Images....

Eating Horse?

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/horses-for-courses-as-diners-eye-off-equine-entrees-20100708-101ws.html

You have to be kidding me.

Horses are a bastion of regality; an animal that while not as intelligent as, say, a dolphin, still exude an air of such grace that to kill one in the name of food is just simply wrong. If you have ever looked a horse in the eye, you will know that there is an intelligence there that cannot be denied. Behind those eyes are memories; thousands of years of mankind treating their steeds like members of the family. It is an ancient acknowledgement that our lives and theirs are forever entwined. Do not forget that mankind has existed side by side with horses since 3500BC.

These beautiful, graceful, INTELLIGENT animals have no place on a dinner plate. You wouldn't place your dog on your dinner plate. Horses are infinitely more regal and important to the human race.

This is WRONG. Oppose it wherever you can. I pity those that think that a horse is right for a dinner plate. Why are human beings so goddamn stupid sometimes?

s.

Pre Release album rundown #1: HOLD YOUR HORSES

For anyone that's interested, I thought I'd start to talk about the songs from our forthcoming album THE BLACK BOOK OF THE UNIVERSE. It's due for release next week (hopefully - at the moment there's a backup at the pressing plant). The album is definitely NOT contemporary, ha ha.

HOLD YOUR HORSES:

This is the second song i wrote for the album. It was written in my former apartment on a day off. I was just sitting on the couch listening to sounds reaching me from other apartments, the background hum of traffic etc etc. That started me off. I really wanted to encapsulate the feeling of solidarity I was feeling - being shut of from everyone else - in this case being a solo artist for the first time without having a band or management or record label - basically being right back at the point i was when I was 18 and first started out in bands.

I got the first half of the song pretty easily - just an acoustic ditty, but when i got to the end of the second chorus i realised that the song needed to go somewhere else. I'd been listening to a lot of early Genesis which completely threw the rule book of songwriting out the window, and i decided to just fuck it up and go wherever my mind took me. When i'd finished the thing i liked most about the entire song is that it just lurched from this quasi-medieval jaunt into a rock opera esque number. At first it seemed a bit too weird. but after repeated listens it really grew on me.

Clouds #1

I freakin' love clouds!

Happenings....

The Black Book Of The Universe has a release date of 4/6/10. We are really excited. It's nearly a year to the day that we were freezing our arses off in the Penrose State Forest shooting the album cover and other snaps.

Since my last post we've had some great live reviews from our Vasco Era tour (and some erm, not so good ones). I've attached one of the good ones, and one of the bad ones. Yin and Yang and all that!

So what's on the cards? I'm doing a little acoustic show on the 18th of May at Cafe Lounge. Rores is helping out on percussion and Pabs on 2nd guitar. Gonna sneak in a few cheeky covers i think.

The next step is sorting out hoo-ha surrounding the release, and crossing my fingers that people will dig it!

xox

LIVE REVIEW/SPECTRUM/30/4/10 by Doubtfulsounds, www.fasterlouder.com.au

Simon Carter has been hard at work over the last year recording, mixing and a preparing to release his debut solo album The Black Book Of The Universe. On the back of a support tour with The Vasco Era he played a set with his band that seemed to rock and roll with its own surging momentum. The band was exceptionally tight and seemed a great deal more relaxed than previous gigs when they were still finding their feet live.

Carter’s solo songs swung from classic pop to almost Pink Floyd guitar sounds and progressions. By the nature of his songwriting the songs stood out from pretty much everything that is happening on the local Sydney scene. Absent are distortion drenched garage rockisms or electro infused sounds and in their place is a deluge of melody and clever arrangements. Songs like Symbio brought to mind a strange jam session between Tears For Fears and Style Council, it is a fantastic classic sounding pop song that demands radio play.

The approach that Carter has taken with his songs is a bold one. In lesser hands the slow solos, twin keyboards and dramatic song structures would fall flat but on stage the band is so locked in and Carter sings and plays with such conviction that it all works. In The Wilderness I Wept rose and fell, rocked and swayed like Suede with a pulsing bass and some atmospherics that accelerated into the chorus with swagger and an urgency. It was controlled yet felt like that moment when a rollercoaster drops. Bombast never sounded so good.

Eschewing current trends Carter has a batch of timeless songs that don’t regress to slavish retro-isms. He showed that he can deliver them live with a killer band and fittingly included a sugar rush version of White Light/White Heat that was more akin to Bowie’s version than The Velvet Underground’s. Like Bowie did so successfully, Carter showed he is in his own way attempting to put some credibility back into artful and creative pop music.

LIVE REVIEW/INPRESS/CORNER HOTEL/10/4/10

Ex The Cops frontman Simon Carter introduces his band as The Salesmen. What this sextet's spruiking, we're not buying. A pair of keyboardists bookend the stage and my plus one enquires "What's their demographic?". Much is made of mid-song dynamic shifts and there's an improv quality to song structures. "This song is about losing your fucking marbles," intros Carter, but this band look like they would be the least likely individuals to run amok. Time Crawls."

The Mountain

Yo! This is the first single from my debut solo rekurd "The Black Book Of The Universe".

It's called The Mountain.

There's a FREE DOWNLOAD below my rantings.

The genesis for the song popped into my head as me and my missus were driving down a dirt road to Paradise, near Glenorchy, New Zealand (Yes, Paradise is a real place! I've attached a photo of the valley from our horse-riding vantage point. I felt utterly ridiculous on the back of a horse, but then I actually started to like it. Such amazing creatures.) The beauty there is just so amazing that it spurred the cogs of my mind into action (which doesn't happen very much i'm afraid to say!) and as we got out of the car and looked up the Dart River Valley, the chorus popped into my head and i filed it away. Later I sang it into my mobes back in Queenstown so I wouldn't forget it. When I got back to Sydney, I finished the track off.

It's a song about feeling completely over-awed by your surroundings. Feeling small, alone and utterly helpless in the face of such an overbearing problem that you can't imagine how you can ever triumph over it. 2009 was full of those types of situations for me and my family.


6 The Mountain by simonjcarter

supporting........The Vasco Era

Got an email from my loverly booking agent Harbour about supporting the Vasco Era which I jumped at. I have met them at a Melbourne BDO when The Cops were playing on the same day as them and from memory they are lovely lads. Their new stuff sounds great too.

Will be an absolute blast to play venues I haven't played in ages like the Zoo and the Corner (last time was with Bethadupa I think). The plan is for us to work up to playing these venues ourselves in the not too distant future (hopefully).

I have scored the main support on these shows which is great.

Saturday 10th April @ The Corner, Melbourne
Friday 16th April @ The Cambridge, Newcastle
Saturday 17th April @ OAF, Sydney
Saturday 23rd April @ The Zoo, Brisbane

www.myspace.com/thevascoera