{"id":622,"date":"2007-06-04T09:14:01","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T13:14:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-06-08T14:17:28","modified_gmt":"2007-06-08T14:17:28","slug":"critical-upgrade-the-cure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/critical-upgrade-the-cure\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Upgrade: The Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iQhh4Xs8RcM?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nLast weekend I stumbled on both a live performance of <strong>The Cure<\/strong> on that British show Jools Holland hosts and the song &#8220;Friday I&#8217;m in Love&#8221; on the radio, and I wondered whether this band was due for a <strong>Critical Upgrade<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m aware that to our chubby, sexually ambivalent, 17-year-old readers, the notion that The Cure would need a Critical Upgrade is preposterous, but it&#8217;s time I &#8211; and others within the Halls of Rock &#8211; re-evaluate our grudging admittance that The Cure is, as one might put it, <strong>&#8220;As good as that pussy shit gets.&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe first video, of course, is &#8220;Boys Don&#8217;t Cry&#8221;, and dating back to the band&#8217;s initial, awkward appearance in my music-loving life, I had to give them credit for this one. Great ascending chords, nice drum hooks, and more importantly, a tremendous display of inverse balls! I mean, what better way to be a pussy, if you&#8217;ll excuse my French, than to shove it in people&#8217;s faces? Surely boys cry, and some of us cry more easily than others, even us tough guys. Their other minor hit, &#8220;Killing an Arab&#8221;, was pretty cool too. I was hip deep in my Camus phase, and what Camus- and rock-loving freshman didn&#8217;t dig the insider knowledge of that song? <\/p>\n<p>A friend in college had their first 2 albums &#8211; I think they were imports, and that was cool too, but once I caught a few looks at this <strong>Robert Smith<\/strong> guy and heard enough of his whining vocals, I quickly tired of the band and felt a bit ashamed for liking those early singles. The chubby, effeminate frontman in baggy clothes, make-up, and teased, dyed-black hair was <em>not<\/em> my idea of a rock hero. Hell, I&#8217;m just a make-up kit and box of Clairol away from achieving that Look! I need to aim higher. (Please note, today I do not support such <em>pussyphobic<\/em> beliefs; I share so that others might confront their own <em>pussyphobia<\/em>.)<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2Y9KJ9Lcfqc?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI once dated a woman who was into their &#8220;dark, difficult&#8221; album, <em>Pornography<\/em>. She was crazy, wild, and so confused I felt like &#8220;the strong one&#8221; for once in my young dating life. I respected the fact that &#8220;Pornography&#8221; was dark and difficult and that she was strong enough to love it for all it was, but it was the beginning of the end of my ability to like this band even a little bit. As much as I would love the movie <em>Edward Scissorhands<\/em>, seeing a bandful of that character, dressed in black, playing Miss Huntenpeck synth parts and Roto-toms&#8230;<em>Ugh<\/em>! Around this time, I thought, Robert Smith sorely needed a wedgie.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QBiKyf_AbGY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIt must have been around 1990 when the band put out a remix album and a video came out for some quirky little number with Smith singing &#8220;underwater,&#8221; in a <em><strong>Sigmund and the Sea Monsters<\/strong><\/em>-like set. The band&#8217;s greatest hits album might have come out around this time too (maybe the remix was part of the greatest hits album &#8211; I don&#8217;t know and refuse to look it up right now). This song was so good I started thinking that I needed to find a copy of the greatest hits album &#8211; maybe find it at a yard sale in a town far, far away from my own, so that I could buy it anonymously, without the likely shame that would accompany my buying it in Philadelphia and having some watchdog of close-minded types like myself of old &#8211; like <strong><strong>Townsman dbuskirk<\/strong><\/strong> &#8211; report, &#8220;Did you hear what Mr. Moderator bought today!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, I think I&#8217;m getting real close to walking into a local store, plopping that greatest hits CD on the counter, and maybe even paying with a check, so that the clerk needs to see my ID! That, or maybe I&#8217;ll order it through Amazon. <strong>Meanwhile, what do the rest of you think, is The Cure &#8220;As good as that pussy shit gets&#8221; or can we say that they are simply &#8220;Very good,&#8221; and leave it at that? I look forward to your responses.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend I stumbled on both a live performance of The Cure on that British show Jools Holland hosts and the song &#8220;Friday I&#8217;m in Love&#8221; on the radio, and I wondered whether this band was due for a Critical Upgrade. I&#8217;m aware that to our chubby, sexually ambivalent, 17-year-old readers, the notion that The <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/critical-upgrade-the-cure\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}