The Cure: The Head on the Door poll

Yeah, the very same! I think they only put out a laserdisc and a VHS of it... did they ever get around to putting out 'Orange' on DVD? I don't think they did, did they?

Push from Glastonbury '86 rules.

You know what I wish I still had? My Paris shirt. I only really wear band shirts to sleep in now but I still wish I had it. It was so awesome and soft and where on Earth did that go?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DrjnffvVSQ

this is still one of my favorite Cure videos

Tim Pope easily makes my top 5 favorite video directors.

That Top 5: Sophie Muller, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Tim Pope, Tim Newman

It's interesting that it's Anton Corbijn who is the 'go-to' guy for music videos/photographs for artists who want to 'take their career to the next level' these days. Y'know, Coldplay have been using him recently - no doubt because of his work with U2 and because he sorted out Depeche Mode's image problem.

The Cure didn't need Anton Corbijn - they had Tim Pope and Parched Art.

I greatly prefer Pope to Corbijn, but I understand why most artists would rather look like Bono than dance with socks.

the story behind the socks is one of my favorites

you know, all three videos off of this album are amazing

xpost:

Yeah, true. But thinking about Coldplay's recent artwork/marketing campaign for their latest record - which is all about graffiti and colour and whatnot... probably would have made sense for them to use Pope instead. Although I'm thanking whatever force is up there that they didn't.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1yftp_cure-in-between-days_music

http://www.timpope.tv/the_cure_close_to_me.html

i really wish he'd gotten to make more videos with neil young. His Landing On Water clips are bananas.

the story behind the socks is one of my favorites

you know, all three videos off of this album are amazing

― dense macabre (DJP), Thursday, November 3, 2011 7:00 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I completely agree! Another couple of Pope favourite is the video to 'The Caterpillar', and didn't he do the video for Talk Talk's 'Life's What You Make It' as well?

*favourites are

SO SMOOTH IT EVEN FEELS LIKE SKIN

^^^^ one of my favorite lines

"Sinking" is my favorite Cure synth-gush ballad.

'Sinking' is very very underrated... it's got one of those trademark Cure synth sounds on it as well, which has cropped up in stuff like 'Where The Birds Always Sing' amongst other songs...

Of course, the best songs from this time might be the "In Between Days" 12" b-sides....

"A Man Inside My Mouth"!

"Throw Your Foot"!

"Throw Your Foot" is excellent!!!

IT WOULD BE SO PERFECT!!! IF YOU WOULD JUST FALL OUT THE WINDOW!!!

always been a big fan of that track.

A Man Inside My Mouth is in my top twenty Cure songs ever, maybe top 12

did they ever get around to putting out 'Orange' on DVD? I don't think they did, did they?

nope

I didn't think so. It's a bit of a shame, really, because it's one of my favourite concert films. I definitely prefer it to 'Trilogy' (I only tend to watch one album at a time on that DVD, rather than the full thing - and it's usually the 'Pornography' set I choose to watch).

none of their VHS releases have made it to DVD AFAIK. and the Greatest Hits DVD is pointless bcz a) incomplete and iirc b) shoddily mastered and c) taken from masters for the VHSes, so some clips end in a second or two of transition pieces from Staring At The Sea

Robert also recently said that some Paris film from a few years ago (ie not "Paris") that no-one's ever heard of before will come out before the Reflections DVD that MY TAXES DAMMIT paid for...

STRIKE ME
STRIKE ME
STRIKE ME DEEE-ADDD

except "Six Different Ways" every song is amazing

You misspelled "Push"

I love every song on this album. If I had to make a choice or do a TS between this and Disintegration, this album would win.

Push isn't so much a song but one little idea, but it's effective imo xp

"push" is my favorite thing here easy

"we have this great riff, why do anything else to it"

right. full disclosure as I was clicking this thread I was thinking "Dan and his GD 'Push' aversion" lol

"we have this great riff, why do anything else to it"

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson),

I muttered this in a mail earlier this week regarding an article pitch about this album:

...this is more than just 'another great Cure album,' it's also a strangely unique one. Consider: it's their last 'short' album ever, their last one designed for a single slab of vinyl or cassette (everything else after that either doubles or is more and more aimed at the CD age and beyond -- they have NEVER had an album shorter than an hour since, much less forty minutes). And within that they have a crazy range, something that had been clearly going on The Top but given that was a glorified solo project, this feels more like a *band* stretching out, the more so because it is for a lot of folks the start of a classic lineup, though Smith gets the sole songwriter credit throughout. All the poppy singles in the previous two years build up to bigger pop moments, the deep cuts often sound richer, the harrowing extremes more harrowing, and it's still a slim ten-song punch. It deserves a lot more attention for itself, even with the profile it already has.

I read that Smith treated this album as if he were a composer giving material to a band instead of a functioning band recording and writing together (which KKK and Disintegration were).

although it's my understanding that Smith really does write most of the music and just plays fair with composing credits.

I love The Head on the Door dearly but the idea that there are ANY harrowing extremes on it makes me giggle.

Anyway, because of its brevity the band's penchant for repeating a motif without variation for several bars is more charming and effective than it ever will be again. Like Ned said, every song is a discrete entity, signaling directions for albums the band could have pursued.

I love The Head on the Door dearly but the idea that there are ANY harrowing extremes on it makes me giggle.

Tsk sir. (Nothing may have the cumulative impact of, say, Pornography itself, but "The Baby Screams" and "Sinking" do exist, and the fact that the album ends with "Sinking" always stuck out at me. It was almost like "Fight" two years later was a necessary corrective.)

didn't they do "The Blood" on Unplugged in '90? That impressed me.

Everything on this album rather emphatically sounds like a pop song, I believe on purpose. There are points where the lyrics go out there but even then, Robert spends more time singing them rather than the extremes he goes through on The Top or on KM^3.

Would have voted "Inbetween Days" but "Six Different Ways" is a close second.

In fact, it's that unrelenting pop sensibility that connects all of these disparate songs and makes them work so well together as an album; even though everything sounds different, there is a baseline accessibility that connects everything together.

yeah it's basically Smith's pop album, hence its brevity. If you'd followed the band till this point you could see the clouds parting as those drums roll heralding "Inbetween Days."

xposts -- A fair take! But I think it's also a way of how allowing the disparate songs musically and lyrically etc. to exist next to each other (and again, not totally unprecedented, thus The Top etc.) gives them greater gravity that might otherwise have existed. My terminology/emphasis may be out of place a bit but it functions still. In this regard the difference between this and Kiss Me lies in the concision.

also: "We have money."

Record company dosh? You're soaking in it!

It's bugging me a bit, I'm trying to find a quote -- I want to say it was either Nabisco (OTM) or Douglas Wolk in one of their reissue reviews, but I'm not seeing it in a quick search -- about how 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?"