Many of our friends know Tom Carter very well. He is an internationally revered musician whose work has touched so many people but to us Tom will always be that guy we met at UH who wore The Misfits T-Shirt. You see, Clinton, Larry, and I went to university with Tom and he has been a wonderful and dear friend ever since. We played with Tom in various bands including Schlong Weasel, Herpes Media Blitz, and at times with some variant of the Mike Gunn.
One song “Tom’s in the Bathroom” was written when Scott Grimm, Clinton, and I had a huge ranking session where we wrote songs making fun of Tom. While “Tom’s in the Bathroom” survived as a Mike Gunn song, sadly, various other odes to Tom eating all Scott’s food and some song that went something like “I like Buttered toast. I like Buttered toast. OH No all the butter is gone! Tom ate all the butter! Noooooooo!” (This is what you do when you are bored in the dorms.) The funny thing about that story is Tom really had his feelings hurt by that at the time. Though that’s not as funny as when Tom was writing a term paper and Clinton and I hit a button on his mac and the paper disappeared… Now THAT was hilarious!!! Tom was SO mad, he smashed a glass bottle on the floor and started rubbing his palms in it until he bled and Clinton and I, realizing how serious this was, were trying as hard as we could not to laugh but when Tom did the glass thing, well, that just made it all the worse and our faces just turned beet red from trying to stay serious and then we just burst out laughing our asses off. Needless to say, we retyped his paper but that’s still one of Tom’s best freak-out moments. Though that Mike Gunn show where he implanted a mop in the wall of Mary Jane’s runs a close second. Come to think about it, Tom’s probably the reason I find people freaking out like that funny to this day. But I digress. There is some serious business here that I need to discuss.
See, while on tour with Charalambides last month, Tom Carter was hospitalized in Berlin for pneumonia. Due to complications, he was put in a medically induced coma that lasted weeks. Tom’s recovery was uncertain at first and some doctors even suggested he may not pull through but on June 18th he was pulled out of the coma and thankfully his prognosis is good, though questions remain about long-lasting complications. On July 10th, Tom was transferred to a medical rehabilitation facility in Germany, near the Baltic Sea where he will receive medical care, monitoring, and physical rehabilitation. It is expected Tom’s recovery will take months, and he will remain in Germany for the time being. If all goes as planned, doctors have recommend that he may be able to return to work and regular activity by January 2013.
Because of this, The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust has been set up to take donations that will go toward the considerable expenses related to Tom’s recovery. Please consider a contribution here: http://helptomcarter.org/donate
Because Tom means so much to us, we here in Houston are putting together three benfit shows for Tom. Sandy Ewen (Weird Weeds), John Cramer (Project Grimm, The Mike Gunn) and I are organizing a rock show at Rudyard’s, Jonathan Jindra (Binarium) is putting together showcase of local experimental musicians the following day at The Railyard, and David Dove (via Nameless Sound) is planning a third event sometime in September. While details are constantly evolving, below is what we know as of today. Check our Live Shows page for further updates.
TOM CARTER BENEFITS SHOWS
Friday 24 August @ Rudyard’s
1 am Project Grimm
12am The Linus Pauling Quartet (playing a couple Mike Gunn songs)
11 pm Dead Mineral
10pm Hearts of Animals
Doors 9pm, Music 10pm(!!!)
21+
Pay what you can – suggested donation $10
*100% of the door money goes to to The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust
*100% of the sales made that night of the new LP4 album “Bag of Hammers” will go to The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust
Rudyard’s British Pub
2010 Waugh Drive, Houston, TX 77006
(713) 521-0521
http://www.rudyardspub.com/
Saturday 25 August @ The Railyard
Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith – improvised duo
Richard Ramirez / Brian Traylor (night at noon) – noise duo
FLCON FCKER – live handmade electronics interfaced with laptop
A Week of Kindness (Sean E. Matzus)
Eric Todd – solo guitar
8pm to 11pm
All Ages
$5
*100% of the money collected from the door and from the donation jars goes to to The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust
The Railyard
2020 Commerce Street
Houton, TX 77002
http://www.facebook.com/pages/RailyardHTX/196256367064557
TBA September
Nameless Sound will present an intimate show some time in September. This is still in the planning stages but I have heard that Jandek is confirmed and I have seen the proposed venue and it is really really cool.
Regarding the “lost paper” incident, you are misleading our audience about our, er…. vintage. That was not actually a Mac, it was an Apple II and I think it was running either Word Perfect or perhaps Apple Writer. I think I blocked Tom’s broken glass immolation from my memory, or had it conveniently erased through sustained substance abuse, but I am sure that whatever reaction he had was fully justified. Tom had the misfortune of having to not only suffer fools, but to suffer many of them – in parallel.
No way it was one of those early macs you know the light beige ones that looked like the walking trash can robot from Star Wars? Likely the Mac 128K. But yr right in that it was likely Word Perfect or Apple Writer.
Herre we go.. One of these guys…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
Then it wasn’t mine. I never owned one of those…. I am pretty sure it was my Apple II E. Which was also beige.
No, it wasn’t your computer; it was someone else’s. Dunno if it was Tom’s or whose but this wasn’t in your dorm room if I recall correctly.
All my best thoughts to Tom, but I read this as “Scott, Clinton, and I had a huge WANKING session”, and I was momentarily wondering if I had suppressed some college experimentation memories. I still have those tapes somewhere, I think. Also, my (always shaky) memory of the story is that it was Clinton’s computer in Clinton’s dorm room.
I think Scott’s right. Mike Gunn was my roommate at that time, as I recall, and our room was on the 4th floor of Bates Hall.
Yeah, I think you guys are right and it was Clinton’s apple iie. I think the Mac I was thinking of was the ones they had set up around campus and not the one in the dorm room.