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Random musings on music

infection

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So a number of different things I'm curious in discussing, but may stretch across a number of different genres but, instead of making multiple threads over time, I'll just condense it to this one thread.

So I'm going to start with The Cure. One of my favorite bands. However, over time I've noticed that when I sometimes speak to other people about The Cure, we're essentially talking about different bands. A good highlight for this was a youtube video that was recently suggested to me. (This guy has some good videos on his channel, though):



At the end he does have a couple songs from Disintegration that I feel more capture what I think of when I think of The Cure, but it does seem as if they're two different bands. They have the really happy, upbeat songs that are typically fairly short (most, but not all, of their singles fall into this category). I had always known who The Cure were, but never really got in to any of their music because most of what I was exposed to was this more popular side of them. Starting in 5th grade was when I got really into music, and I would stay up each night to find out who was playing on Letterman or Leno and record it on VHS. It's fun going back to youtube and finding those performances that I watched many times since youtube didn't exist then and it wasn't as easy to get a hold of music. But in 6th grade I remember my dad having me record The Cure when they came on Letterman, and I remember coming away not liking it (not hating it, but having no interest):



And I remember watching Trent Reznor give his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduction speech for them and recalling (it's been a while since I've seen this) that he was listing songs he really likes, and saw that it was (obviously) a lot of older stuff, but in particular a number of the peppier songs, which I wasn't expecting from him. So that was another one of those moments where it seems I'm listening to a totally different part of the catalogue.

Bu then you have another side of The Cure, which is the depressing, ambient, long tracking time side, which is amazing, and I didn't really discover until I was in high school. Some stuff coming off Disintegration, but then stuff into the 90s and even 2000s. You had songs like "Friday I'm in Love" become big hits of Wish, but then songs like "To Wish Impossible Things" from the same album blow that song out of the water:



As do others:



And later songs that were pretty amazing:



And then a much more recent one which is among the best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbNW96KQd68
 
Feel like I missed out on a lot of The Cure's best songs. No one I knew really listened to it growing up.

I loved the remix of 'Watching me Fall' in the credits of 'American Psycho', this song rules
 
I grew up on the Cure. 80’s kid.
They’ve always has two sides to them.
I wouldn’t call them two different bands... just wrote songs from two different perspectives sometimes.
Robert Smith is an interesting cat who has had an interesting love story and lived an interesting life, and it shows in his lyrics sometimes.
 
One thing I liked about a lot of the Cure's earlier singles (most of the stuff on Standing on a Beach) was they sounded really pretty and maybe happy, but there was a deep sense of pain to them. I hated Friday I'm In Love. Hate it still. For me, Disintegration was the end of the band, after that, nothing I heard interested me.
 
I would liken Robert Smith in some ways to Prince in that his persona/image would often overshadow his talent. The Cure released some very solid live material - Live in Paris is pretty close to brilliant and illustrates that two-sides that you mentioned.

I followed The Cure in the late 80's a bit along with The Smiths. However I was 18 when grunge broke - I was in ground zero for that target audience, lol.
 
I would liken Robert Smith in some ways to Prince in that his persona/image would often overshadow his talent. The Cure released some very solid live material - Live in Paris is pretty close to brilliant and illustrates that two-sides that you mentioned.

I followed The Cure in the late 80's a bit along with The Smiths. However I was 18 when grunge broke - I was in ground zero for that target audience, lol.
Prince is another interesting one. The dude was very talented, and everyone talks about that. He has some songs that are just really great, but man, WTF? A lot of his popular music is... not good. Songs like "Delirious." Some other good songs like "7" I remember liking back in the early 90s..



Also, this was pretty cool:



I always had interest in music but it was in the mid-90s that I got really into music from grunge.
 
U2 is a band that could be in the conversation as well - some of their best stuff isn’t their newer stuff, or their “hits”.
 
Most overrated band, by far, is Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi is to rock what On the Border is to Mexican food.
 
Alright, so another great band:

Type O Negative.

So when I was in middle school I was familiar with the name from magazines and online and such, but hadn’t actually heard them. Coal Chamber came to town and I needed someone to go with me to the show so I invited a kid from my math class. My parents dropped us off. It was at the state fair grounds. The headlining act was Type O Negative. The first band was Full Devil Jacket, then Coal Chamber. We left before Type O Negative came on. A few weeks later he told me he saw their CD in a catalog and so he ordered it and thought they were decent. So then I went to Napster and downloaded “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” and thought it was alright, but I didn’t get the whole thing since it took a year and you’d have some people cancelling the file share while you do it, so you download the file from someone else and it may have different tracking time so you get weird skips/repeats in the middle of songs.



But it wasn’t until about a year or so later that I actually heard any more when my cousin had October Rust. After that they were one of my favorite bands in high school (and still). I went and saw them live downtown. I forget the name of the venue, but when I was looking for parking I saw Brian David Mitchell (the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart) start to approach my car. He was decked out in robes of what looked like some middle-eastern garb. This was during the time she was missing, too.

Anyway, if you’re going to listen to any of their songs, this is it. @colton liked each time I suggested Anathema. Curious if he’s like this. Need to make it past the initial doom.

 
Alright, so another great band:

Type O Negative.

So when I was in middle school I was familiar with the name from magazines and online and such, but hadn’t actually heard them. Coal Chamber came to town and I needed someone to go with me to the show so I invited a kid from my math class. My parents dropped us off. It was at the state fair grounds. The headlining act was Type O Negative. The first band was Full Devil Jacket, then Coal Chamber. We left before Type O Negative came on. A few weeks later he told me he saw their CD in a catalog and so he ordered it and thought they were decent. So then I went to Napster and downloaded “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” and thought it was alright, but I didn’t get the whole thing since it took a year and you’d have some people cancelling the file share while you do it, so you download the file from someone else and it may have different tracking time so you get weird skips/repeats in the middle of songs.



But it wasn’t until about a year or so later that I actually heard any more when my cousin had October Rust. After that they were one of my favorite bands in high school (and still). I went and saw them live downtown. I forget the name of the venue, but when I was looking for parking I saw Brian David Mitchell (the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart) start to approach my car. He was decked out in robes of what looked like some middle-eastern garb. This was during the time she was missing, too.

Anyway, if you’re going to listen to any of their songs, this is it. @colton liked each time I suggested Anathema. Curious if he’s like this. Need to make it past the initial doom.


Nah, didn't grab me at all. I'd forgotten about Anathema though, haven't listened to them in ages. Need to remedy that tomorrow.
 
Nah, didn't grab me at all. I'd forgotten about Anathema though, haven't listened to them in ages. Need to remedy that tomorrow.
I just got into Anathema a couple of years ago. Phenomenal band, don't know why they have absolutely no traction in the US. Although hearing "The Lost Child" literally minutes after finding out my son was dead was pretty wrenching, to say the least.
 
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