I have been posting most weekends using @detlev’s #metalweekend tag, but my main love of music is progressive and alternative music. Some of my posts have included these songs, but I feel they are not keeping with the spirit of metal.
I will continue to post article’s using #metalweekend occasionally but feel I have more to offer regarding these other genres that I am more familiar with.
Introducing #alternativeweekend. Post an article that highlights THREE great songs that are either progressive or alternative and use the tag #alternativeweekend or use the ‘Focus on’ series if you like. There are no rules, just make your own!
If you have a short story or something to offer regarding an opinion on your songs, then share it with us!
After catching a little of The Cure’s show at Glastonbury last week I felt it appropriate to do a little something on a band that I do have a likeness for, but am not particularly well acquainted with as far as their back catalogue is concerned.
They seem to be on a tour fest right now with @joythewanderer recently seeing them at Rock Werchter, posting possibly their most famous single, ‘In Between Days’
I do have vague memories of them repeatedly hitting the lower ends of the music charts in the early eighties, and one song in particular caught my ear (below).
Robert Smith was a Banshee for a while and I have read a book in the past where he states, ‘this was an important time of my life’.
Siouxsie and the Banshees are another early band that I have a fondness for though I don’t hear any Banshee style guitar work in The Cure’s music.
I have to say that at 60 years of age, I’m really not sure that his makeup is doing him any favours visually. Is it time to go with clean face look like the members of Kiss did?
The Cure - The Walk (Japanese Whispers – 1983)
The song that brought their attention to me is quite different than their usual fare. Electronic music was still going strong in '83 and this is a fine example of it.
The Walk was not on the 'Pornography' album released just a year before and so was released as a standalone single, later to be added to the compilation album, 'Japanese Whispers'.
The Cure - Siamese Twins (Pornography – 1982)
I had to include something from this patchy album that has never completely settled with me.
Talk about depressing! Most of the album is like this song, which I generally don't mind but..., well I have my limits.
Smith seems to be being tortured while preforming a masterful vocal in this live version I found from 2002.
The Cure - The Same Deep Water as You (Disintegration – 1989)
A song that starts with rain and a thunderclap is not going to be a happy one. I love the symphonies in this song with the guitar overlay.
The record marks a return to the introspective and gloomy Gothic rock style the band had established in the early 1980s.
Someone from a previous gig I worked on recommended I listen to the Disintegration album, and though patchy like 'Pornography', it has a decent string of songs though it's middle such as Fascination Street and the single, 'Lullaby'
Running at over 9 minutes, this is a long gloomy song of the finest quality.
After listening to the gloom-fest being offered to you, you may think The Cure are all about depressing music. This is not true, it's just my preference is their Gothic depressing songs.
I once had a conversation with @trolleydave about the doom and gloom material of Robert Smith, and he explained to me the he was a married man and has been since very young.
Smith is married to Mary Theresa Poole (born 3 October 1958), whom he met in drama class at St Wilfrid's when he was 14. They do not have children, as they decided early in life and in their marriage that they did not want children.
Where all this depressing stuff comes from, we can only wonder? I'm sure glad he wrote it though!
If you want to listen to some upbeat material, then I would recommend, 'Friday I'm in Love. It's just not for me, all this happy happy stuff!
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