Right smack in the middle of the second wave of punk rock that spread around the world, a band from Crawley, where they have a very hard time pronouncing the letter R, appeared with a single which had a creepy dude’s face on the cover. The music was great, it resonated with my affinity for bands like the Buzzcocks, and Wire. There was a lot of meaningless pop music, but few approached anything as neat and compact as the Cure. At the time everything was highly specialized. Power Pop was a form of music, not punk, rather a unique sub division which was more accessible, and more appealing to more people than the iconic spikey hair, and nasty, drunk spew of a classic punk band. The Cure were power pop, indeed, but there seemed to be something more. They didn’t really hit home for the punks, but they hit home with me. I really loved the singles and the first album ‘Three Imaginary Boys.’

The turning point in the Cure’s career came when their second album, Seventeen Seconds, was finally released. It seemed to take so long for this record to come out. By the time it was released, the Buzzcocks had broken up, and Wire had wandered off into the obscurity Colin Newman’s abstractions, and lack of form. The world had changed, and it felt like a serious change for the worse. People were furious at this record. They’d hoped for more of the same. More power pop, more humor, more staccato emotionalism. What I heard in the grooves of this record was an expanded emotional dialog. A further exploration of the whine in the singer’s voice, and a longer take, with a slower tempo. I loved it, and the Cure became my favorite band immediately, superseding all others. Finally, a language I could speak, listen to carefully, and sing along with as if I’d written the words myself.

The Cure ‘Seventeen Seconds’
flash player required