The Cure being an all-time favorite band for me, they were initially a hard sell when I was in high school and a devout disciple of metal and punk. When I was seen bridging with the punkers of our school, I was approached by someone (my apologies for forgetting who you are, dude) who told me alternative rock was a cousin to punk and he handed me a cassette recording of The Cure’s epochal The Head on the Door. One of those old cheapie Certrons, if you dig my old school jive.
I gave it a chance and I just couldn’t gel with it at first, except for the 1950s feel of “A Night Like This,” with its unexpected sax drag and the mind-blowing lyric, “Your trust the most gorgeously stupid thing I ever cut in the world.” If left its mark upon me, as did the superb grindy bass of “Screw.” I handed the tape back the next day, assured the guy I listened with a politeness I was finally starting to develop after carrying a metalhead’s chip on my shoulder for some time. “Not for me, but I see why they’re liked so much,” I remember saying, with, “That Robert Smith with the black mop for hair sings like he’s being tortured.”
Well, it wouldn’t take me long thereafter once graduating high school and heavy metal taking a temporary dirt nap in America before I turned to the alternative scene and feel deeply in love with The Cure. Disintegration is their inarguable finest magnum opus and to this day, there’s never been a better layered album I’ve ever heard. Yet The Head on the Door is an equal masterpiece where The Cure pushed their own boundaries beyond their palettes of angst and gloom, recording fine art with a ton of groove.
Thank you, my old, anonymous friend. Your efforts stuck in the long run.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Roads Lesser Traveled 
One of their best albums in my humble opinion. Fourth on my personal list after Faith, Pornography and Seventeen Seconds. Maybe tied with Seventeen (or edging it out), depending on my mood at the moment. I turned on a fair number of metalheads to the Cure with this album myself. The bass on Screw is still one of Simon’s best.
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Those are great albums and totally what I would expect from an artist of your caliber. “Pornography” is one of the darkest. most dangerous albums ever recorded, but still a masterpiece. It’s cool how metalheads from the past and today learned about The Cure. A shared love of dirge, I suppose.
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That was always the album I could hook the dirtballs and metalheads with. “You want dark? You don’t know the meaning of dark until you’ve heard this album.”
That and Christian Death. I could play their first album and get my friends to “come over to the dark side” after they heard either of those albums (although “Only Theater of Pain” can get campy in places).
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LMAO! Kinda like MDC and how they changed the acronym every album. Metalheads jumped on with Millions of Damned Christians, lol
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I’m sure. I know I saw a lot of metalheads at the Circle Jerks concert moshing to “Killing for Jesus” too. Oh, what a time period, such a beautiful mess of cross-genre music.
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I fostered the crossover and bridging in our school. I literally said “Why the hell are bickering amongst ourselves? As outcasts with a common interest in music everyone else hates, we should be united.” Ye-bang.
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That was pretty much the sentiment where I was at as well.
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My wife’s favorite album by her third favorite band. We listen to this one A LOT! I also love The Cure, so I’m not complaining! Much like you, I had to get to college before I replaced my Ratt and Metallica tapes with R.E.M. and The Cure.
I also have fond memories of Certron tapes. 3 for a dollar! But they broke or stretched if you breathed on them wrong. 😆
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BWAHAHAHAHA! They certainly did. I used to tape The King Biscuit Flower Hour shows on those things and most got mangled after a short while. I moved up to Maxell for the serious stuff I wanted to have recorded, lol. They always called alternative rock “college rock,” and like you, I was in college when I went that path.
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Oh yes. I have great memories of sitting in front of the tv and recording music onto my Certrons.
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I guess since Disintegration is the only Cure album I have, I picked the right one. Well I also have “Friday I’m In Love” and “The Lovecats” via other media too …
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“Lovecats” is such a great, jazzy, breezy cut. Clever beyond words and at the time in their careers, a breath of fresh air giddiness.
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