The 90's Revival starts here....

And it starts with not so much a comeback as a final farewell, not so much a reformation as a resignation letter, for one of the most critically reviled bands ever, according to the revisionist history of the music press. Come 1991, and you couldn't move for this lot on the front cover and an avalanche of hyperbolic plaudits - come 1996, and even mentioning them made you such a social pariah it was akin to admitting you laughed when Cobain got shot. Ladies and gentlemen, its Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine.

Tonight sees a feverishly anticipated and long overdue last hurrah. Once one of britains much loved and favourite bands, with an interminable stream of NME and Melody Maker front covers, number one albums, a turnover of a £1 million in a single year and a court case with the Rolling Stones (the silly cows), Carter USM quietly faded away into obscurity -  killed by britpop and a fickle music press whose favourite bands changed everytime a music journalist blinked . But one thing that is true is that fans, the people who loved your music, who travelled around the country to see you armed only with a kitbag and a guest list pass - they may have grown old but they haven't gone away. And their memories last much longer than the last big thing in NME towers. And tonight, it seems they are all here...

10 years on from the last time they played, Carter USM play a set decidedly of nostalgia and greatest hits. With a set comprised from the first four (of seven) albums when they were a two piece and nothing post 1994, everything from their glory years of top ten singles and number one albums, you get practically every song you could imagine them playing - almost. 

With half the set dedicated to the hits, the rest a smattering of their best B-Sides, a few choice fan favourites and cover versions, Carter cover all the bases in the best show I've ever seen them play, and all immortalised forever for the DVD. No wonder  then, that it is by far the longest show I've ever seen them play - 26 songs and 2 hours long. You wanted the best of them? You got it. Flashing Strobes and video screens, loud guitars and screaming singalongs, bouncy indiepop and heartfelt confessions. Because even if you didn't get "Rubbish" or "24 Minutes to Tulse Hill" or - even more criminally  the hauntingly brilliant "While You Were Out"  - what you did get was a British punkrock indiepop institution that we should be proud of.

No matter what the NME or drownedinsound think, no matter what Radio One say in their insane quest to say that any band more than 1 single old are over the hill and past it ...ignore them. They wouldn't know good music if it came along, they'd just look at it whether it had a floppy black fringe or wore chessboard pattern trainers or whether it was has the letters "oasis" in the name.

In many ways, Carter always were a particularly very British band - It’s the sound of tower blocks and punk rock, much like Madness or The Jam or Blur, all mixed in with drum machines and the anyone can do it ethos.  After all, if you can't find a drummer or a bass player, all you need to do is to buy a drum machine and some seqeuncers and you're away. Anyone can indeed, do it, and they can do it working out their shed - literally in this case.  

With a venue rammed to capacity, Glasgow saw the first full Carter gig in over a decade, and what a gig it was.Louder than Motorhead, brighter than a strobe machine on max, this is Carter USM stripped back to the classic 2 piece line up of JimBob (voice, guitars), Les Fruitbat (voice, Guitars), and the drum machine. Carter came, they saw, they played. And played. And played. Coming on stage to Chas and Dave doing Auld Lang Syne, the familiar and unexpected sight of the ominpresent yet long lost Jon Fat Beast - possibly the only roadie ever make the front cover of Melody Maker - greeted us with “I Don’t do this anymore” scrawled onto his naked torso. And then it was a seemingly unending stream of hi-NRG disco punkrock..

From the pumping euphoric opener of "Surfin' USM" - imagine if the Blur and the Pistols had formed a supergroup and asked Giorgio Moroder to produce them, and you get the idea - to the Solemn closer of "G.I. Blues", it was a string of classic electro-punk in a way that only a snobbish music press could deride and hate. From the endlessly bouncy “Only Living Boy in New Cross”, the paen to endless drinking that is “Anytime Anyplace Anywhere”, the long lost punk rock classic b-side of “Re-educating Rita”, the portable indie disco of “Sheriff Fatman”, every song tonight is a winner.

But songs like this connect with a certain time, a certain place, a certain memory with so many people. They don’t speak of the ostentatious bling of America, or the self-proclaimed greatness of doing the white line, or the narcissic self-loathing introspection of so many other bands. They speak of how crap Radio one is, of mercenary slum rent landlords, of binge drinking and nights out in a taxi where you don’t know where the hell you are, of being trapped on the Hammersmith and City line, of how rubbish production line pop is, of the secret in every street where people drink and run up a bill the pope couldn’t pay, drinking themselves into an early grave to escape the crushing numbness of existence, of the ingrained racism of institutions such as the Army. Songs that sing of the allday, everyday existence. Welcome to the grind.

These songs spoke to people, about their lives, and that’s why these songs live on in peoples lives. Much like Suede (in their early years, who ran with a peculiar britishness Carter pioneered), or  The Jam, Carter spoke to the people on the council estates and the highrises. The low, the downtrodden, the good, the bad, the average, and the unique. If you don’t know the songs by now, where were you in the nineties? Listening to Nirvana and Kurt Cobains teenage angst that paid off well? Get out of the bedroom and get back into the real world. Go and listen to the sadly absent “While You Were Out”, (a damning indictment of thatcherite hospital closures) instead. Just listen to that fragment of time, which sums up the living in the 90’s better than the rose tinted mockney parody that is “Parklife” or “What’s the story?”. And you know why? Because what Carter USM are stripped of that rock star bullshit. Its not some public schoolboy playing a mockney wideboy character, not at all. It is exactly what it is. And what you see is what you get.

And what you get is a back catalogue with more hits than Mike Tyson in a bar brawl, perfomed by two old punks playing the hits. But what hits. Magnificent hits. An epilepsy inducing light show fullof bright strobes and video backdrops (which Carter took around the music hall circuit back in 1992, when most bands wouldn’t provide a video show for anything less than Wembley Stadium), with songs that say everything about my life. And the life of the people around me. Hundreds of them. All packed into the same room, with a shared experience beyond just this two brief hours, but so much more also. 

If this is a brief return to playing live, just a couple of shows to say goodbye, then so be it – I’m glad to see them again playing the music nobody likes, but the fans truly love.Its better that than to see them do that than to limp onward into vast indifference with new material, disinterested fans, and zero critical acclaim; like so many other bands who confuse an initial burst of vast interest for a permanent return to the spotlight. You can quibble about the setlist – and there were some blindingly obvious classics not played tonight (Such as Rubbish, While You Were Out, and Shoppers Paradise) but pretty everything else you could hope to hear, you got.

For a couple of hours in a ballroom in Glasgow, one of Britains best ever bands were welcomed back to life again, if only briefly – and if you get the chance to go to see them, you might just love them as much as they deserve to be. Carter USM show tonight  just how great they were ... and how great songs transcend time and trends. Easily a contender for gig of the year, certainly the best gig I’ve ever seen of the dozen or so I have seen Carter play; Carter gave us a fantastic night out, and we danced like teenagers again. Tonight, we partied like its 1991. If – as some rock star once said, we glorify the past when the future dries up, then thank god the past was so damn good.

Ignore the NME, Mojo, Q and all the other detractors – tonight wasn’t cool, was never gonna make the gossip pages of the daily tabloids, because it was about the music, not the bullshit.  Carter USM easily prove that they are one of the bands you really must see before you die, if you ever get the chance.

You take your current flavour of the month and stuff it, because Carter USM have stood the test of time, and then some. See them. Now.

Setlist::-

SURFIN USM / SECOND TO LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT / GOOD GRIEF CHARLIE BROWN / MIDNIGHT ON THE MURDER MILE / SAY IT WITH FLOWERS / DO RE ME (SO FAR SO GOOD) / RE-EDUCATING RITA / SEALED WITH A GLASGOW KISS / RENT / ANYTIME ANYPLACE ANYWHERE / THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW CROSS / AFTER THE WATERSHED (EARLY LEARNING THE HARD WAY) / PRINCE IN A PAUPERS GRAVE / LENNY AND TERENCE / GLAM ROCK COPS / RSPCE /  LEAN ON ME I WON'T FALL OVER / ...AND BLOODSPORT FOR ALL / THE MUSIC NOBODY LIKES / THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

encore: IS WRESTLING FIXED / A SHELTERED LIFE / THIS IS HOW IT FEELS / SHERIFF FATMAN / G.I. BLUES

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