You make me feel like I am young again

May 30, 2019 6:31 AM

In May 1989 The Cure released their eighth studio album Disintegration. To celebrate the 30th anniversary The Cure perform Disintegration at the Sydney Opera House . The Atlantic. NME. ABC podcast.
posted by adept256 (36 comments total)

It really is the best album ever.
posted by prize bull octorok at 6:42 AM on May 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

30th anniversary?
If only I could feel young again.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:50 AM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]

No, no, Bloodflowers is the one where Robert Smith moans about getting old. But don't worry! It's coming up on its twentieth anniversary next year, so we can do a post about it then.
posted by phooky at 7:01 AM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

I remember the University of Maryland bus driver playing the CD on the boombox at his feet as I was drifting in and out of sleep after a night of cramming for exams for which I was unprepared. It felt so psychedelic and different. I had never heard of The Cure at the time, but bought the LP the next day -- and failed the exams.
posted by terrapin at 7:04 AM on May 30, 2019 [10 favorites]

My veins, let me show you them.
posted by Etrigan at 7:22 AM on May 30, 2019

I loved this album when it came out. I lived in a suburb in a rather odd family (I mean, a good family, but basically a no-TV-no-pop-music family) and the only music reviews I knew how to access were the ones in the Chicago Tribune, thus not a lot of variety. And of course as a tween I couldn't, like, go to any record stores that were not literally at the mall (or the one that used to be in our little downtown).

Disintegration was a big enough deal that it got reviewed in the Chicago Tribune and was available at the local record store - so not only did I hear about it, I was actually able to buy it, which led to getting all the Cure albums then available, which led to looking at bit randomly at interesting-seeming albums because I wanted more Cure-like experiences and ending up with a fairly decent amount of hits and relatively few misses (one advantage to small chain record stores - their selection of "alternative" music tended to be pretty time-tested).

(Best random find: Close Lobsters albums. There weren't really any "worst" finds, but I was not at the time capable of appreciating the Legendary Pink Dots and I distinctly remember getting an XTC album that I now own and like which was too complicated for me when I was 14.)

I decided that the Cure had "sold out" eventually and didn't really buy any albums after Disintegration...by that time I was older and had access to better record stores. And I can't say I really especially like the turns they took post-Disintegration, but you have to hand it to Robert Smith, he seems like a decent person, and that's not easy to say about a lot of famous musicians. Also, the Cure's music pretty much holds up, even lyrically - some of it seems a bit treacly or over-dramatic now that I'm an adult, but on a percentage basis it compares very well indeed to most of the music I first heard at the time.
posted by Frowner at 7:25 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]

, but you have to hand it to Robert Smith, he seems like a decent person,

years ago, I ended up having dinner at a guy named Roger O'Donnell's place (friend of friend of friend) who apparently had something to do with the Cure. Turns out, he'd played keyboards on Disintegration among other contributions. I was rather odd-man-out that evening, not being a big deal Cure fan. I liked them, I'd seen them live in the early 80s, I thought they had a brilliant pop sense -- I just wasn't overwhelmed to be in Mr. O'Donnell's presence. Which I guess he found a bit of a relief because we ended up talking quite a bit.

One thing that came up was Robert Smith's generosity. In O'Donnell's case that meant no songwriting credits on Disintegration, but he did get a piece of the b-sides for two big deal hits, which ended up buying him both a country place in England and the upscale townhouse in Toronto where we were talking.

You hear a lot about various song rights and royalties rip-offs in the music biz, but seldom stories like this one. Needless to say, at the time (1994 if memory serves) Mr. O'Donnell was very much looking forward to working with The Cure again, which was about to happen.
posted by philip-random at 7:50 AM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]

This is my favorite album of theirs. I still listen to it when i'm in a certain frame of mind. In the day it was perfect soundtrack for a certain kind of sex. fond memories abound.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:12 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

In 1990 I was working part time at a place that did mailing list sorting and labeling of (mostly junk) mail. One of our computers had an external CD-ROM drive (which was then a $600 peripheral...!) with its own headphone output. The boss brought in a couple of music CDs -- Disintegration was one, and I knew I had to have it.
posted by Foosnark at 8:17 AM on May 30, 2019

I can't find it on YouTube but if any of you haven't yet heard the live version of Disintegration on the Pictures of You single go fix that now

Yes, now

I'll wait
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:47 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

I remember hanging out with a friend of mine while he dialed and re-dialed the local alternative radio station to demand they play "Fascination Street" the day the single came out because we were kids with no means to get to a record store ourselves and we wanted to tape it off the radio.
posted by the painkiller at 9:50 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

I first got this on record, sans 'bonus' tracks that were added to the CD, and that version is the masterpiece. The versions with the bonus filler is flawed.

Same with The Police's 'Synchronicity' and The Cult's 'Love'.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:53 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Were the bonus tracks the ones they played at the beginning of this gig? They played three unreleased tracks and three b-sides.

Smart to play them first, people will be getting ready to leave when they hear Untitled's harmonium.
posted by adept256 at 10:00 AM on May 30, 2019

According to Wiki, original tracks were:

"Plainsong"
"Pictures of You"
"Closedown"
"Lovesong"
"Last Dance"
"Lullaby"
"Fascination Street"
"Prayers for Rain"
"The Same Deep Water as You"
"Disintegration"

Bonus tracks for the US CD and cassette releases were:

"Homesick"
"Untitled"
posted by Chrysostom at 10:20 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Anyway, Pictures of You is seven and a half minutes long, and I'd be fine with it being 70 minutes long.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:21 AM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

I stole this CD from my (very preppy, now a doctor) cousin some time after it came out. Years later I included the MP3s I ripped from his disk in a thumb drive of music I gave him. A propos nothing, of course.

What a great album. Is there anyone who *doesn't* dig it?
posted by notsnot at 10:22 AM on May 30, 2019

Bonus tracks for the US CD and cassette releases were:

"Homesick"
"Untitled"

Untitled was on the record.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:23 AM on May 30, 2019

I've gotten so many weird looks over the years by replying "it's like the cold if you were dead" whenever somebody says it's chilly
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:25 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's just the way you smile when you say it.
posted by adept256 at 10:31 AM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

Sigh, the hot Young Life counselor turned me on to The Cure via The Head on the Door while trying to get me to God (I'm sorry, lyrics too on the nose?), but I wasn't ready for Disintegration when it first came out.

Join the Dots continues to be a masterpiece.

And I of course LOVED that Mary made an appearance at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. SIGH SIGH SIGH
posted by armacy at 10:35 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

'Love' story: The Cure's 'Disintegration' and Robert Smith's romance, 30 years later
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:41 AM on May 30, 2019

turned me on to The Cure via The Head on the Door while trying to get me to God

Wow they really picked the wrong angle. Robert hates religion. From this interview on French TV:

Is The Cure a religion? Absolutely not, if The Cure was a religion I wouldn't do it. I hate religion, I hate all religions. I think religion is at the heart of so much discontent and idiocy in the world. I think all faith is terror.
posted by adept256 at 10:47 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

At least the first comment had a reference to the best reference of the best album ever.

I was so gay for Robert Smith (even though I was an ignorant homophobe as a child), I wanted to BE Robert.

So many nights of listening to Homesick or Same Deep Water as You in my mom's 1991 Geo Metro outside of church while moaning about my various breakups with my various girlfriends. I could do without Plainsong, Closedown and Untitled, but even then I don't mind them. But apart from those? God this album is so amazing 30 years later.

A friend coined a term way back in the 90s to describe this feeling:
Depressarific
posted by symbioid at 11:02 AM on May 30, 2019

years ago, I ended up having dinner at a guy named Roger O'Donnell's place

Roger O'Donnell has written a very, very long article about the making of "Disintegration"! It's pretty darn great. Read it here.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 12:04 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

I recall that the CD liner had a note that read :"This album was engineered to be played very loudly. Please don't let our engineers down".

Or something to that effect. This was one of the first CDs I bought for my 200 dollar (@3.85/hr) in 1989 dollars cd player.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

This was the first thing I ever heard on CD.

One of the highlights of my 20 year high school reunion was someone telling me, “You know how we used to hang shit on you for liking The Cure? Well, you were right, they’re really good!“
posted by andraste at 1:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]

Baseline of Fascination Street remains my favorite of all time.

And this is still one of the very few albums where I can remember exactly what I was doing when I heard it for the first time. It was my second year of high school and my best friend and I were allowed into her impossibly cool big brother's basement room to hang out with his friends as they listened to it. (We were not cool.) Then we got on our bikes and rode down to the record store to buy an album.
posted by gaspode at 8:37 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

just putting in my word for "The Same Deep Water as You"
posted by atoxyl at 1:01 AM on May 31, 2019

My sister and I saw them in Sydney 30 years ago, and we tried pretty hard to get tickets to this show. Unluckily for us, they did a decent thing and balloted access to the ticket website, and we missed out.
I’m not sure I’m quite ready to witness how 30 years have treated any of us.
posted by bystander at 2:35 AM on May 31, 2019

I went to their last show in Sydney but missed out on the ballot tickets to this one. Super bummed about that. I’m literally a 15 minute ferry ride away from the Opera House but listened to it livestreaming instead last night and it was amazing. A few of the comments on the SOH Facebook feed were from fans who went to their other concerts earlier in the week and they actually said that livestream was better than being there! Which just made me think they got bad seats. Robert Smith, they don’t make them like that any more.
posted by Jubey at 4:11 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is one of my all-time favorite albums, not just because it's amazing, but because it also helped open a lot of musical doors for me and led to me being much more open about music. I grew up in a small midwestern town where the nearest decent record store was 45 minutes away, 30 minutes to mall record stores. And I didn't get a car until ridiculously late in my teens, so I was always at the mercy of friends to get to record stores or whatever.

I was put off by Smith's voice at first, but I couldn't resist "Just Like Heaven" when it was played at parties and school dances. "Fascination Street" blew my doors off, though. That bass line still gets stuck in my head for days if I so much as think about it. (here we go...)

Disintegration was, if not my first CD, one of the first two or three. And I played it over and over and over. It was undeniable. My best friend at the time was a hardcore classic rock dude, anything that featured synths or was too new wave, goth, whatever was a no-go for him. After playing Disintegration and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me around him a few times he gave me a really resigned look and said "can you make me a copy of those?"

I enjoyed Wish and Wild Mood Swings but Bloodflowers and other late Cure output doesn't quite do it for me. TBH, I've listened to Bloodflowers quite a few times and I can't remember any of the songs at all. They don't annoy me or anything, they just don't stick.

Have high hopes for their next album, and I'm keeping my eye out for the next tour. I've seen them live four times and I really, desperately, want my partner and her kids to have the chance to see them. Saw them twice in 2017 and they were amazing both times.
posted by jzb at 4:53 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

Are you trying to make me feel old? I always thought of this as one of their “new” albums so never got into it that much. But always loved them. Robert Smith snuck me into their concert at First Avenue when I was 17.
posted by misterpatrick at 7:27 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

Unluckily for us, they did a decent thing and balloted access to the ticket website, and we missed out.
...
I went to their last show in Sydney but missed out on the ballot tickets to this one.

Does "ballot" here mean something to the effect of a lottery for tickets?
posted by Etrigan at 8:08 AM on May 31, 2019

My first exposure to the Cure was actually Wish (and thus it has a special place for me), although Disintegration is certainly one of their best. There is no band that has been more important for me, in so many ways. Back when collecting physical music was a thing, they were the only band where I tracked down every single, live release, etc I could.

I'm seeing them for the 9th time in August and just as excited as I was the first time (1996 Wild Mood Swings tour). Surprisingly, it's a Goldenvoice production. I still remember seeing them at their final Coachella performance, when they went on late due to other bands being late. There was a curfew, but The Cure had been forced to start so late Robert didn't want to stop playing. During Boys Don't Cry Coachella finally pulled the plug on them, but they still finished the song (with the crowd's singing helping now that there were no speakers...) I know he said he wouldn't do Coachella anymore after that but apparently they made up with GV enough to produce this new festival (Pasadena Daydream).
posted by thefoxgod at 4:40 PM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

Etrigan, yes, it was a lottery.
posted by Jubey at 5:48 PM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

My two brothers and I would play Fascination Street and A Forest. The impetus for this was a drum machine my older brother bought. Those beats were pretty easy to program, and that was important for a flaw in this drum machine. It's permanent memory required a charged battery installed, and this battery would drain by being plugged in. The result was that it effectively had no long-term memory.

So every time we wanted to play those songs I'd have to program the drum machine all over again. That was my burden, my brother who played the bass had his own frustration. The bass is extremely repetitive. It sounds great but it's really boring to play. I played rhythm guitar, which was equally as boring. Our older brother would play lead and do all the fun parts, we really resented this. He owned all the equipment though, and this is what he had us do to have the privilege to use it.

I know now that he was spending our orphan's pension to pay for stuff for himself, including this drum machine. I remember I needed shoes when he got that thing. He said we couldn't afford shoes. Making us play the most repetitive rhythm section ever was pretty typical of how he regarded us. I didn't go to his funeral.

But I love the songs.
posted by adept256 at 2:57 PM on June 1, 2019