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Don’t forget the songs (Part three)

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – 1992 The Love Album

It’s 4th May 1992, and worlds are turned upside down with special meetings, false starts and love. Of course, every story needs a soundtrack, and this was ours. Moving jobs, affections and realising what was being taken on (In mountainous proportions) needed relief. None of the songs are particularly relevant, other than perhaps the only cover version on the album, but Summer in a red Fiat Panda and a presumably hookey stereo, with the cassette in permanent residence is burnt on the heart and the senses for all time.

A plaintif piano, a banging instrumental introduction, and off we go….”Is Wrestling Fixed?” we are asked, and plenty of other questions too, in a sorry tale of a bed-ridden woman wheeled into a court. The band were always dismissed as a “Fun” act….but their cartoon appearance was just a distraction. This album has some serious undertones, and some angry overtones, all wrapped up in love. The stand out single “The only living boy in new cross” cracks us along at a rattling good pace….”Hello Good evening welcome to nothing much”, and then the trademark drum machine, sequencers and scratchy punk guitars provide us with a track worthy of any speeding Fiat Panda.

“Suppose you gave a funeral and nobody came” is next, and the opening lines are regularly sung here at Badham Towers whenever an election is on it’s way…

Go ahead you fuckin’ sadist

Pucker up and kiss some babies

Kiss ’em till they die of rabies

Get your tits out for the ladies

And then sooner than expected, the righteous anger turns to a melancholy outro that lasts a while and is all the better for it…And then to “England”…A bar room singalong for the inappropriate, a Barrel organ and once of the finest opening verses of any song named after a country…

I was born

Under a wandering star

In the second council house

A Virgo

Forceply removed

From the belly of my Ma

And raised on milk

And Pernod

On next to “Do re me so far so good”, an upbeat peaon to the elderly in winter…..Singalong football chorus, …..

The lyrics, by Jim Bob (Now author JB Morrisson…Buy his books, they are amazing), always raise a smile, but under the clever wordplay, there is a degree of social commentary that is still sadly missing in much of today’s music….Les “Fruitbat” Carter provides the music, and this album was before they spoiled it all and got a band (They didn’t spoil it of course…it was just different”)….

“After the Watershed” is now included on the album, although it wasnt back then (The Rolling Stones objected to the borrowing of lyrics, particularly as it was used in a song that deals with child abuse)…I include it here for completeness, and because it’s fantastic

“Look Mum No hands” is next, Funeral, Semtex and a sense of regret….And then into “While you were out”, a song about being out on tour and leaving your partner and child at home…..”Skywest and Crooked”, a sweeping ballad..that has Ian Dury on the outro………And then into the cover version…”The Impossible Dream”, a great song and a fantastic version that was Carter’s attempt at a Christmas Number 1, and well…It should’ve been

It’s not the greatest album in the world, but it’s a bloody great one. Both Jim and Les continue to make music and books and this makes me happy as they are without doubt two of the loveliest men in rock/pop……, but anyway it’s special to me, and that’s all that matters….

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