The CaterPOLLar -- ILM Artist Poll #23 -- The Cure -- voting thread

i got into the cure around 1990 as an elementary schooler and honestly you didn't even have to be that dour, just sort of a new wave kid. they had goofy gushy pop hits and dressed funny.

They were about being different, dark, and romantic. For the "weird" kids, the outsiders. I thought they were really experimental for a pop band. They did become more and more popular with each album, but their biggest commercial success was with one of their darkest release, Disintegration.

I was a broody black turtleneck 12 year old when KMKMKM came out, was both terrified and permanently altered the first time I heard it. Jumped off the bus with 'Friday', never went back.

same here

will admit to being freaked out by "subway song" when i got boys don't cry

The first time I heard the scream at the end I almost died. It still scares me when I forget it's coming. Great song though.

The crazy laugh at the beginning of "Shake Dog Shake" and the howl at the beginning of "Other Voices" were other great freaky moments for the teenage me.

Totally geeky/bragging story about me and the Cure:

My freshman year of college, I took a class in existentialism as an elective. I was the exact right age for that, and I loved it. We read all the regular stuff, Sartre et al. The professor was this middle-aged woman of murky mid-European origin, with long black hair streaked with gray. She wore black dresses with black shawls and gold hoop earrings, she was kind of this exotic philosopher Gypsy Queen. The TA was a gay French dude who wore leather vests with no shirt. For the final exam, we had a choice of essay test or we could write a five-page paper on anything of our choice that somehow reflected and summarized the course. So I decided to do the paper. I'd been listening to Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me a lot all year, and really loved "How Beautiful You Are." So I took the basic idea of that song and rewrote the Adam and Eve story and called it "An Existential Eden." I wrote the whole thing the night before it was due and stayed up til 6 in the morning. I put a little note at the beginning saying the paper was influenced by Sartre, Camus, and "Robert Smith of The Cure." When I went to pick up the paper the next week, it had "A+" written on the front page in big red letters (there was actually no such thing as an A+ at the school), and a handwritten note saying, "This is wonderful." So that's pretty much what the Cure meant to me in confused late adolescence.

I discovered them in early '89 just as "Fascination Street" broke. As a soundtrack to misery they made me giggle but, man, I loved their pop side, and after buying Japanese Whispers and Seventeen Seconds I heard the (good) sobby stuff as more good weird pop.

xp - that song totally has that existential parable quality to it! that is a sweet story

When I discovered Baudelaire about a year after The Cure, the connection was one of those great AHA moments

RS is so good at turning literature into songs. "Killing An Arab" really captures the climax and the whole meaning of "L'Étranger" into a three minute rocking pop song. And he wrote it when he was 17! I was so impressed by that.
They've had such a prolific and amazing career since that it often gets overlooked in a sea of gems. But I think it's one of the best first singles of all time.

Ballot sent. As expected, two-thirds of it comes from '85-'89. And since ctrl-F "Kyoto" is giving me no hits on this thread, allow me to lobby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U-XuH3P8ZI

Had to leave it out at the last minute. But THOTD is still well represented in my ballot.

I got into them with "The Top" but first saw them live on the "Head..." tour. For this (then) teen it was the dark romanticism (i.e. gothiness) plus tales of drunken hijiks plus they're cool-as-fuck look at that time - all teased hair and paisley shirts and cool Yohji Yamamoto looking suits and BLACK (Robert knew about looking cool at that time) - just a standout band in every sense that hit every mark in my dark little mind. 'Twas a good time.

Hey, Wish is really good! I may stretch to forty after all and throw most of it some points. I don't think I'd heard it all before, but I remember now I did have a full-print t-shirt with the flowers and the eyes and all. I must've looked great.

God, I should reread and edit my posts when posting from work.

I've been relistening to The Cure all week before making my ballot, the THOTD - Disintegration run is pretty much flawless. And Wish is mostly brilliant too.

Anyone else ever have this book?

http://www2.gol.com/users/fusae/newday/bookpix2/be01cbig.jpg

Some great stories in there, iirc.

yep!

A gift in '92 from my best friend at the time -- certainly eye-opening in detailing the band's drink and drug use.

yes! And the lyrics book as well.

oh god yes, I have that book

I got into The Cure through seeing their albums and iconography all over the place and wondering who this slightly creepy band with a bazillion albums was and were they going to be too "out there" for me to appreciate; then I went to a party at a friend's house who had cable and saw the "Just Like Heaven" video on MTV and went "woah, this is awesome pop music wrapped in a weird wrapper, I love this!" and shortly after that jjj got KMKMKM and pretty much called me up the instant after he heard "The Kiss" and was like "dude COME OVER HERE NOW you have to hear this"

I've basically been obsessed with them ever since

Rereading the book's newspaper clippings and band coments on the making of The Top persuaded me to buy the thing a couple months ago.

The story that I remember the most is someone (Lol?) trying to kick a hubcap back onto a car wheel while on quaaludes, not realising his thumb was trapped between the hub and the wheel.

A most excellent read -- not sure if this has been linked here but I know it was linked somewhere on ILX -- Roger O'Donnell's extensive memories of the making of Disintegration, with photos!
http://www.rogerodonnell.com/disintegration/

holy wow that was fantastic

I didn't know this

Writing parts

Each person’s demos for the songs were finished entities so for example when I brought a song like Fear Of Ghosts it had the drum parts, bass and keyboards. People didn’t really write new parts for other people’s songs. Simon wrote Lovesong and his demo sounds exactly the same as the finished song, he wrote Same Deep Water and Untitled as well. I will have to check who wrote what.

so Gallup wrote "Lovesong"!

he never wrote full lyrics for a song afaik, though he would give Robert suggestions (generally, not nec. for his own compositions)

in an interview I taped off TV in 1989 that no longer even exists in the TV station's archives, Robert said that when he was stuck on lyrics, Simon would post sheets of paper with lyrics on them underneath his door in the middle of the night

ballot sent.

ballot sent.

ballot sent.

TIB/BDC 7
SS 5
F 3
P 3
JW 5
TT 2
THOTD 3
KMKMKM 2
D 8
W 1
& 1 non-album single

ballot sent

I still have to start ranking the songs on my shortlist (blame the Olympics).

I discovered The Cure around '89, the Disintegration singles (all of their singles, in fact) were all over our local alternative radio station. So like most others here, I heard their gloomy side and their pop side right from the start, it was always part of who the Cure were for me. But I've never talked with anyone who followed them in the early 80's, who identified with their most gothic phase, had to suffer through their possible breakup (back when that might have seemed like the real deal and not a cliche), and then suddenly a year later they're back and releasing "Let's Go To Bed" and "The Lovecats", WTF?? Or maybe it wasn't so unexpected at the time?

listening to every Cure song I own - about 147 - in hopes of having a beautifully diverse, obscurity-rich ballot and the damn thing is turning into hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-album track-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit. They were more than an amazing singles band but holy shit were they an amazing singles band.

so is the deal that I can vote for both the regular version & the Mixed Up version of the same song? like I can vote for both "Close to Me" & to the Closer remix of it?

Yeah I'd say that's ok.

I really dislike this idea of splitting votes for songs based on alternate versions. I haven't seen this allowed in any other poll in which I've participated. Is everyone else really OK with this?

I mean, I'd love to specify the full 7+ minute version of "Just One Kiss," but I don't want to split the vote from people who don't specify a version.

Are really early Cure a punk band? I feel like there might be a separate genre for the Cure/U2/Jam/Joy Division strain that's kind-of-rough-n-powerpop-but-a-bit-weedy-not-fighty, but I'm pretty sure it isn't called that.

On another topic - why do most CD versions of "Charlotte Sometimes" and "The Walk" sound so terrible and muffled? The JW version of "The Walk" is the only decent, crisp-sounding version of that song that I've heard, and I've yet to hear "Charlotte" not sound wretched (which is weird considering how clear most Cure recordings from this period sound).

the pre-3IB demos have some stuff that sounds surprisingly like the Vibrators

Are really early Cure a punk band?

yes, imo (same w/Warsaw-era Joy Division)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmoFgi2EB9c

At the very least, The Easy Cure were punk if the Buzzcocks were

so is the deal that I can vote for both the regular version & the Mixed Up version of the same song? like I can vote for both "Close to Me" & to the Closer remix of it?

yeah, I could have easily squeezed the closer remix into my top 40 solely on loving the original the two originals so much, but I stayed away from the Mixup Up album, except for "Never Enough"

I got to thinking about who were the biggest thing to come out of the punk movement. I guess U2 have it in a walk, but The Cure might be second? Or Blondie, I don't know - it's kind of hard to get a handle on, when their peaks are happening decades apart.

Biggest in what sense? If chart success, you could make a case for Adam & The Ants.