Some of these titles for my posts really suck. Just was on my mind and needed to point that out.
Still, the fact of the matter is, I have been listening to The Cure ALL weekend. Literally. 🙂
I listened to both the “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Faith” albums three times straight through yesterday. I existed in the aura of a music concert all by myself sitting at the bar in a vegetarian restaurant, oblivious to what was going on around me; bobbing my head up and down, being powerless to resist what accosted my ears, and in a musically induced dazed nod-similar to the one I’m in now-writing this on my bed.
Sometimes I think that maybe it’s possible to hear music before you are born, or hear it around you as a child before you gained consciousness, and it’s familiar to you somehow later in life. Kind of like seeing a cousin you haven’t seen in a long time, or family members bearing your resemblance and reflecting it back, leaving no doubt to the relation standing before you.
Sounds crazy, but there was an uncanny thing that happened with my dad a few months back. We were relaxing in the house playing music in the stereo with our phones, and we pretty much connected on every song. You know when you hear something, and you love it just as much as the person you are with? Well, that kept happening over and over on a random playlist of music that I had put together, with no input of his own, and coincidentally, happened to be song after song of some of his favorites; yet, what was even more unreal, was that all of this music I had found, and was brand new to me, were songs that his brother (who is no longer with us) listened to with him decades ago.
I sometimes imagine what it would have been like to have been in the car with them. I picture a couple of young, carefree country boys riding down some back roads, fast as hell (ha!), in a pickup truck with nothing but the stars above and the black of night surrounding it all. Maybe I was there? The music makes me feel like I was, and just like the music is still with us, I think the people we’ve lost still are too. I can’t see them, but I feel them sometimes like the music I can’t see, flowing with me without restriction of time or space.
This brings me back to The Cure. I don’t know why some of these songs are so familiar. I’ve never listened to these albums before. I used to watch MTV as a kid, as most did at the time, but I was waiting for “Yo! MTV Raps!” or New Edition or some Michael Jackson song. Back when MTV played videos, you had to wait through stuff you didn’t want to hear, just so you could get to YOUR song. Hahaha.
So somehow, waiting for my song of the moment, which would soon change on another capricious whim, I had to have heard some Cure songs after Cher, and Lionel Richie, and Rod Stewart.
As frustrating as it was then, I appreciate MTV for this, if in fact this was the reason. Or it could be that there was some sort of spiritual osmosis of what was in the music, and it passed on to me at just this moment? Or it could be that I just really like them? That’s too simple though. I like the more magical sounding reasons. Either way, it’s true that the band was huge, inspired the whole goth genre-though they hate to be classified as anything. The beautiful thing about a band like this, or any trailblazing artists, is that elements of their music are still burning brightly, and you can see the flame in the music of today. Guitars, synthesizers, funk, dark melodies, artsy experimentalism, and ethereal sonic backdrops. Its a little complex to try and put into words, but it’s kinda like….floating. Yeah, like that. 🙂
You may be listening to them now and not even know it. 🙂
“Plastic Passion” http://bit.ly/XtEMh0
“Other Voices” http://bit.ly/1u9yI6p
“Just Like Heaven” http://bit.ly/1gKOO1G
The Black Aesthete 