By: Brooksie

Brooksie — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:45:35 +0000

While everything you say is true, as you point out; everything Tom said was true, too. I knew a lot of Carter fans back in the day when they were the darlings of the NME. I was never a fan myself. I found myself not taking to them because of the people who did, as much as because of the band themselves. To me, Carter, with their weak politics, puns, witticisms, baggy shorts and forced working class accents, seemed ready made to appeal to one demographic; middle-class kids. They liked the accent, they liked the anti-establishment jokeyness. But these teenagers politics went no further than ‘bigger student grants’/'racism is bad’. Carter’s biggest failing was to appeal to the most insincere fanbase of all; the kind that *think* they’re smarter than they are, and want to be taken seriously. As soon as Nirvana came along, Carter might just as well have been a SAW side project. They were like an uptempo ‘Half Man Half Biscuit’, which made them seem very frothy indeed, especially when they had to compete with the ‘serious’ stuff that was coming out of America. I never disliked Carter, but middle-class rebellion always looks tacky, *especially* when it comes across so tame and unthreatening. Philip Schofield made a comment about their lack of originality when smashing up their instruments at the Brits, and one of them went for him. Problem was; they weren’t tough guys. Why put on a display just for the crowd when it clearly isn’t what you’re about? They weren’t the Sex Pistols, so why pretend? That underlined my issues with them at the time; they wanted to be seen as rebels, but they just *weren’t*. Even a friend (who was a fan) admitted they looked silly at that point.

Comments on: Let me let you into a secret

By: Brooksie