I was watching the latest episodes of the Guy Garvey: From The Vaults series (on Sky Arts, we get it as part of our Freeview package- I've never paid for Sky anything, hitting Rupert Murdoch where it hurts every day). The series trawls through the ITV and regional networks archives of musical performances, some never previously seen, some only seen when transmitted. There are lots of clips from The Tube, Friday night teatime brilliance, and from a slew of other programmes such as Razzmatazz. The latest run has clips from 1982 (including a never before seen clip of Wah! miming The Story Of The Blues on a never broadcast pilot for a Granada music show hosted by Pauline Black of The Selector), 1984 and 1987. In 1987 with The Tube having ended Tyne Tees briefly tried to run an alternative TV chart show to rival Top Of The Pops. The Roxy was based from the studios The Tube had vacated and in the summer of 1987 attracted some big indie names- New Order did True Faith, The Jesus And Mary Chain mimed their way through Only Happy When It Rains and The Cure turned up to do Catch.
Catch is a funny little song, the second single from their then just released album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, a double vinyl packaged in a bright red/ orange sleeve, a close up of some lips. It came out at the end of May 1987, not long after I turned seventeen. I wasn't a huge fan of the group at the time but had a tape of Kiss Me and only a fool would deny the pleases of songs like Just Like Heaven and Why Can't I Be You? I had, until the other night, forgotten all about Catch
It's less than three minutes long, led by a violin and Robert Smith doo doo dooing his way in. The melody is achingly gorgeous, acoustic guitars and the snare drum rattle, there's a very summer sounding guitar solo and Smith's swooning, romantic vocal, 'I remember she always used to fall down a lot/ That girl was always falling/ Again and again/ I used to sometimes try to catch her/ But I never even caught her name'. Appearing on The Roxy didn't seem to shift many extra copies of Catch and it peaked at number twenty- seven in the charts and it is overshadowed by the band's big songs from the mid- 80s to early 90s run of singles and albums but it really hit a spot for me recently.
I then discovered that I own Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me on CD- I don't remember buying it but there was a period when CDs became much cheaper in bulk buy deals at HMV and Fopp and I think I picked it up as the third or fifth in a buy three/ five for a tenner deal. Catch is the second song on the album. At the other end of the album and in tone and sentiment is Shiver And Shake, the penultimate song on the album and messy tirade against a former lover/ bandmate with Hooky- esque bass, noisy guitars and crashing drums. Smith doesn't start singing until over halfway through, 'You're a waste of time/ Just a babbling face/ Just three sick holes that run like sores/ You're a fucking waste'. He does at least admit the object of this hatred, who he wants to smash to pieces, makes him shiver and shake when he thinks of how they make him hate. From the sweetest love song to violent hatred, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me covers the range of human emotions.
Today is my daughter Eliza's nineteenth birthday. She'll be spending it in Liverpool where there's a week of partying going on, end of the first year university partying and birthday partying. I spent my nineteenth birthday in Liverpool too, back in May 1989 so there's funny circular/ history repeating itself thing going on for us. With everything that we've gone through since the end of last year, the fact that she's gone back to university and made a success of it is incredible in itself- we're very proud of her (obviously) and how she's dealt with things since Isaac died. Happy birthday Eliza, have a blast and hopefully you won't be too hungover when we arrive to take you out for tea tonight.
One of our songs is Halo by Beyonce. Our shared vocal take on it, usually when in the car with us switching lead and backing vox effortlessly and intuitively, is probably the definitive version of the song. Unfortunately it remains unrecorded so here's the original from I Am... Sasha Fierce in 2008 instead.
Back in May 1989 Dinosaur Jr had just released their cover version of The Cure's Just Like Heaven. Last year they released a live album, Emptiness At The Sinclair, recorded in Boston. The version of Just Like Heaven on it is a blistering, sonic assault, J Mascis' guitar and wah wah pedals feeling the heat while drawls his way through one of Robert Smiths' finest moments.
We had a day out on Saturday, drove to Liverpool to pick up our daughter from university and then on to the Wirral. The sun was out for more or less the first time this year and we all had an urge to see the coast, walk on a beach and take in some spring sun. We walked along the promenade at New Brighton, had some sandwiches and then drove along the coast to Hoylake and West Kirby. We took Eliza back to Liverpool, through the Wallasey Tunnel, and had some tea on Lark Lane near Sefton Park and then dropped her back at her halls of residence for a party that night. Driving home down the M62 I was struck by a wave of sadness which grew in me. This ordinary day out was exactly the sort of thing we used to do with Isaac- he'd have loved the Mersey tunnel, the wandering around new places, tea and a cake in a cafe in West Kirby. He wouldn't have been much bothered about the beach to be fair but everything else was right up his alley.
The wave of sadness broke on me later on that evening. Scrolling through social media in a distracted, needing no concentration kind of way, I clicked a link to Pictures Of You by The Cure, and was hit by that melancholic guitar line and the opening lines sung by Robert Smith, 'I've been looking so long at these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that they're real... I almost believe that the pictures/ Are all I can feel'. And that did for me, absolutely and totally, in a way I can't really explain. The tears came good and proper.
This version was released in 1990 on the Mixed Up album, a double vinyl set of remixes and re- recordings. I've listened to it a few times since Sunday night and it hasn't quite repeated the trick it did that evening but I've no doubt now that this song is connected in my brain and my emotional responses to Isaac. Funny how music can do that. I have an appointment next week to be assessed for some grief counselling. I think it's about time.
I'm sure this song has been the subject of Friday posts on music blogs a thousand times before but it helps me nail three things with one mp3 today- a Friday, and not just any old Friday but the Friday I finish work for a week and a song that has love in the title and is about love too, so perfect for Valentine's Day. Friday I'm In Love
From 1992, which at the time seemed like late- period Cure given they had over a decade behind them at that point, bouncing in the jangliest guitars and a catchy- as- flu lyric this is Robert Smith at his poppiest, a naive and deliberately up record.
To give some Yang to The Cure's Yin, this is a song by My Bloody Valentine in 1988, a song that's less poppy and direct, more trippy, more sensual and slightly bewildering too. Cigarette In Your Bed
Acoustic guitar as an uneven rhythm, detuned electric guitars coming in like storm clouds passing through and Belinda's half asleep voice making vague threats against a lover/ ex.
'Falling down I like to watch you Crawl around
Arms untied Scratching your eyes out With a smile
Strange stare Strangled by the blade left In your heart
I glide by Slip a cigarette In your bed'
The whole thing gathers speed at the end with some 'de- de- de- de- de- de- de- der' cooing over thumping drums, feedback and bent strings. This still sounds like little else and goes further out there than most of their contemporaries travelled.
Cigarette In Your Bed was one of the B-sides of the You Made Me Realise e.p. from 1988 and on the budget price Creation Records sampler Doing It For The Kids (also 1988), a compilation I still treasure. You Made Me Realise is a record that contains the astonishing guitars and dynamics of the title track, with its malevolent instrumental section, and has at least two other MBV classics- Slow, a song with stunning guitars and drums and Kevin Shields singing about oral sex and Drive It All over Me, a woozy, hammering Belinda Butcher/ Colm O'Ciosoig co- write.
There will now be a break in transmissions for a fortnight while we head south to France for our summer holiday, the Atlantic coast for a week (near Royan, south of La Rochelle) and then a week in southern Brittany near Quimper. Static caravans this year, an upgrade from tents. I'm looking forward to the wine, the cheese, the sun and the heat, the sea, the sunsets, the slower pace of life. I'll also be less well connected to events back here so I'll miss Boris Johnson's ascension to the Tory throne and installation as Prime Minister. Since 2016 I keep thinking we've hit the bottom of the barrel but someone or something always comes along to keep scraping lower- Trump's outright racism recently a new low. I'm sure Johnson will provide us some further depths to tunnel. According to reports Jarvis Cocker finished his set at Blue Dot last weekend with his 2006 song Running The World, a song that keeps giving. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, everyone in the European Research Group, the Conservative Party generally, the Murdoch press and anyone I've forgotten- this one is for you...
Ever since The Cure played Glastonbury I've been immersing myself in their back catalogue and this song has been a real earworm for me over the last few weeks. In 1990 The Cure released an album of remixes and extended mixes called Mixed Up, a double album and one that stands up very well still today. Lullaby was a big hit in 1989, fuelled by a claustrophobic Tim Pope video. The extended mix (done by Robert Smith and producer Chris Parry) fades in gently, a funky guitar part and a shuffly rhythm guiding us. Once the bassline hits the whole thing shimmies along, Smith's tale of dread and spidermen, taken to an outdoor disco, dancing under Mediterranean skies.
Anyway, that's yer lot for the moment, hope the weather holds up while we're away, play nicely, look after yourselves and each other and I'll see you in August.
I was bowled over by the coverage of The Cure headlining Sunday night at Glastonbury. In the 80s I was an arm's length fan of the band- liked some the singles, dipped into the albums, eventually realised A Forest is one of the great post-punk records, spun around to Inbetween Days and Just Like Heaven, but I was never a knocked out fan. 80s tribalism played a part here, there's no denying it.
Watching bits of Glastonbury over the weekend presented some highlights- Johnny Marr reclaiming his Smiths songs, Billie Eilish lording it on Sunday afternoon, a seventeen year old with some serious confidence and attitude, Janelle Monae's showstopper and a Saturday night blitz from The Chemical Brothers. But The Cure on Sunday night were something else, two hours of perfectly pitched songs, balanced between wonderful guitar/synth pop songs and creeping post-punk dread. Robert Smith's voice has aged far better than most of his contemporaries and the group were spot on, Simon Gallup's bass playing especially so (I've often had him down as a Hooky copyist but he was a post-punk bassist in his own right on Sunday night). In front of a massive crowd with very few smoke and light show gimmicks they played song after song that seemed to connect in Somerset and definitely broke through the plasma screen. They peppered their set with the hits and paced it brilliantly- Pictures Of You was chucked in as the second song, my favourite three mentioned above were all played mid- set, an icy Play For Today and an intense and wired Shake Dog Shake. The encore would have been worth the price of admission to a Cure gig on its own- Lullaby, The Caterpillar, The Walk, Friday I'm In Love, Close To Me, Why Can't I Be You? and Boy's Don't Cry. Genuinely magical stuff and by a band who have done it more or less on their own terms, British post-punk, indie mavericks, surviving four decades and working their way in from the outside.
There's a dreamlike quality to The Cure's Just Like Heaven, a 1987 single recorded in the south of France. The instruments come in one by one, the quicktime drums and melodic bass then rhythm guitar, followed by keys and lead guitar, and finally Robert Smith's lyrics and thin vocals, inspired by a trip to Beachy Head with Mary. Smith says it is about 'kissing and fainting to the floor' and that sense of giddy weightlessness crosses over into the music.
Dinosaur Jr's 1989 cover is faster, louder and messier. It still carries the sense of weightlessness but is rooted in small venues, spilt beer and feedback.
While looking for something else on the net I found this picture of fans of The Cure from 1985. It was an easily obtainable look for those willing to go the distance with the crimpers.
This 1985 single by The Cure couldn't sound more like New Order if Hooky played the bass and Stephen Morris was on the drums. No mistaking the voice though, it couldn't be anyone other than Robert Smith. A song about regretting the mistakes of a love triangle and losing the girl he wanted with the finest pop melodies and the jauntiest rhythm.
I don't have (or need) that many records by The Cure but this 12" single from 1980 is close to perfection. The interplay between bass, drums, keys and flanged guitars with Robert Smiths' anxious vocals work a treat. Post-punk dread as standard.
I was never that into The Cure. I mean, I liked some of the singles- Boys Don't Cry say, The Lovecats, Just Like Heaven- it'd be stupid not to. But I didn't buy them. It was their fans I think and those silly shapeless, holey jumpers and messed up hair. Irritated me. And they did spend some time ripping off New Order's sound. Pop-goths. Pah. Hence, I stood against The Cure, despite having the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me lp on tape and playing it secretly. There's no denying some of their songs though two decades later, like this one.
