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.