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

Thanks, that's the way I'll do it.

Here's when my newfound affection for The Top will come in handy.

I'm totally in the dark post-Disintegration... Could a real stan recommend 3-4 albums to investigate? I wish I had time to comb through everything.

Bumping this for anyone who might've missed it. I've only had 2 ballots in 6 days and I'm worried that this thread is getting buried.

The deadline is still more than a week away, right?

I just put together my shortlist yesterday.

I wasn't kidding fwiw - there are usually a couple of *very* short ballots and I think it's a bit unfair when those three or songs get a huge boost up the rundown at the expense of all the other songs that haven't been listened to at all. But obviously it doesn't really matter.

Deadline:[b] Friday August 8th

did you mean Friday, Aug. 10?

yah nate confirmed it was a typo.

my "shortlist" has 93 songs on it and I think I'm still missing a few

I'm totally in the dark post-Disintegration... Could a real stan recommend 3-4 albums to investigate? I wish I had time to comb through everything.

there's only five albums since then! DJP will stan for the last two but rly check out the album Wish and the singles The 13th and Wrong Number and then relax, almost every single Robert guest appearance on someone else's record post-90s is better than anything on a Cure record in this period

if you want to hear another whole album get the Trilogy DVD, they played Porno and Disint and Bloodflowers in full at some German stadium gigs for that

oh wait post-Disintegration you totally need the single Never Enough too

lol see I knew I was forgetting something

I definitely thought I'd struggle to come up with a full ballot but my first draft had 36 tracks so I spent some time listening to a couple of albums I wasn't familar with plus a few b-sides (this thread really came in handy) and made 40 no problem. Have to say my ballot is heavy on the gloomier stuff - Seventeen Seconds/Faith will always the absolute pinncale of this band for me.

Totally forgot about that POX B-sides thread, but it's good to see I've stayed consistent over the years (four of the five tracks I named are on my shortlist, the fifth was "Man Inside My Mouth" which I waffled on before finally leaving it off).

I got u covered on that one ;)

10:15 Saturday Night - it's actually this that The Libertines were ripping from all those years, right?

Thanks for the tips... It turns out I actually have Wish on CD but I have no recollection of either acquiring or listening to it... Although I know "High" and love it.

I think my favorite Cure mode is when they balance the mope and the pop lift; they do this pretty damn amazingly well, but when they veer too far in one direction or the other they lose me.

as a package deal, the "High" single ("High"/"This Twilight Garden"/"Play") may be my favorite single by them ("Close To Me"/"A Man Inside My Mouth"/"Stop Dead" is the main contender)

"This Twilight Garden" will def make at least my top fifteen.

there's some post Disintegration stuff thats still half decent, but other than Wish I never find myself wanting to often go back to listen to the other albums when i've got the choice between them and everything before

Voted. An even more dogmatically old school ballot than my Depeche Mode one :)

man

I have 40 songs on a ballot but it's not even close to final

there are 55 other songs I have to go through and make sure I want to discard, then I have to rank

I am on the verge of NOT voting for "The Funeral Party" or "Let's Go To Bed", which can't be right

I listened to the first part of Wish on my iPod today (nice surprise realizing I had the CD), and "Apart" is a REALLY good song. I also forget how good some of those last few tracks on Disintegration are since the thing's so damn long.

Side thought: are The Cure the Iron Maiden of gothy postpunk?

I am on the verge of NOT voting for "The Funeral Party" or "Let's Go To Bed", which can't be right

must admit i'm intrigued what 40 could top these!

it's not an organized top 40 I will admit

"Apart" is a frickin wonderful song, one of those numbers where the lyrical repetition really paints a picture (I find it interesting that he most often does that to signify bleakness, like "Prayers For Rain" and "The Loudest Sound")

Fist rough draft and I have to leave out "One Hundred Years", "Inbetween Days" and "Piggy In The Mirror", which seems ridiculous. This is going to be impossiPOLL.

Ballot sent! Sorry "Pictures Of You", "In Between Days", and "Play For Today", I'm sure plenty of people will vote for you!

I can't imagine a ballet without those three. Two of those will most likely make my top 5. lol.

One of those is in my top 3.

One of those is in my top 3.

i think i am more or less done. can i post my 41-50 or is that bad form?

I'm usually really picky when I make a shortlist for these polls because I don't want to end up with 80 something songs. So I try to pick only the best of the best and reject the song if I have any doubts. That leaves me with about 40 songs and I just have to rank them. That's what I did this time too.

Except then I started thinking about my rankings, listened to a bunch of Cure ... and have been adding more songs to the list. I rejected "Disintegration", "Siamese Twins", and "Faith" the first time around? What was I thinking?

Some of these early bonus tracks on the deluxe editions - the sound quality is terrible! I used to wonder why bands didn't clear the vaults as a matter of routine, I guess this is why.

guys, i am voting in this poll, and limiting it to stuff i bought on cassette (w/the exception of 3 Imaginary Boys which I bought on vinyl because it was an import)

Wish is still the only Cure album I don't have, at this point I'm just waiting for the remaster (soon I hope!). I'm a little over halfway through the discography and my shortlist is nearing 40 songs as it is.

What was it like being a Cure fan at the time? I'm not getting any sense of what the hinterland is. Like if you were into U2 it'd be about passion & adolescence, or whimsy & kitchen sinks for The Smiths ... but what was it with The Cure?

There's a bit of teenage existentialism, a bit of romance, iirc they liked the booze - but that's all I've got.

for me, gloomy dark sloppy scary romanticism

i don't have time to contribute to this poll/thread, but you all have my blessing. i know you will choose well.

I didn't get into these dudes until like 2000, Bloodflowers era. I don't know, I was too young for the 80s heyday and by the time I was aware enough I only knew them through "Friday I'm In Love" as a pop band with the weird looking dude. Had no idea about even Disintegration until later, but by then I was all about "the new" and was in my "kill yr idols, fuck the past" phase - I was rejecting out of hand a lot of bands from the generation just before me. Anyway, I've only really gotten to delve in as the reissues came out and it has been fascinating to kind of follow the development of them throughout the 80s without any other clouding context.

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. Would take a lot of excavating for me to choose favorites at this point and I am newly really busy at work. Still, I wish you all luck. Looking forward to the results thread.

First band I really really loved, age 16. First band I ever saw live - Kiss Me Tour @ Wembley Arena, I saw no other non-white face there although seemingly everyone wore black.

I guess I got into the poppier side first care of a tape my friend made me _ Inbetween Days (which I thought was called 'Without You' for ages), Boys Don't Cry, 10:15 Sat. Night (play the drip drip drip one)etc

Kiss Me was the first CD I ever bought. Worked my way back through the albums and was just catching up when 'Disintegration' dropped. Must have watched 'Cure In Orange' video over 100 times along with some late night video show where Robert taalked through the Cure's videos with Gary Crowley. It seems most videos were designed to give Lol a hard time!

It wasn't an angst thing for me, though maybe the 'outsider' thing played into it. They were kinda local. Robert Smith just seemed v v cool. I will never love a band as hard as I loved The Cure for 4 or 5 years.

KMx3 was a real revelation when I first heard it.

Yes, I've just reached it and it's an unexpectedly mighty kick-off

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.