Fact #162099
When:
Short story:
Carter USM play their last gig ever at Guildford Festival in the UK.Full article:
Les ‘Fruitbat’ Carter (Carter USM) : We were thoroughly sick of the music business by then, and we’d just come off a depressing American tour playing to maybe 50 or 200 people a night. Jim and I had decided at the gig in Baltimore to end the band, and we decided that Guildford would be our last show.
We didn’t want to do the farewell concert thing. We just wanted to go out with one really great last show. So the only ones who knew was me and Jim, and the roadie and the bus driver.
It was a brilliant gig. People were coming up to us after and saying it was the best they’d ever seen us play. Martin Goldschmidt, the owner of Cooking Vinyl came up and said, ‘I can’t believe how brilliant you are.’ And we said, ‘Oh, sorry, but that was the last one.’
He was really, really depressed because he’d just invested a lot of money into us. The band couldn’t believe it when we told them. They were getting paid a good wage and they though it would go on forever, so it was like pulling the rug out from under them. We didn’t feel to bad about that though, because they’d been winding us up.
We hadn’t told anybody except a couple of our roadies, so even the band didn’t know. It was a bit like pulling the rug out from under their feet. We’d been a cash cow for them, because they were on a good regular wage from us. But we didn’t feel too bad about it, because they’d always been winding us up, and they were pretty insensitive to how miserable we’d been feeling on the US tour. For us, we knew it was the end of our career, and we were on the way down, but they treated it like a big holiday, like a party.
Jim and I were still great mates. The only time when we had arguments with each other was 1991, when it was all taking off, because things were growing too fast and we weren’t ready for it, and our egos got out of control. It was all a bit of a shock. One minute no-one wanted to know us and the next minute everyone wanted to know us. It took a while to adjust to that and we took it out on each other. But once we got over that, we remained friends through the rest of the band’s career, and we still are friends. We’re probably better mates now than we’ve ever been. We’re the only band I know that never had drug problems. We left that to the crew.
We weren’t that clever with our money. There was never anything in the bank. We had accountancy bills of £70,000. The tax system worked three years in arrears so in 1994, when we weren’t making any money, they were taxing us on what we’d made in 1992. We’d spent it, mostly at the bar. So we ended up having to pay it off in instalments.
I didn’t ever want to be in a band again. I was going to write a musical, which I started doing. I got halfway through it when I formed the new band. The songs were getting a bit to pretentious so I decided to stop and write some punk songs. And I rang up Carter’s old agent and said, I want to do a tour, and he said OK. Then I got off the phone and though, ‘Hell, I haven’t actually got a band.’ So I rang up a bunch of old mates, and put a band together like that. And it’s been going on like that ever since.
Now (July 00), when I play in Australia I pick up a local band, and the same in America or whatever. I’ve no desire to be a hugely successful pop star ever again. I have a website, where people can download MP3s and if they like them, they can send me some money. Then, when I get enough money, I press up 1000 copies of a CD, and you can make a profit that way and keep going.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Q magazine)
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We didn’t want to do the farewell concert thing. We just wanted to go out with one really great last show. So the only ones who knew was me and Jim, and the roadie and the bus driver.
It was a brilliant gig. People were coming up to us after and saying it was the best they’d ever seen us play. Martin Goldschmidt, the owner of Cooking Vinyl came up and said, ‘I can’t believe how brilliant you are.’ And we said, ‘Oh, sorry, but that was the last one.’
He was really, really depressed because he’d just invested a lot of money into us. The band couldn’t believe it when we told them. They were getting paid a good wage and they though it would go on forever, so it was like pulling the rug out from under them. We didn’t feel to bad about that though, because they’d been winding us up.
We hadn’t told anybody except a couple of our roadies, so even the band didn’t know. It was a bit like pulling the rug out from under their feet. We’d been a cash cow for them, because they were on a good regular wage from us. But we didn’t feel too bad about it, because they’d always been winding us up, and they were pretty insensitive to how miserable we’d been feeling on the US tour. For us, we knew it was the end of our career, and we were on the way down, but they treated it like a big holiday, like a party.
Jim and I were still great mates. The only time when we had arguments with each other was 1991, when it was all taking off, because things were growing too fast and we weren’t ready for it, and our egos got out of control. It was all a bit of a shock. One minute no-one wanted to know us and the next minute everyone wanted to know us. It took a while to adjust to that and we took it out on each other. But once we got over that, we remained friends through the rest of the band’s career, and we still are friends. We’re probably better mates now than we’ve ever been. We’re the only band I know that never had drug problems. We left that to the crew.
We weren’t that clever with our money. There was never anything in the bank. We had accountancy bills of £70,000. The tax system worked three years in arrears so in 1994, when we weren’t making any money, they were taxing us on what we’d made in 1992. We’d spent it, mostly at the bar. So we ended up having to pay it off in instalments.
I didn’t ever want to be in a band again. I was going to write a musical, which I started doing. I got halfway through it when I formed the new band. The songs were getting a bit to pretentious so I decided to stop and write some punk songs. And I rang up Carter’s old agent and said, I want to do a tour, and he said OK. Then I got off the phone and though, ‘Hell, I haven’t actually got a band.’ So I rang up a bunch of old mates, and put a band together like that. And it’s been going on like that ever since.
Now (July 00), when I play in Australia I pick up a local band, and the same in America or whatever. I’ve no desire to be a hugely successful pop star ever again. I have a website, where people can download MP3s and if they like them, they can send me some money. Then, when I get enough money, I press up 1000 copies of a CD, and you can make a profit that way and keep going.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Q magazine)