Beware if your name is Phillip Scholfield!

I was initially going to do my game changer article on the seminal album by The Clash, London Calling, the album on which they found their stride, but sadly never bettered. London calling has been on constant rotation throughout my life since the day it arrived from one of those music mail order catalogues we had in the back of Q magazine before the internet, if you can remember that far back?

Paul mate, Londons calling, best stop smashing up your bass and answer the phone eh lad.

But no, oh no! I thought about why I was listening to The Clash, why did I seek out that album, with those cool cats in white jeans and hand printed slogan shirts (which of course I emulated during my college years)? OK, part of that was the Manic Street Preachers, but more importantly, it was Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine who I heard many years before. A Post-Punk crusty band, the term band used loosely here as it was just two guys with guitars and a drum machine as was the fashion in the 80’s.

I cant even find the tracklist to this any more!

I remember in the middling 90’s, ’93’ perhaps, my dad got me a tape from the library which was entitled Reading Festival Indie Years with a tonne of Shoegaze and Indie stuff on it (if I remember) as well as Wild child by Iggy Pop for some reason unbeknownst to me. However, all these fell by the wayside when I heard Sheriff Fatman by some band called Carter USM. My mind was blown from then on in.

Wake up you sleepy headcases!

What a tune, fast paced, social commentary, tongue in cheek, massive chorus, I hammered that song for weeks until I’d located some more albums in the library, which I then borrowed, and recorded on to tape. 20 years later and I still get goosebumps when I hear that synth line intro with Jim Bob declaring “Ladies and Gentleman…”

Once I’d got 30 Something taped, I tracked down the other albums at the time, The Love Album and 101 Dalmatians, and continued to discover amazing tracks in the same vain as Sheriff Fatman; Glam Rock Cops, 24 Minutes From Tulse Hill, Any time Any Place Any Where. Tracks that were quite often dark, sardonic commentaries on 1980’s Thatcherite Britain, alcoholism, suicide, the armed forces, a whole cornucopia of issues dealt with in their own inimitable Post Punk style. The lyrical trappings of The Clash were there, but this was something different, something undeniably 80’s granted, but to this date, I’ve never stopped listening to them. The tracks still stand up, the punk rock bile rolled with pop chart hooks, the very well placed samples, and a drum machine, later to be replaced with an actual drummer called Wez.

Carter kickstarted my interest in punk rock, led me to The Clash as a kid and everything else which followed. I was kind of expecting this to be written up as an album game changer initially, but its turned out to be a single song buried on an obscure tape from 1992. Jim Bob, Fruitbat, I salute you!