Edition №5
The Head on the Door was my way in, the album and the first time I saw them live. I was a teenager, part of the OG New Wave crowd, too young for anything past a teen club. I hadn’t heard much that sounded like The Cure, and it was their slow, dark songs that reached me, a perfect companion for that 80’s teenage angst.
Then Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and its tour came in 1987, right in the middle of my teenage years, and it sent me digging into the older, atmospheric records. For a couple of years The Cure was most of what I played. I considered them an element of waver religion.
Disintegration is the last of their records that connected with me, and even then only partway, because I could already hear the turn starting underneath it. The band was reaching for something bigger and more commercial, and that’s where they began to lose me. Everything after did less and less, and I kept going back to the early records.
Here’s the odd part. Disintegration is the record most people call their masterpiece. It’s been cut and recut for 37 years, in versions that measure and sound very different from one another. The one most people buy today, the one that streams and fills the reissue bins, is almost never the one you want.
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Love this. The Head on the Door is still my favorite.
Thanks, Bill! Funny how it works...a whole new generation finding The Cure through Olivia Rodrigo. Glad the band still has a place in your rotation.