The Cure: Pornography

The Cure: Pornography

1982

Fiction Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. One Hundred Years  2. A Short Term Effect  3. The Hanging Garden  4. Siamese Twins  5. The Figurehead  6. A Strange Day  7. Cold  8. Pornography 

Happy Friday Everyone!

Ugh...Sorry I haven't really had the chance to post much this week...Everything was going so well...My In-Laws came out to visit and I was having so much fun...

(See! I even went to a Ballgame and drank an 8 dollar beer! It must be fancy stuff at that price!)

But then suddenly (and without warning),  I got sick as hell Tuesday night...Running a horrible fever and I've seriously done nothing but sleep almost 24 hours a day for the last three days...It's now Thursday night (actually, this would be Friday Morning) at 2:04 am and my fever's broke and I'm finally starting to feel a bit human again...Problem is, I didn't get a chance to write my post for "The Cure II: Pornograffiti" so I'm really doing this on the fly...So forgive me if this particular post isn't as in-depth or as insightful as my usual posts where I just post funny pictures and youtube videos...

And boy, let me tell you...There's no album more comforting to listen to when you're running a 105 degree temperature than The Cure's feverish nightmare "Pornography"....


This literally kept happening....

So as grueling as this particular listening was, "Pornography" is definitely one of my personal favorite Cure albums, and as far as "Goth" (I think I promised not to use that word again, in relation to the Cure, but at least I put it in quotation marks, so...) Cure albums go, this is hands down the best (Sorry,  "Disintegration" fans...)...

Actually, "Disintegration" fans needn't worry too much...I have a lot of lapses in taste...Here's a list of things I honestly enjoy from the bottom of my heart...

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace...



Sugar Ray (but only the early stuff)...



...ah, who am I kidding?! I like the later stuff too!

The film oeuvre of Michael Bay...Here's hoping for a Criterion edition of "The Island." When I look at that above picture this is what I imagine him saying, "...But Wait! There's more! This time it'll be in...(pregnant Pause becomes unbearable)...3-D!!!!!!!" (A couple of well-paid "Yes-Men" start clapping wildly and whistling..."Bravo!" they exclaim..."The cinematic genius strikes again!!")



The entire Phil Collins discography (minus that horrible "I Can't Dance" Genesis album...Y'know what? In my fevered state, the mere thought of "I Can't Dance" makes me feel nauseous...Strike Phil Collins from this list for now)...

So, there you have it...You can't be too outraged that I like "Pornography" more than "Disintegration"...And you know why? Because this is the album that has "One Hundred Years" on it, which is my jam...Let me give you some back-story...(audience groans)...I was watching TV back in the 90's (which is a discipline I practice to this very day) and I heard this song and I tell you what! My socks shot off both me feet and did a happy jig right there in the middle of the room for all of God's creatures to see!  I think it was the cumulative effect of that industrial-strength drum machine beat, the lead guitar line that sounds like a deadly cobra uncoiling and that glorious opening line, where Robert sobs "It doesn't matter if we all die!"

Oh my God, it was the greatest single thing I'd ever heard in my entire life...I had to know what that song was! But waitaminute! It's the 90's, remember? No internet then...So you kind of just had to walk around with unanswered questions for years until you just so happened to blindly stumble upon the answer one day...By "blindly stumble into the answer" I mean "buying every damn Cure album in the hopes that it'd contain the song I was looking for"...

And let me tell you, back in those days the stores weren't exactly overflowing with copies of "Pornography"...Lots of "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," "Mixed Up," and "Standing on a Beach" sure, but no "Pornography"...



 But eventually I stumbled upon a copy and as soon as I pushed play and heard that stumbling drum machine beat that had haunted my dreams for lo, those many years, I knew I had found what I was looking for (run-on sentence)...

What I found most interesting about listening to all the Cure albums in a row, is that there's a very visceral sense of the heavy, oppressive fog that enveloped "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith" finally lifting and what's been lurking in the shadows is much more horrible than you could have imagined...On "Faith" you get the feeling that Robert's overwhelmed by the sense of death from a barely-comfortable distance (the Grandparent's funeral for example),  but on "Pornography" it sounds like the shit just got personal...Like he's finally face to face with the reaper himself, cornered and snarling...

And it's that lucidity and LOL Tolhurst's big, pounding tribal beats that puts this above the pack for me...

 
I mean, listen to "The Hanging Garden"...Those jungle drums give it a real sense of dread, but it's not the diffuse dread of "Faith"...And besides, I can't drive past an Olive Garden restaurant without singing, "Cover my face as the animals die! In the Olive Garden..."

God, I hate myself for actually typing that out...I'm sure you guy's have nothing better to do than read my gut-busing filks...

Here's another one:

"The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on Klingin' On,
 like a Bird of Prey that fleewwww...
naDevvo' peghoS!"

Yeeks...It's getting late...I should probably go to bed someday...I guess I'll cut this short...I do have one more thing to say, though...I've always kind of wished that "A Strange Day" closed this album...It gives off such a disorienting, yet beautiful "the day-after vibe"...Instead we get the title track which is just a bunch of screamin' noise, naked women and loud rappin' as far as I'm concerned...

Man, I've got to pull the plug...I'm realllly starting to lose it...

Anyway...I'm hoping I feel better tomorrow, but if not, make sure the Friday Night Record Party goes on without me...Make sure you drink plenty of cold beers, eat lots of cheap pizza and go to bed no earlier than 3:30 am...

Here's "One Hundred Years" by the Almighty Cure...Enjoy...