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

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.

haaa

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

Your favorite Cure drummer

*preens*

Haha.

I don't think I've ever met another Cure fan, nubile or otherwise. Even the softgoths I knew were into Sisters or Mission instead.

I guess coming to musical consciousness in 1991 there could hardly have been a more irrelevant band, even though Wish did quite well. But it'd've been like getting heavily into REM for Up, or something. Rob Newman's thing on The Mary Whitehouse Experience is about the only contemporary reference I can remember.

lol I have that bit. I haven't seen it in ages! brb.

Aw, I can't find the "I'm a little teapot" one. That's the best bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rPpjctNlk

I've liked the Cure for a long time but I've never had that period of real identification with them or their vibe. I think I'm a little too young for them to have meant as much in their prime to me as they meant to some of y'all.

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.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 6:06 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM :(

Although I did date a couple of people who were big Cure fans and it was not a recipe for stability, let's put it like that.

I tended to turn my girlfriends into Cure fans, by which I mean I would incessantly play The Cure at them until they lied and told me that they liked them so I would stop, and then would realize in horror that this just meant I would start playing the super mopey sadface stuff at them

One retaliated by playing They Might Be Giants at me, which you know, fair play

(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.)

"The Walk" and "A Forest" for sure. "Primary" sounds like the original vocal to me, though they prolly recorded some new samples (there was no guitar on the original).

I do believe the "lost masters" issue is that the original multi-track masters were needed for remixing (so individual instruments could be isolated), but they had been ruined by being stored near a washing machine....IIRC. The actual 2-track mix-down masters were not (though I suspect "The Walk" may be gone due to the crap sound quality of ever reissue of that song post-Japanese Whispers - not sure why they don't use the Fiction or Sire CDs as a source).

"The Walk" and "A Forest" are the only tolerable tracks on Mixed Up, IMHO.

there was no guitar on the original

really?

yeah, it was two 6-string basses + drums (video makes this very clear)

lol sorry, two 4-string basses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xrZ61cuKLk

The performance from Count Down is awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZFYh6B7Fr8

Man, two six-string basses would have been SICK. (Especially if they were part of one double-neck bass.) That was a top 5 song for me!

"The Walk" and "A Forest" are the only tolerable tracks on Mixed Up, IMHO.

I should clarify: of the new versions/mixes...

Made an effort to include something after 1989 but in the end, nah.

I only had a 20-song ballot and I put at least three post-89 songs on it. Nothing post-99, though.