The Carpenters

A typical sextet performing rough framing music in a typical concert "venue".

The Carpenters are an experimental, avant-garde performance group. They are notable for being the largest, longest living experimental musical act in history dating back almost two-hundred-thousand years and comprised of innumerable musicians from across the world. Their performances are staged on "work sites" in which a single performance can last anywhere from one or two hours to weeks, months or even years. The Carpenters are usually paid by a carpenters union, but many are freelance "sit-in" performers. Millions, perhaps billions of recordings of performances exist but are hidden from the public eye using a sly linguistic trick.

Early Career

To chart the entire career span of The Carpenters is nearly impossible. We do know that early performances were usually held during the day and that the timbre of the music performed was quite different than it is today. Early instruments were made of stone or bone and the early sound was very much more percussive than the later scratchy sounds developed in the Middle East and finally "The Whine" perfected in North America and Japan. Early performances were much better attended and music historians suspect that indeed the early performances were much "more pure" without interest in high-tech gear and flashy stage effects.

Early Public Performances

Artist rendition of Prehistoric Jesus contemplating what rocks

Public performances of carpentry had been forbidden since late prehistory when prehistoric Jesus walked from hut to hut passing out pieces of bark and leaves with shoddily drawn pictures trying to gather people to watch him build a wooden marijuana pipe. This act of promotion was met with great anger from fellow members of The Carpenters who quickly formed a mob and attempted to fasten Prehistoric Jesus to a rock. As there was no method of doing this yet invented, Prehistoric Jesus survived, but was cast out of The Carpenters.

Structural Performance and The Birth Of The Avant Garde

It is postulated that during early performances, a byproduct of music was discovered- structural performance, as it is called in critical circles, was discovered soon after the group formed and quickly became integrated into their performances. After the discovery of structural performance, where two byproducts are left behind after each performance- waste, also known as "scrap" and a product, often called a "building" or "furniture". This byproduct became very valuable for The Carpenters, providing them with something to sell at the end of each performance. Since the development of structural performance, The Carpenters rarely charge for their performances, and in fact, rarely perform in front of audiences- the "building" or "furniture" is sold and the performers paid either by a manager or a union. It was the development of "buildings" and "furniture" that created one of the principle schizms in The Carpenter's career and art; since prehistoric times the music of The Carpenters is not performed for an audience but for the byproducts. This single fact makes The Carpenters the longest, most prolific and enduring avant-garde musical group in history.

Middle Career

The "middle era" of The Carpenters career, and indeed their career as a whole, can be defined along with the technology that accompianies them. In the early 4th century AD, Japanese musicians developed an instrument composed of a "blade" with a serrated edge that when dragged upon wood created a scraping sustained tone. The act of "saw music" also had the added benefit of cutting the wood in two which aided in the "structural performance" of the carpenters art.

The Carpenters were most prolific in their middle career on the Asian Continent performing thousands of shows every year. Byproducts of these performances can still be experienced today across the Asian continents.

Early Fame And Tragedy

In the middle-east, Harvey Christ, (see Famous Ray's Original Jesus), a solo saw-and-nail man from Nazareth Kentuckistan, in the first documented act of showboating in The Carpenters, had himself nailed to a piece of wood as an pre-historical satire with several people watching, forming an audience. As public performances in front of intentional live audiences had been forbidden for The Carpenters since 129,000, The Carpenters elected to kick Harvey out of the group and supposedly gave him the name Jesus, after the original showboater and outcast band-member, Prehistoric Jesus. This single act of showboating threatened to tear the band apart. Civilization's growing dependence on The Carpenter's musical byproducts however were such that the band was forced to remain together. Not until recent history and the creation of the easy listening group The Carpenters, will the band ever meet such fame and utter tragedy.

Some performances use ancient methods and tools to achieve a "pure sound"

Later Years And Genrefication of The Carpenter's Music

It wasn't until much later in history that the music and performances of The Carpenters became divided into specific sub-groups or genres of musical performance. To this date The Carpenters perform roughly 10 genres of music including:

Genres Performed By The Carpenters

• Rough Framing Often characterized by heavy loud percussion, futuristic short staccato punctuations of air-powered pneumatic instruments, extended periods of glissandos with varying durations and pitches performed by modern "saw-men" and "drillers" and occasional steel on steel percussion. Rough Framing performances tend to last from one to two months and generally result in a building, typically a "house" or "office". The duration of rough framing music is often affected by conductors called "building inspectors" who often like to extend the period of the music even if it requires use of the "stop-work-rest" (also known as the "week rest" rest) that can result in periods of avant-garde silence of days, weeks or even months.

• Trim Often characterized by occasional percussion from pneumatic punctuations, the quiet more percussive sawing sound produced using the technique called "coping", and rhythmic interludes, usually performed at the end of the work, called "sanding".
• Other Genres Include...

• Cabinet Performed nearly always in specialized studios containing specialized instruments and "recording equipment", cabinetmusik is characterized by detail-oriented short duration notes with the smell of glue and often the bass/noise tones of large vacuum machines. Cabinetmusik uses such techniques as "the dado", "the dovetail" and "the rabbit", clearly references to animals and ancient royalty suggesting that cabinetmusik is indeed the oldest musical form performed by The Carpenters and, in fact the oldest form of any music.
• Joisting
• Finish
• Theater
• Roofing
• Siding

The Twenty First Century and Beyond

A secret recording studio of The Carpenters where Cabinetmusik is often recorded

Only now are the struggles of the late twenieth century calming down and the wounds of the last forty years being healed. A renewed disinterest in high-art, experimental music, and culture has afforded a newfound anonymity to The Carpenters allowing them once again to move into the shadows where they have performed their special brand of intense performance art since the dawn of time.

Leading members of The Carpenters are currently developing performance styles to lead the group into the 21st century and beyond. These new developments include the addition of highly-intelligent robots to take the place of the rather monotonous job of the "saw-man". Changes are also being made in so-called "building materials" that will change the timbre of the music as well as advances in "adhesives" and the once frowned-upon act of "measuring", also known as "the silent music". When asked about the future of the music, Andre Goporcu, critic for The Journal of New Sounds has commented that "The Carpenters will be showing us some very new, cutting edge performance techniques over the next thirty years. Too bad most of us will never see or hear them."

Long-running dispute with AT&T

The carpenters had an 18-month struggle with the telephone provider over their efforts to call interplanetary craft, stretching to 14 visits from engineering personnel, who consistently would say that their broadband equipment must be malfunctioning. Eventually, a passing telecomms engineer noticed a frequency-suppressor on their line and they have been able to get through just fine since then, although the aliens are threatening a lawsuit and they are having problems with communing with the dead.