Shayne Carter

aka Big Sorry Brown, Shayne P. Carter


Shayne Carter might not quite match Chris Knox’s status as a Kiwi alt-rock hero, a legacy punk paratrooper, but he has the cheekbones.

Born in Dunedin in 1964, Carter was still a callow schoolboy when, inspired by Knox and his punked-up band The Enemy, he formed Bored Games with guitarists Wayne Elsey and Fraser Batts, bassist Jonathan Moore and drummer Jeff Harford.

Shayne Carter - Crystalator (solo acoustic gig at Whammy Bar, Auckland, 11 April 2015)
Chris Knox and The Nothing at Laneway, Auckland, 1 February 2010, with Shayne Carter on guitar, Roy Martyn on bass and Stefan Neville on drums
Photo credit: Photo by Jackson Perry
Joe 90 (Live at Bodega 6 May 2011)
Shayne P Carter, Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford, Melbourne, 2016.
Channel 39: Dunedin musician returns to old stomping ground, Aug 25, 2016
Dimmer - Evolution
Shayne Carter
Shayne P. Carter – Taite Music Prize 2017 finalist, 9 April 2017
RNZ Live: Shayne Carter and Don McGlashan – ‘Hooked, Line and Sunken’, Oct 7 2016
Shayne P Carter Offsider NZ tour poster, 2016.
Shayne Carter
A very young Bored Games at Kaikorai Valley High School Dance in 1979, with Shayne Carter on his knees beside Wayne Elsey.
Photo credit: Photo courtesy of Jeff Harford
Shayne Carter
Shayne Carter - Dialling a Prayer (solo acoustic gig at Whammy Bar, Auckland, 11 April 2015)
Shayne Carter
Photo credit: Photo by Georgia Schofield
Cheese on Toast interviews Shayne Carter
Dimmer - Degrees of Existence
Shayne Carter
An Iliad, 2018 – starringMichael Hurst with music composed and performed by Shayne Carter.
Dimmer at the time of 'Degrees of Existence' (2009). From left: Kelly Steven, Shayne Carter, Dino Karlis, and James Duncan
Shayne Carter and Dave "Mulch" Mulcahy, early 1990s
Photo credit: Murray Cammick Collection
She Speeds (Live at The Kings Arms, May 14, 2011)
Bored Games - Happy Endings
Shayne Carter, Dimmer.
Shayne Carter
Shayne Carter
Photo credit: Photo by Georgia Schofield
Dimmer play the Squid Bar, Auckland, at the time of the Crystalator single, 29 July 1994
Dimmer - I Believe You Are A Star
Randolph's Going Home - Live @ Bodega 06/05/11
At rehearsal at The Back Beat bar in Auckland, June 2011. From left, Shayne Carter, Julia Deans, Jon Toogood.
Photo credit: Photo By Adrian Malloch
Shayne Carter at Laneway 2012.
Photo credit: Photo by Jonathan Ganley
Shayne P Carter and Tiny Ruins
Don McGlashan and Shayne Carter - Live in the Lab (2016)
Shayne Carter covers Jimi Hendrix - If 6 was 9 (solo acoustic gig at Whammy Bar, Auckland, 11 April 2015)
Shayne Carter & Peter Jefferies - Randolph's Going Home - Bob Sutton Collection
RNZ Live: Shayne P. Carter – ‘Waiting Game’, Aug 19 2016
Shayne P Carter - Offsider (Flying Nun, 2016)
Real Groove, May 2006
Shayne Carter Big Band - Big Fat Elvis (Recorded late 1991 at Studio 13 and Super 8, Dunedin, NZ - produced for and released as part of the VHS compilation X/Way Vision, originally co-released by Xpressway and Drag City) - Bob Sutton Collection
In May 2019 Shayne Carter's memoir 'Dead People I Have Known' was published by Victoria University Press. The reviews were uniformly enthusiastic. A year later, it won best non-fiction book and best first non-fiction book at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
Dimmer in concert, mid-1990s. 
Photo credit: Photo by EJ Mathers
Trivia:

He hates mosquitos and hippies.

He loves: Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Sly Stone, Muddy Waters, football.

Carter briefly worked as a journalist/reporter in Dunedin before devoting himself full-time to music.

Carter’s dark humour is all over this extract from now-defunct label FMR, who signed Dimmer after Sony dumped the project: "The contract may well be signed in his blood but it was already drenched in the sweat of FMR staff as we battled to create an incomprehensible document that will shaft him from the moment we start selling his album".

His dad featured in the video for Evolution, the first single from Dimmer’s I Believe You Are A Star, but sadly, he died before the album was released.

Shayne was employed as Chris Knox’s caregiver after his stroke in 2009, and worked with Knox on some co-compositions, but nothing came of it.

Labels:

Flying Nun


Warner Music


FMR

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