and it still lives in its glass-topped wooden box in my parents' house like some sort of medieval relic. i haven't listened too them in ages but don't feel guilty for having liked them, what care i for the taste police? i think i still like them in theory but until i get my tape player fixed i won't be able to like them again in practise.

― angela (angela), Monday, 23 September 2002 10:24 (twenty-three years ago)

delete old-ilm please!

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 23 September 2002 10:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Ha ha - I was right all along.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 23 September 2002 12:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Classic, though I suspect I've carefully bought the albums other than 1992 in order to keep it on a pinnacle. The other are all right, but everyone know's they're no 1992, right?

If Freaky Trigger was still running Moments in Love (or whatever) I'd probably pick "come on home" off The Only Living Boy In New Cross. A True Meaning Of Indie moment.

There was an episode of Baddiel & Newman that dealt with people with humorous deformities: A guy with a Groucho-like glasses and moustache, and a guy with frizzy orange clown hair. At one point they panned around a support group, and past Jim-Bob and Fruitbat just sitting there. So Classic for that by itself.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 23 September 2002 13:58 (twenty-three years ago)

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