CARTER USM London Brixton Academy 19 November 2011


Here we are : five years, and 12 shows, since the first Carter reunion, and for me, having seen them 7 times since then, I'm starting to feel that maybe Carter and I are growing apart. Even the last time I said it was the last time, the last time, and maybe, with two years apart since the last show, I thought, maybe I'd go back again. See what it was like.

Tickets went on sale in March and I thought to myself, I'll do it again – albeit with reservations. Eight months later, and those reservations are still here. What more can I get now, doing this again? No new songs, no changes, just the same songs, in the same order. The same sense of gnawing predictability I had two years ago hasn't gone away. JimBob's wearing the exact same red shirt he was wearing three years ago. It's a nostalgia for the 2007 reunion, as well as the 1990-1993 glory years. The years that weren't all that anyway.

Sure, some of these songs are fabulous things. The words to the songs are ingrained within me. At times, material such as “While You Were Out” hasn't sounded as relevant in twenty years ago. Living in an austere age where everything costs too much, nobody has enough, and everything that the state is doing is cutting, closing, dismantling, and hurting the poor, then the averagely well off, and finally the rich, I was struck, vividly, that Carter always sound more relevant under a Government that is at war with all but the rich. Yesterday they took away our bus stop. Today they'll try to take our happy home.



And that, how come, two decades on, we're still fighting the same old wars, against the same old dumb motherfuckers? It's not about politics to me. It's about fairness. About a world where the financial and social inequalities are so brazen that there is, seemingly, not even the veneer of any equality at all exists : the only career aspiration there is is to win X-Factor or marry a footballer.

But this, the endless repetition of the same stuff, the same staging, the same old, same old, it's boring. I'm there, and I'm enjoying myself, but it's rote, repetition, predictable, and there's nothing new, no unique experience I'm getting from this, and it could be 2007, or 2008, or 2009, and for me, I want – no, I need - my music to go somewhere new, not live in an old world forever, and I'm bored of living in this past : it would be foolish to forget the past, but if you're always looking to what happened a long time ago, you'll miss the future and everything that beautiful that is happening around you now.

Goodbye Carter. I loved you, but we're through.It's not you. It's me.


- posted by Mark @ 7:39 pm