The Friday Canon: GOTH SPECIAL!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

So we've done modern pop, we've done classic pop - let's go a bit indie, I thought, and then I thought, this is LJ after all, so today's Friday canon spotlights an individual dear to many of your hearts....



YES its FAT BOB and his Cureists. Some people think the Cure are a bunch of fannies, but even those people tend to tip the hat to a few classic singles.

Here are all the Cure's UK Top 40 singles. In an attempt to find, by poll science, which are best, we would ask you to select a generous SEVEN for inclusion in the Friday Canon.

[Poll #679272]

Fly, children of the night, fly!

Comments

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Thing about the Cure is that vvvv few real actual goffs of my acquaintance like them AT ALL. The crossover band rejected by original constituency phenom. is hardly rare, but it seems particularly marked in the case of Bobmug and pals.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they never struck me as particularly goff. As Tom says in the poll bit, they were more Joy Div/New Order copyists I'd have thought. BUT they never sounded JD enough ergo not goff enough I'd expect.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think they're probably everyone's idea of 'goth' rather than being goth, just as yr actual metaller does not have much time for Def Leppard (FOOLISHLY!) and yet DL were always 'metal' to the non-metal kids.

In fact I dunno if they were ever goth, and yet they are forever so!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I think they def were goth, at least in their second period (roughly A Forest up to (but not including) The Walk). But yeah, I take your point re Lep. It just seems much more extreme with The Cure.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The dancefloor at B Movie says thee "NAY!"

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Bbbbut everyone who goes claims B-Movie ISN'T a goff club!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But all goths claim not to be goths!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Claiming not to be a goth = most gothest thing ever!

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Not really my cup of tea at all: not either pop enough or indie enough; I'm something of an extremist about these things.

I do like all the songs I ticked, though I don't own any of them, and in my head they all tend to run together esp. FIIL and IBDs.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

wow haha this is showin my age i guess (ie i can remember the first LP a million times better than anything they did in the 80s or 90s or 00s) but the JD/NO copyists idea seems NUTS to me and my ears!!

also BOBBLEMUGG is a billion times a better singer than either curtis i. or albrecht b.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

The first album is NOTHING like JD/NO, but there are def elements of both from A Forest onwards. Simon Gallup's bass playing is very Hookesque indeed.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hah xpost!

The first LP they're not copyists at all AFAICR, it's spindly new wavey stuff. And yeah as a singer Bobmug does not cleave to IC or Barney. But the sounds of their 2nd and 3rd albums are JDish I think, and then shortly after NO started doing the expansive Ceremony-style pop they moved onto doing stuff like "Primary" which is quite similar, and THEN "The Walk" is an outrageous Blue Monday clone, and then quite suddenly they found an entirely workable style of their own.

But maybe this is all hindsight!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

where does WISH come in this trajectory (as i am playin it this very minute)?

i think this is a an i-word issue to be honest -- even if i couldn't put a name to it or summarise it well, i think bobmug's project has been his own from the first*, and (to me) the fact that he uses elements NO possibly came up with merely introduces inflected elements into the bobmug project

hahahahahahaha

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile in a parallel universe where light from our universe has yet to penetrate:
http://ilx.p3r.net/thread.php?msgid=6747003

Good old Geir!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My other question about the Cure: how did they get away with following in JD/NOs footsteps quite so closely? (For the first 7 or so years of their career)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

They didn't! Their first album sounds nothing like JD or NO, and even after that there was something quite diff in feel about most of their stuff.

I JUDGE THAT...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

... they are ur-goth = a vector towards goth rather than the thing itself

(m.mercer agrees w.me acc. his enkyklopedica gothicka)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Putting the poll together I was surprised that the early early stuff never charted Top 40, those songs were all pretty well-known (though I did hit adolescence shortly after Standing On A Beach came out so it's not surprising that my peer group played them a lot)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

yes i think that's definitely a thing isn't it. and as an owner of the CASSETTE versh i probably know more cure b-sides than album tracks...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

What, in general, do you think of Teh Cure?
This:
http://jeff-worrell.livejournal.com/32340.html

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

where the hell is the CATCH love mofos???

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i have to disown you all, except damnspynovels who must be just me but in canada form :-)

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is highly bewildering. It's probably among the top 100 singles ever, and and and 3 votes?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

ha ha at least science has proved that in between days is the best cure song. i think science has proved this before, but perhaps only in my own head

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

It was proven in my own head many years ago.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It seems the "got rub in the 1990s" idea is pretty generally accepted - will nobody defend them? (HI DERE nedmug)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

aw man i wanna listen to some cure now...

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Boys Don't Cry should be right at the start of that, becz it was released before all this Goffic Nonsense, wasn't it?

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

It was, but it was only an hit after it was re-released post Standing On A Beach,

[dorsalstop.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it even in a newly-polished version (bigger sound, slightly more echo on the vocals)?

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I just realised that I got the wrong "end of the world" and am thinking of the REM song.

The Cure were okay, bit before my time really. Dinosaur Jr's cover of "Just Like Heaven" is better than all the Cure songs I've heard.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

I agree completely.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Oh! And I thought "the Rasmus have aged!" when I saw the picture of the Cure.