The Cure: The Head on the Door poll

a night like this

I like the live version on Live In Orange better than the album version, but still, OTM

not their strongest album by any means...The Baby Screams and A Night Like This are so far ahead of the others it's not funny

was actually thinking about this the other day

I know Dan will vote for Push

Push used to be my favourite when I were young but these days I find it too depthlessly saccharine

whereas the two I named are pulsating, psychotic trips into the dark heart of the soul...AND great pop-songs too!

I voted 'A Night Like This' too... Funny story - for some reason - when I was in HS, liking this record a bunch despite my normal love of raucous Punk and Thrash Metal I remember accompanying some friend in my small town to a church youth group thingy - youth for christ or something similarly terrible. Anyways, the young preacher dude proselytizing was slammin' the youth about the danger and impurity and devil-worshiping in popular music - for some reason, this record was on the 'hit list' - for 'blood' and 'screw' I believe ... made me listen to it all the more. They even had it on some crappy video tape supplement material - off to youtube to look for that ...

I saw the local Cure tribute band Fascination Street do an absolutely fantastic gig this weekend. Really can't say enough good things about them, and the singer is a dead ringer for Robert Smith in every way as well.

I don't think this is a particularly strong album for them, either. In fact, aside from Push, Sinking & A Night Like This, I've never felt any need to play any of it again since it came out.

I'm going with Sinking.

"Close to Me" is one of the best singles from the 80's.

but still will probably vote for something else.

"A Night Like This." Love the sax solo, the bridges ("It goes dark, it goes darker still.."), the growling guitar lick, and the palpable sense of sexy menace.

1. Close To Me
2. Six Different Ways
3. Blood

Best I could do ..

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0007_Hells_Bells_-_part_2.html
http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2003/138.shtml

Hahahaha - good stuff - gotta watch out for those Cure guys - they devil woshippas!

I love A Night Like This but the Sax just ruins the song for me. If only there was a saxless version. I love this album in general though. Probably my 3rd fav. behind 17 Seconds and Disintegration.

The sax version is a very good Andy Mackay imitation.

i had sax but I love it in this song, it's so incredibly 1986.

hate sax, that is.

my first cure album. it all seemed so mysterious to me. hmm, i'll have to think about it.

ok well if there wasn't a bug preventing me from voting, it'd be The Baby Screams

Actually, if I could see this poll I'd be voting for "Screw".

(stupid mod setup making some polls invisible to me)

any poll with a jpg in the title doesn't allow a mod (even of one board) to vote for it

hence: please refrain from putting jpgs in poll titles

Hahahaha THAT's why polls are loco sometimes. Mystery solved!

Anyway BLOOD for fucking real. If it comes out with zero, remember my words!

can a MOd delete the .jpg, we need the votes!

here is the album cover:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DV00XM0KL._SS500_.jpg

Can a mod make a poll so heavy not even a mod can move it?

seems like they can't fix that problem...:-(

I'm going to rep for "Kyoto Song" which apparently has no love here. "It's so smooth it even feels like skin" always gave me the creeps... the good creeps.

I really love In Between Days, Push, Six Different Ways, Close to Me and A Night Like this but I think I have to vote for In Between Days.

Oh my god, that Bob Larson clip upthread is hilarious and classic, BlackIronPrison. I can see Negativland having a field day with that one. I'm also impressed at the sheer range of groups mentioned in the first link. I guess going after "satanic" music turns out to be a good way to get a musical education!

"A Night Like This", but this album is crowded with gems.

"In Between Days" would win for me in most polls, so...

I voted "In Between Days" too, but so many great songs.

Really, the only song on here I have no time for is "Push".

"Sinking" is really the best of their synth-gunk ballads.

"The Baby Screams" is so so so great.

I'm going with "A Night Like This," but it almost went to "Push" and "The Baby Screams." Damn tough one, this.

My first Cure album and concert (Radio City, November 1985). Will rep now and forever for "The Blood".

I could very happily vote for any song on this album except for "Push".

Then why are you voting for "Push"?

don't make me find you

voting for "a night like this" but if "close to me" was the brass mix there'd be competition.

You know I am actually totally fine w/sax on 'A Night Like This.'

Whenever I buy a can of soda from a soda machine, the sound of the can landing reminds me of the opening of "In Between Days." Still, I'm going "Six Different Ways."

First time I heard "Close to Me," I thought it sounded like The Cars. I just realized this past weekend that it has such tight percussion versus all the reverb etc. on the rest of the album.

this was and still is one of my favorite cure albums. it was tough to choose, but i went with "the baby screams".

Whenever I buy a can of soda from a soda machine, the sound of the can landing reminds me of the opening of "In Between Days."

YES!!!

Not a bad song on this one. I love short albums with no filler. For me it's between "Push", "Sinking", and "A Night Like This". "The Blood" needs more love too.

Whenever I buy a can of soda from a soda machine, the sound of the can landing reminds me of the opening of "In Between Days."

YES!!! (seconded)

I don't think my heart will let me vote for anything other than In Between Days. And Mrs Fiendish would kill me.

I do have a tremendous soft spot for Push, too ...

voting for "a night like this" but if "close to me" was the brass mix there'd be competition.

^^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hprQpOdr34

is it a mistake i wonder when he goes "this.. this is.. " i always thought it might be.

xp: Theresa Wayman from Warpaint at 2:38.

when the Cure turned away from a truly playful sense of pop experimentation that describes 82 to 87, there was a phase that ended and never really returned. One thing I remember about the last album is how when "Freakshow" came out as a single there was a sense of "hey where has THIS Cure been for all this time?"

Yeah this is very much OTM - the main reason for the decline of the band post-Disintegration has been their loss of spontaneity, RS spending his time trying to second-guessing his audience. All the wacky pop singles since have seemed mostly fake and contrived compared to the unpredictability of their stuff 82-87

Unreserved love for this entire album excepting "Screw" is a touch pointless ... and "Push" is actually Blondie's "Union City Blues", once heard the similarity cannot be unheard.
But yeah, "The Baby Screams" is probably the perfection of everything The Top was aiming for, the singles are untouchable, and I had a little "moment" in 2013 when I finally visited Kyoto and played THAT SONG (which is also untouchable).

Yeah this is very much OTM - the main reason for the decline of the band post-Disintegration has been their loss of spontaneity, RS spending his time trying to second-guessing his audience. All the wacky pop singles since have seemed mostly fake and contrived compared to the unpredictability of their stuff 82-87

It could be argued, now that I think about it, that part of RS's own particular impulses on this front have been channelled into the stream of one-offs, dance collaborations, etc. that has been happening constantly. Not all of them by any means

It took me years but I finally picked up the Deluxe Edition reissue of Head on the Door recently (KMKMKM too), listening to the album again for the first time in quite a while confirmed for me that it's my least favourite of their 80s releases. It doesn't hang together as an album for me in the same way that the 1980-1984 records do, the sequencing feels kind of haphazard. The bad bits: Push (which I've never been able to stand - "depthlessly saccharine" as someone described it above perfectly), A Night Like This (possibly my least favourite Cure single) and I like both Screw and The Baby Screams but they feel kind of...unfinished, as though the genesis of a great idea was there that didn't quite reach fruition. That said, I think Six Different Ways, The Blood, Kyoto Song and Sinking are all absolute top-shelf Cure and the album version of Close To Me is really great. I think I like Stop Dead, The Exploding Boy and Man Inside My Mouth more than I do about half of the songs that made the album.

Onto KMKMKM!

The extras on The Head On the Door are fantastic.

Kiss Me... not as much.

yeah 100% agree with Birds in Hell. It's OK but always seemed a bit throwaway. 30 years later, it's the b-sides that I keep coming back to.

but, but, INBETWEEN DAYS!
There is a fair bit of rubbish though - Birds in Hell OTM for most tracks.

Shit, just saw my January post of unreserved love. Clearly 2015 has done a number on me.

This is one of their best ever albums.

This is where they started getting a bit duller (it is still quite good)

It's the last proper studio album in what I personally see as The Cure's "golden age" which began on their first album and ended with the release of the Standing On A Beach compilation. Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Disintegration and Wish were/are all incredibly popular records, and there's some great music on them, but they're all overlong/overstuffed in a way that The Cure's 1979-1985 albums weren't. Wild Mood Swings onwards is strictly hardcore fan territory, but there's some great material in there.

head on the door is not quite as good as the top but i love it a whole hell of a lot

I love The Top and have never understood why folks are so down on it, but The Head On The Door is just magnificent. That line-up of The Cure is the Cure line-up as far as I'm concerned.

I love The Top. I think Cure fans generally do but music magazines always seemed to hate it.

It's the last proper studio album in what I personally see as The Cure's "golden age" which began on their first album and ended with the release of the Standing On A Beach compilation.

HOTD is the last record where RS was the sole songwriter too, I think.

I love The Top and have never understood why folks are so down on it, but The Head On The Door is just magnificent. That line-up of The Cure is the Cure line-up as far as I'm concerned.

I adore The Top, that and Faith are my favourite Cure records. Definitely agree that the Head... line-up was their strongest, The Cure In Orange is just immense. I watched the VHS tape over and over and over when I was first discovering the band.

RS was never the sole songwriter.

If I remember the album credits correctly, HOTD is the only Cure album where RS acts as sole songwriter. He cowrote three of the songs on The Top with Lol.

Ah, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself then - I presume I misread backwards from the HOTD album credits...

I'd be interested to hear more from the band now about Lol's contributions. In the Deluxe Edition booklets for HOTD and KMKMKM (circa 2006 or so), RS is still definitely sticking the boot into the guy about being drunk and useless but I've always wondered how much of that is actually true. They've clearly patched things up since, going by his appearance at the Reflections shows.

This interview with Lol from Keyboard magazine in 1987 paints a markedly different picture than his usual characterisation as 'the drunk buffoon who could barely play, he seems pretty switched on and knowledgeable: http://www.musicfanclubs.org/cure/press/I15.html

For lyrics, yes. Not song ideas though. Simon was always Robert's backboard.

Which, if any, of the reissues has In Orange in the bonus material? Has it ever been issued in audio-only form?

Nope, none.

Not as a whole, anyway. Couple tracks were single b-sides, but the whole concert has never been on DVD or reissued.

I said upthread that Robert Smith has always been generous about songwriting credits. He said that for KMKMKM he accepted ideas from others for the first time (e.g. "Fight" was Williams'). It wouldn't surprise me if he gave Tolhurst credit on those mid eighties sessions as reward for Tolhurt's loyalty.

According to Roger O'Donnell, the genesis of 'Homesick' (from Disintegration) came from Lol. As to the exact nature of his contributions over the years, who knows? I mean, of course that's him drumming on the records from 1979-1982, but it does seem to be the case that he was off his face a lot from the mid '80s onwards, and the band used to bully him quite a lot as a result. I think Alfred is right that Smith was generous with songwriting credits, with the exception of Japanese Whispers and The Top (which feature songs which have Smith as the sole writer), and The Head On The Door (which has Smith as the sole writer throughout), most of the songs are credited to the entire band (whoever was officially in The Cure at the time)

It's easy to belittle a bandmate's contributions when he jumped or was pushed at the peak of acrimony.

Today is my birthday and looking at this thread sort of makes me sad as i see Bimble wished me happy birthday in this thread. RIP.

anyways some of you are so wrong, this is a classic album. the remastered version of this is incredible and made me appreciate all over again.

i voted for "Sinking" but these days my vote would be "Six Different Ways."

Six different ways is amaaazing

Yeah I didn't want to start nothing, so I backed off, but this album is a stone cold classic from beginning to end.

There's some really great, nearly shoegazey live versions of 'A Night Like This' from the Swing tour in the mid 90's.

Me on the 30th anniversary:

http://thequietus.com/articles/18610-the-cure-head-on-the-door-review

Nice write-up! I still hate "Push"!

Hahah I was almost waiting for that.

I'll eternally find your dislike of 'Push' completely mystifying, DJP, even more so than your dislike of 'Domino Dancing'/Introspective... the guitar riff of 'Push' is just all-time for me, and it's one of those Cure songs that has stayed with me from the moment I first heard it!

nice Ned, thanks for the link.

The slurred introduction on In Orange sold me on Push.

I love The Cure, I think their output up to and including Wish is pretty much unimpeachably wonderful, yet I too can't stand Push.

I can barely make out what Smith is saying in most of the song introductions on In Orange, bar the song titles!

Something about wearing a dress on the train or something?

i think he says 'this is a song about when i used to wear dresses and ride the train'

I think In Orange serves as a good introduction to the band as well as the first singles compilation does... it's a bit of a shame that it hasn't been re-released yet.

NICE gonna listen to this during work today

Yeah, I think I'm going to give The Head On The Door a listen too... I expect I'll love it just as much as the other hundreds of times I've heard it. This album never, ever gets old for me.

Played Head On The Door last night and loved it. Followed it up with Japanese Whispers. Nice combo.

otm on the summer feeling of "In Between Days"

xpost:

Yeah, I completely agree! I've always been incredibly fond of Japanese Whispers... I know it's a compilation, but when I listen to it, I tend to listen to it front-to-back and I think it stands up well as a mini-album.

Some mad genius has given 'The Cure In Orange' a once over via deinterlacing and it looks pretty decent. Not as good as a pro clean up job but you can't have everything can you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVS9EFUMUts

nice. love the version of 10.15 saturday night on there. push too!

Very lucky to see IN ORANGE at the Cinefamily in 35mm some years back with a great audience. The beginning with them walking in unison through a fog of dry ice like the gangstas they were at the time is just hysterical. People nearly gave a standing ovation for Lol’s 2 note keyboard solo on the “A Forest” outro

When Lol was promoting his memoir, he attended another screening (at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood), but I didn’t catch it

That 4K interpolation looks TERRIBLE - I have a downloaded laserdisc rip which my TV upscales beautifully. Since I can't play my VHS tape any more.