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

How many ballots so far? Only 4 days left!

Sic, I think Nate means "Never Enough" qualifies even though it's original album is Mixed Up

single came out a couple of months before Mixed Up tho! and Big Mix is the only one on the album. I demand more pedantic pollrunners http://www.4thletter.net/wp-content/plugins/smilies-themer/SAEmoticons/emot-colbert.png

iirc: single version of Close To Me has some new recording compared to album version (ie the horns), Close and Closer versions are different mixes of a new re-recording?

(A Forest and Primary* were def. completely re-recorded in order to be remixed, bcz Polydor had lost the masters. Which raises some questions about the album remaster project.)

* for the Keith LeBlanc mix on the 12" of above

How many ballots so far? Only 4 days left!

Only 13 so far. I'm a bit disappointed with the turnout to be honest, especially considering (for example) Paul Simon got 33 ballots. Are The Cure not as popular on ILM as I thought? Are people bored with these ballot polls? There's been a couple of normal Cure polls recently, maybe people have run out of things to say about The Cure?

Anyway, I have to extend the voting period because it's my son's birthday this weekend and I'm away Tuesday night, so voting will now end at MIDDAY on WEDNESDAY 15th. So get your ballots in, folks.

Lots of people wait until the last two days, I've noticed.

Still, part of it may be The Cure aren't loved around here like they once were AND their discography is gigantic and hard to narrow down for a ballot AND maybe there's some poll fatigue. Personally, I'm looking forward to taking a break for a few polls after this one.

I wouldn't worry Nate, twenty ballots is enough for a decent poll - and you probably need even fewer for this one since you're asking for forty songs. You might even have enough already.

I would say, though, that raising it to forty songs makes it much harder to vote. These polls are most fun when there's a lot of people pitching in imo, so anything that makes voting more onerous is best avoided.

I definitely plan on voting but haven't had time to work through the options yet. I reckon there will be a healthy influx in the last day or so. No reason to doubt the appeal of the poll - this is a catalogue where the big hits aren't necessarily the best-loved and album tracks loom large, so the results should be full of surprises.

Most of the ballots are always sent close to the deadline. I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah, even with the ballots I've already got the results are pretty interesting so far with no clear front runner.

Nate - In keeping with every deadline I've ever had in my entire life I am fairly certain I will wind up sending you mine on 11:59 am on the 15th if not a couple hours later with a note begging for forgiveness. I suspect others will do the same. I really wouldn't worry.

Just voted to relieve nate's stress.

I'd never actually thought about what my favourite Cure song was before now and it's not what I expected. Easier to pick the whole 40 than to settle on the top one.

I'm shuffling my rankings right now trying to nail down a final lineup. All this Cure listening lately has made me: (a) discover some excellent new tunes, and (b) want to kick Robert Smith in the face from time to time. :-(

All the Cure listening that's happened in our place in the past couple weeks has made me realize that I dislike The Top even more than I thought and that I no longer have much time for the overly dramatic and whiny stuff. That's not entirely surprising but it was definitely reinforced.

;_;

overly dramatic Cure is THE BEST, "New Day" and "Lament" and "Siamese Twins" and "Piggy in the Mirror" and "Prayers For Rain" and "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea" pwn

"A Thousand Hours" is a bit much, tho

A Thousand Hours is a top 3 dead cert for me.

I've been trying in vain to figure out why some overly dramatic Cure works so well for me and other songs in ostensibly the very same vein don't do it for me. He really is a hell of a guitarist, and I think when he and Gallup brew up a storm that does justice to the over-the-topness of Smith's delivery, that's when those songs work best. Maybe.

Will definitely be voting -- a 20-song ballot.

A Thousand Hours is a top 3 dead cert for me.

that was one of the first songs where I thought to myself "man this isn't so much 'singing' as it is 'unpleasantly moaning on pitch'"

also didn't help that my brother used to ask why Robert Smith sang like he had a horrible migraine all the time and then follow up by moaning "For how much longer/Can my heaaaaaaad hurt so muuuuuuuuuch?" in the most overbearingly melodramatic way possible

(he also used to moan "The spiderman/Is giving me a heeadaaaaache toniiiiiight" but because that isn't really a moany song it made me laugh)

I'm doing 25... There were a few from Disintegration I didn't originally consider pre-listening that realized I couldn't not include.

x-post: haha DJP

Does Smith play all the guitar? (NB just realised I know nothing about them btw, not even how many members or whether there's a second guitarist)

for many years I underrated (as is my wont with singer-guitarists) to what extent Smith instrumentally dominated the first ten years of the band's existence. He also played a fair share of the keyboards and synths.

Does Smith play all the guitar? (NB just realised I know nothing about them btw, not even how many members or whether there's a second guitarist)

depends on the lineup/era

"Disintegration" itself is such an amazing song... Rocketed into my top 5 when I played the album in full again (for the first time in some years).

ballot sent!

When the sequencer riff takes over toward the end: song dies happy. It's their "Soon"--everything (well not everything, but a lot of things) awesome about the band rolled up into one song.

on record, Smith was the sole guitarist up through The Top, after which Porl Thompson joined as lead guitarist/keyboard player/saxophonist. As of Wish they added Perry Bamonte as a third guitarist/keyboardist, which is why so much of the Wish material has a massive wall of guitars on it. Porl left after Wish and Bamonte was released right after The Cure. Porl came back to tour with them for 4:13 Dream and Reeves Gabriel is now touring with them.

poor Lol

Lol never played guitar, did he? He was a drummer/keyboardist.

lol Dan I do not like any of those songs

I am sorry.

Lol is the best name.

well that's what I mean. He got stuck behind an instrument he could barely master (Thompson and Smith ended up playing most of his lines on record, no?) and became a laughing stock.

(I know it's a nickname but still, lol)

obviously E you are happy, otherwise you would love those songs

That must be it.

"Lament" is top-tier Cure imo

I'm debating whether to keep "Sinking" as my top-rank synth-gunk ballad.

all this Cure relistening has made me realize how much I love Seventeen Seconds & am pretty ambiguous about the rest. though I liked Pornography a lot more than I remember. I like when the songs get very drum-heavy, like "The Hanging Garden" & on a number of Kiss Me tracks; who's the drummer on those?

Lol drummed on Pornography, Boris Williams drummed on KMKMKM

btw Boris is the fucking BEST, I still maintain that ppl would like the later material more had he drummed it instead of Jason Cooper

I guess I wasn't clear: I meant Lol's keyboards.

you were clear to me after the explanation

Ballot sent.

also noticing on relistening how sexual a lot of these songs are, & it's making me wish I'd befriended more of the beaucoup female Cure fans at my high school; like DM they were much more popular with women than with men in those days at least.

I did that (befriend the female Cure & DM fans). Those girls almost immediately put you in the friendzone while dating older losers from other schools or dropouts. My sadness comes back just thinking about it.

Robert also plays a fair amount of bass on the records - six-string bass is his primary compositional instrument.

btw Boris is the fucking BEST, I still maintain that ppl would like the later material more had he drummed it instead of Jason Cooper

I don't think you need to actually convince anyone of this, even ppl who've not heard any of the Jason albums

Somebody, on one of the many Cure threads, gave an excellent explanation of why Boris is so much better than Jason.

BTW Jason is now the second longest-running continuous non-Robert Cure member, by far, ever :(

(given Simon's off-screen quitting periods he might even have a claim on longest but I don't want to think about that)

After re-listening through Disintegration, I've got a list of 41 songs to rank. Now I have to decide whether to press on into the later material or go with what I have. I think I have Wish on cassette somewhere in the garage. I guess the deadline extension means I have time to hear it all, though I doubt that will change my ballot much.

It's been strange to go through everything in more-or-less chronological order. The changes from album to album are startling. I never paid much attention to Three Imaginary Boys before and agree with comments upthread to the effect that it's kind of like weaker Buzzcocks, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed the guitar sound -- Smith's solos are usually the best parts of the songs. If you played some of these tracks back to back with tracks from Disintegration, most (normal, non-ILM) people probably wouldn't realize it was the same band.

This poll is harder for me than the Zep, Stones, or Bowie polls were, partly because the Cure is more closely associated with a specific period in my life. I got into them first in 1988 and 1989, listened to all the earlier albums then, and saw them on the Prayer Tour (still the best arena show I've attended). After Mixed Up I stopped paying much attention. But my reaction to the older Cure material is still a little too tied to personal memories for me to contemplate it the way I can those (other) classic rock acts.

Many x-posts but mostly an aside. Posts about Cure listening girls just reminded me of something.

I remember once making out with a guy in college who was really very cute but not my usual type at all. Mid make-out he said, "Never thought I'd wind up kissing a girl wearing a Cure shirt" to which I responded "Yeah, well, you have Phish posters in your room so I think it's fair to say we've both crossed some unexpected boundaries tonight".

lol

He was in the same deep water as you.