Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine: "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good"

24 June 1992

"Rock that funky punk machine, dudes!"

— Tim Southwell

Top pop-jazz-rock critic Andrew Male recently Tweeted a passage from a bio or memoir or some sort of music retrospective which argued that Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (note to all who may be interested: I have never liked referring to them as either 'Carter' or, worse yet, 'Carter USM', I like their name in full) were "written out of history" because they fell through the cracks between acid house (presumably this anonymous writer is including offshoot scene Madchester in with it) and Britpop. "Yes", Male commented wryly, "that's why [they] were written out of history".

I like Male and I understand disliking a band like this one but there is some truth to this assertion. While Britpop no doubt has its critics, there wasn't a major genre or subgenre that was looked down upon as consistently as grebo, the unruly Birmingham-area scene that gave rise to the likes of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, as well as groups like Jesus Jones, Kingmaker and EMF, found a home along with all those longhairs who all seemed to hail from some town called Stourbridge. A lot of them used samples, weren't averse to dance grooves but were also comfortable thrashing about on their "pop music guitars". Over in North America, it was easy to confuse them with Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses but for the lack of a druggy vibe and a distinct lack of cool.

Since they weren't tripping on a daily basis at the Hacienda Club in Manchester, some of these groups had a tougher, angrier sound. When The Wonder Stuff's Miles Hunt pointedly placed "Astley in a Noose" as the B side to their first Top 40 hit "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" he was serving notice that this manufactured pop rubbish wouldn't do. Not everyone followed suit but Ned's Atomic Dustbin would eventually deliver the punky "Kill Your Television" and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine would write and record a protest song of their own in "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good".

It isn't a terribly well-remembered hit for Jim-Bob and Fruitbat. Ask a Brit who happened to be a mopey, spotty youth in the early nineties and they'll likely tell you that they only remember one or some of the following: "Sheriff Fatman", "After the Watershed" and "The Only Living Boy in New Cross". While not quite their three biggest hits (the forgettable "Rubbish" actually outperformed "Sheriff Fatman" on the charts), they were the standouts then and they remain their signature tunes to this day. Yet, "Do Re Mi" represents both their sole Single of the Fortnight Best New Single in Smash Hits and, of greater significance, the only Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine single to appear on a Now That's What I Call Music compilation. Not bad for a song few remember and not a whole lot of people seemed to like even then. (Fun fact: it only spent two weeks in the Top 40; hit singles having chart "runs" of a fortnight or less would become common in the nineties)

Being on a Now is also ironic given the song's subject matter. If you happened to own Now 22 (as I did), you may have come for Take That and — yikes! — Nick Berry but you would've also been exposed to a trio of angsty indie-rock from Shakespears Sister (with "I Don't Care", a sentiment that ought to have appealed to teenagers or was I the only one?), Ugly Kid Joe ("Everything About You": again, hating everything is what teens do) and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine laying waste to the throwaway pop scene that surrounded them.

The only problem was, the message didn't connect the way the efforts of both Shakespears Sister and Ugly Kid Joe did. Jim-Bob (or was it Fruitbat? I only just realised I have no idea who did what in ver Machine) had that thick accent which muffled an awful lot of the words. There's also the racket. And even then, did the lyrics do a decent job communicating this distaste for nineties' pop? Much as I would love for their to be a football club called Antarctic Thistle, I don't know what purpose their big match is meant to serve in this song. Billy Bragg had a way of making silly rhymes work but in the hands of the Unstoppables it just seems like the sort of verse I would have churned out at fourteen or fifteen, convinced of it's worthiness as a masterpiece.

A hint of where Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine went a bit wrong was their ages. Q Magazine praised their number one LP 1992: The Love Album but admitted that it was "undignified" that thirtysomethings would go by the handles of Jim-Bob and Fruitbat. More to the point, they were attempting to do something to attract the attention of teenage good-for-nothings such as myself but couldn't really pull it off because they hadn't been teens since Jim Callaghan's Winter of Discontent.

"Sheriff Fatman" had been about low income renters dealing with a slumlord. "After the Watershed" was about youngsters discovering sex on the telly. "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" was about the AIDS epidemic. All of these touched people in one way or another. "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good" may have been good fun and a nice reminder of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine as heirs to the rock 'n' roll bombast of Meat Loaf and the trashy rock-synth of ZZ Top and Billy Idol but what it represented meant next to nothing to ver kids. And isn't that's what matters when you've spurned pop in favour of using your place in music to be a good influence? And if not, why not?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Roy Orbison: "I Drove All Night"

With all due respect to Jim-Bob and Fruitbat, the rightful Single of the Fortnight Best New Single is from the late, great Roy Orbison. Originally a hit in the spring of 1989 for Cyndi Lauper, the Big O recorded this Billy Steinberg-Tom Kelly classic but it wasn't released until nearly four years after his untimely death. Both versions are good but there's no competing with Orbison's voice even if you're Lauper. (They're both miles better than Celine Dion's lifeless reading a decade later) It was a big deal at the time that TV star Jason Priestley appeared in its video but as a hormone-fuelled teen I was focused on Jennifer Connelly. She still looks great but now I'm all about Roy Orbison. Who else could sing so well despite seeming like he was putting in the minimal effort to do so?

Ride: "Twisterella"

15 April 1992

"Goodbye droning guitar, hello chiming chords. Goodbye depressing moaning vocals, hello pop music. Ride have come out of their shells."

— Johnny Dee

This blog's unofficial look at all things indie in '92 resumes with shoegaze, a subgenre I had very little to do with back in the day. Alternative acts often lack charisma once you get past your Stipes and Morrisseys but even by this modest standard, the shoegazers were low on the showmanship. Looking like you'd sooner be wiping saliva off the faces of the elderly for a living than being in this wretched pop business was precisely the point: you want a star, then listen to bloody Seal.

Shoegaze never seemed like much of a genre per se. Fans and critics praised it to the hills but they never managed to make it seem appealing. I once bought a copy of My Bloody Valentine's seminal album Loveless because I felt like I ought to but it remains unplayed to this day (unless whoever ended up with it decided to remove the shrink-wrap and give it a go themselves). Why did I even bother? All anyone ever did was tell me how important it is, no one ever bothered with how good it is to listen to. On the other hand, groups like Lush and Ride were much better than shoegaze enthusiasts led us to believe. Just as The Jesus & Mary Chain had always been much more of a pop act than indie credibility obsessives would like to think, the better shoegazers seemed content to have a go at all sorts of styles.

There are many great mysteries in pop but few are as puzzling as the one surrounding the two singles that were selected to promote Ride's second album Going Blank Again. One of them is an absolute delight: a chiming slice of jangle pop that generations of boring old power pop bands could only dream of crafting. The other is a much more difficult affair: an uncompromising eight minutes of toe-tapping noise which is ultimately rather forgettable. One of them is an obvious single, the other would have struggled in the format even if it had been edited down to half its length. One came out in advance of the album, the other only after Ride's fanbase had snapped it up on CD and cassette. One of them did rather well for itself on the charts, the other barely registered. How the less commercial, more avowedly "shoegaze" "Leave Them All Behind" fared far better than the irresistible "Twisterella" is beyond me.

The one thing "Leave Them All Behind" has going for it is as a statement of intent. As on-the-nose as The Stone Roses' "What the World Is Waiting For", it was meant to affirm Ride's place above their shoegaze competitors. The fact that they had already gone about proving their superiority with a succession of top notch E.P.'s and a fine debut album Nowhere was evidently not enough. In a subgenre that happened to be defined by musicians who didn't appear to be arsed, here was a band that really seemed concerned about what everyone thought of them. (Many were surprised when Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell eventually became bassist of Oasis at the tail end of the nineties but it's likely he had an ego to match the Gallagher brothers)

The members of Ride and their inner circle considered "Twisterella" to be a potential breakthrough for the band but it ended up being held over because Creation Records head Alan McGee did a backflip or something when he first gave "Leave Them All Behind" a listen. It was eventually released as a potential springtime hit. Johnny Dee was convinced ("a record that just bursts into splendid life like fireworks in the midnight sky") but the reception was muted elsewhere. Perhaps the inkies had become turned off by Smash Hits' newfound interest in the band. (Sian Pattenden was similarly enthusiastic towards Going Blank Again, stating that it explodes the myth that Ride are a bunch of malcontent youths and describing it as a "right poppy affair") Indeed, it's even likely that they're own studenty fans had reservations towards this far more upbeat and hook-filled direction. The BBC wouldn't even play it. Under the circumstances a solitary week in the bottom of the Top 40 really isn't all that bad.

Of course it deserved better. "Twisterella" is an absolute banger, a candidate for single of the year. Ride members Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Steve Queralt and Loz Colbert (is it just me or were there a lot of indie musicians called "Loz" back then?) were all first rate players and the quartet meshed so well together. Queralt's bass playing is hardly noticeable on those early E.P.'s but here it is full, driving and even a little bit funky. Colbert was the era's preeminent drummer and this is an excellent example of why he stood out from the pack: he's as steady as Charlie Watts, as pounding as Budgie and as willing to fly off in whichever direction he pleases as Tony Williams. Bell and Gardener were only just starting to make their marks as songwriters, not above pinching from others but with a talent for sounding wholly original. Sure, "Twisterella" sounds like The Byrds if you really think about it but being caught up in such a brilliant song leaves such dull analysis in the dust.

Fortunately, the band soldiered on this new beat group path when they could have easily reverted back to their indie safespace. The overlooked Carnival of Light album pushed them further towards The Beatles — which in turn nudged Andy Bell a little bit closer to Oasis — even as it alienated them from their once loyal following. Power pop is frequently used as a crutch for groups who are too timid to explore so it's nice that it helped lead Ride out of their own stylistic dead-end. And if you don't like it? Go find yourself another band who can't be arsed.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine: "The Only Living Boy in New Cross"

Camp, tasteless rock with hints of Slade, Meat Loaf, Madness, ZZ Top, Billy Idol and music hall, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine never really became the institution they seemed destined to become. Maybe they were too much of an indie rock Right Said Fred for their own good. In any case, "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" is their most endearing moment. Dee reckons it's just a copy of earlier hit "After the Watershed" but I don't really hear it myself. It's a credit to Jimbob and Fruitbat that they were able to use time-tested references to wrestling and crass lyrics about "butchered bakers and deaf-dumb waiters / Marble Arch criminals and Clause 28ers" in what turned out to be a poignant song about the AIDS crisis. (U2's "One" went one way with this serious topic, Carter went another). Fantastic when I was fifteen and just as good now, though I can't quite put it over "Twisterella".