Dave Quantic Remembers...

The other day I was getting my haircut. Sitting in my barber’s chair was one of the many activities of the last few days where I found myself without the necessary diversions that would allow my mind some peace from thinking about what happened to my friend, Carter. Normally I’m pretty chatty with my barber, but sitting there, I couldn’t help but run over the last few moments of Carter’s life and how terrible it must have been.

Then, out of nowhere, Edie Brickell’s song, What I Am started playing on the barber shop’s loud speakers and I was immediately freed from the torture of Carter’s last few moments and transported back to Mrs. Jenkin’s English class. We were listening to a guest lecturer from Wichita State speak on “philosophy.” Like generations of pretentious academics before him, he was lamenting the sad state of affairs of “today’s youth” using Edie’s song as proof that kids only want to “stay in the shallow water before they get too deep.” Apparently, this professor had never heard of poetry and irony.

I felt personally offended by his critique of a pop song that I rather liked. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought the album and listened to it over and over again. To this day, I can probably sing the album from the beginning to end from memory. I remember feeling proud of myself that I had “discovered” a new artist. But my friend Carter soon outpaced me in his discovery of new music. Somehow he knew about songs that didn’t play on local pop station KKRD. Thanks to him, our soundtrack now included REM, Dee-Lite, more REM. I started to look around for new music and I discovered old solo stuff by Peter Gabriel and I remember feeling so much pride when I turned Carter on to it. We were both blown away by Gabriel’s artistry. The only difference was that I was in awe of it and Carter saw it as a challenge. One day he was going to be that kind of artist.

Once, while still in high school, Carter gave me an album by some group called The Smiths and told me I should listen to it. I resisted the music at first. Giving the CD back to him, I claimed ignorance about the music, the strange lyrics, everything. It wasn’t until we both went to SMU and I started loving Morrissey’s solo albums that I began to search backward for his musical origins. I walked to Carter’s dorm room which was just a few doors down from me. “Morrissey used to be in the Smiths?” I said. I’m sure Carter just rolled his eyes. I listened to Louder Than Bombs once again and a year or so after Carter first gave me the CD and after escaping the suffocation of small town Kansas, I was ready to accept The Smiths and all of their genius.

Last Fall we caught up when he was in LA on tour with Edie Brickell. The night before his concert, we hung out after he had taped a performance on Jay Leno. To any other wannabe rock star, the occasion would have called for hookers and cocaine while hanging out at a fancy club. Carter decided to hang with me instead. We hung out at my favorite rocker dive bar and tried to get into a few other more fancy places. I was embarrassed by my inability to get us in to any kind of cool club, but Carter didn’t care. We just went back to his hotel and watched TV and talked, which is pretty much all we did growing up since grade school. Well, that’s not true. Carter and the guys mostly played video games and I watched them play video games. Later, they switched to playing music and I listened to them play music. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to participate. It was just nice to sit and listen to them make music. Chris, Scott, Dave, Eric, Josh. I was their one man audience and it felt good to have such a cool and creative circle of friends.

When he visited last fall, Carter set aside a couple of tickets at the concert at the Henry Ford Theatre. I remember feeling so much pride as I watched Carter play with the New Bohemians – a band that meant so much to me so many years before (and still does). After years of sitting in empty drainage culverts listening to the guys play their mandolins (the acoustics were better there), here was my good friend, playing with a band on a stage in Los Angeles. A band that signaled my coming of age. A band that served as a bridge between the suffocating world of small town Kansas and the rest of my life – in far away places where I didn’t feel so alone. It felt so good knowing that Carter was right where he belonged and his musical abilities and his soulfulness were on display for all to see. I only hoped that one day it would be his name on the marquee as headliner. I always knew that’s where he belonged – up there on stage, performing for anyone who would listen. I still hope people will hear his artistry in recordings, in their memories of his performances. I want people to feel what I always felt being his friend and audience: my life is more beautiful, more meaningful because Carter and his music helped make it that way.