Bad News & Help Needed: Tom Carter (Charalambides/The Mike Gunn) Hospitalized in Berlin

Received some tragic news recently from the Nameless Sound folks, about Houston expat & psychedelic/experimental music icon Tom Carter. Oldtimers might remember him from long-long-long-gone psych-rock band The Mike Gunn, but over the past two decades he’s probably become better-known for his work as part of Charalambides, a profoundly influential crew that also includes his now-ex-wife Christina Carter.

Back when I was starting out as a DJ at {KTRU}, Tom was one of the people who trained me in the quasi-subtle art of DJing, and even back then, I remember feeling a little starstruck — I was a kid, for one thing, where he’d already been in multiple bands and was a pretty well-respected guy in Houston and beyond. I never knew him real well, but from my brief interactions with him, he seemed like a really cool, intensely smart, very nice (and very soft-spoken, if I remember correctly) guy.

Now, unfortunately, it seems Tom needs our help. He and Charalambides were touring Europe in early June when he developed an extremely serious case of pneumonia and had to be hospitalized in Berlin. The illness got so bad doctors put him into a medically-induced coma to allow his body to try to recover. He’s now out of the coma, thankfully, and he can breathe on his own again, but he’s still in intensive care over in Germany, and the doctors there seem to think it’s might not be ’til early next year that he’ll be fully recovered.

Obviously, this kind of illness and the recovery that goes with it can get expensive (even though I think Germany has universal healthcare, I dunno if it covers non-citizens, and there’re definitely going to be ancillary costs to Tom & his family due to him being unable to work for most of a year, either way), so Christina & some other friends have started the Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust to collect donations to help Tom keep afloat during his rehab and beyond.

You can donate directly via a couple of places — there’s the Help Tom Carter Website (the link to the donation page is here), and then there’s the Tom Carter Appeal page set up by the good people at Volcanic Tongue (who are also giving proceeds of the sale of all Charalambides, Tom Carter, & Christina Carter releases to the Trust).

Help out any way you can, y’all…