Friday, December 1, 2017

And now Tim adds fuel to the fire...


As with Lol, and in fairness to Tim, he didn't say this was Cure related. He also has other projects he's working on. But you can't blame any of us for thinking what we're all thinking. :)

Update (Dec. 1st. 2017): Tim now confirms that one of his projects IS Cure related!


No one has guessed it until now...From executive producer Roger O'Donnell, a story 40 years in the making, Tim Pope's 'Crawley was Ours', the story of The Cure! :)

Note: The above was a joke! Based on Roger being the executive producer of 'England is Mine'. I thought that went without explaining, but apparently not. Only a joke guess, not at all true!

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Lol clarifies his 'Wild Ideas' post

NOAH + The Cure clothing line


A new line of designer clothing, featuring Cure graphics and authorized & approved by Robert, will be released today. Prices will range between $12 and $798. On sale now here, and at Dover Street Market NY, London & Singapore, Commes Des Garcons Korea, & Slam Jam. They will also be available at Noah Clubhouse in Tokyo on Dec. 1st.

Update: If you are interested in any of the items, you might want to act fast, as some sizes are already sold out.

From Dazed: How a heartfelt email to frontman Robert Smith turned into a new capsule collection

“I started listening to everything I could get my hands on,” says Brendon Babenzien. The designer is describing how he became obsessed with The Cure after an older, cooler friend – as is always the case – played a song for him at a house party in 1984. The moment converted an impressionable Babenzien into a lifelong fan. Now, through his New York menswear label Noah, he has collaborated with the English band on a capsule collection, set to release in-store and online at Noah NYC and Tokyo as well as at London’s Dover Street Market this Thursday.

“As soon as I was calling the shots in my own company, it was really the first music collaboration I could think of that would really make me happy, that I could be really proud of,” the designer says of the collaboration, which sees a host of Noah staples, such as graphic t-shirts, hoodies and Harringtons emblazoned with versions of The Cure’s iconic cover art. “What I knew of Robert Smith, historically, I would have guessed that he would say no to something like this. So I wrote this heartfelt email, kind of explaining who I was and why this would be important to me – assuring him that we would do our best to do the right thing with it and it wasn’t going to be this huge commercial project.” To Babenzien’s surprise, Smith quickly got on board. “We also wanted to expose a younger audience to the band – anyone who hasn’t listened to their music before, we’re hoping that this will bring them to it a little more.”

Babenzien grew up in East Islip, a picturesque but nondescript town somewhere between Montauk and the Hamptons. Aesthetically different but similar in feeling to Crawley – the town in West Sussex that gave birth to The Cure – it inspired the same sense of angst-meets-ennui in Babenzien that was a hallmark of the British outfit’s early work. “Where I grew up, it’s beautiful and I love it now as an adult,” he says. “But when you’re a kid it just feels mundane because you can’t access any of the things that interest you. The small group of people that I was friends with that felt out of place where we were from, the music just kind of made sense to us.”

Through an outsider mentality and rigorous aesthetic approach, The Cure’s Robert Smith tapped into that, creating work that both captured and transcended the bleak banality of British suburbia to resonate with pretty much any teenager in a pre-internet era who felt disconnected or different. Babenzien was one of them, and that love of the band has stayed with him in the years that have passed since.

You can read more at Dazed, the NOAH NY blog, High Snobiety, Fashion Network, Hypebeast, i-D, and Esquire. Thanks, Van and Aaron.

Robert Smith responds to fans about death, dreams & his tombstone in ‘The Cure News’


"Cure vocalist Robert Smith was 28 when he started answering questions from his fans in the band’s series of newsletters The Cure News which published its first issue in 1987. During its run, Smith replied to hand-written inquiries sent in about his mythical hair and his aversion to flying—all while slyly avoiding answering a request for his home address. In later newsletters, Smith lets loose on The Smiths/Morrissey and rarely avoids answering intimate questions from fans which run the gamut from amusing to stalker-level weirdness. The vintage Q&As also chronicle Smith’s commentary as it relates to his relationship with his childhood pal, Cure drummer and keyboardist Lol Tolhurst until Lol’s departure from The Cure in 1989.

I combed through every newsletter put out between 1987 to 1991 in search of Smith’s most quotable-quotes—which, I must say, was a shit-ton of fun. I’ve posted loads of Smith’s answers to his fans queries below in the order of their chronological appearance in the various newsletters. I’ve left his answers just as he wrote them, without capitalization and British spellings which in some cases makes them all the more endearing. So without further delay, here’s Robert Smith being very Robert Smith-y while he responds to his fans."

Read the rest at Dangerous Minds.

Josh Cheon from Dark Entries on The Cure


From Resident Advisor:

Label of the month: Dark Entries

"But if luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, Cheon's been laying groundwork for such discoveries his whole life. In the backroom at RS94109, we speak about his undying love for the dark, romantic '80s music that forms the backbone of his label's aesthetic.

"I didn't have the happiest teenage years," he says. "I was overweight, I was made fun of, I was gay and in the closet. I had girlfriends that were into goth music music and The Cure—I think hearing that when I was 15—it's angsty, it's sad, it's emotive, and I was all of these things. If you hear Robert Smith singing about Disintegration or Pornography and how it doesn't matter if we all die, it's like, 'This like a rallying call for what's going on inside my head.'"

Free screenings of 'England is Mine'



New products for sale at Pearl's website

MIRROR * MIRRORS AVAILABLE NOW AT ABOXOFSTRANGETHINGS.COM • * * * @aboxofstrangethings #pearlthompson #aboxofstrangethings

A post shared by PEARL THOMPSON (@aboxofstrangethings) on


By them here.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith


Siouxsie and The Banshees were one of the first post-punk bands to make it big, forming in 1976, already releasing their second album Join Hands in September of 1979.

During the tour for said album however, the Banshees’ guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris (both now referred to as The Blackheads) quit the group, leaving founders Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin scrambling to find replacements for the tour.

Slits percussionist Peter Edward Clarke aka Budgie was recruited on drums, becoming a permanent member of the band—but Severin and Sioux still had a hard time enlisting a guitarist.

Robert Smith of The Cure decided to offer his services as his group were already the support band on tour in support of Join Hands.

After the tour, Robert returned to full time duties with his own band, and Sioux and Severin then had a proper audition, and Sioux and Severin recruited Magazine and Visage guitarist John McGeoch to join the band, which was the perfect arrangement until the departure of John McGeoch from the Banshees after suffering a nervous breakdown at a gig in Madrid.

Robert Smith was recruited a second time into Wonderland to join his hand on guitar as a Banshee, now becoming a full time member, as Smith was still recovering from the emotional anguish of The Cure album “Pornography” (which led to Simon Gallup leaving The Cure, a major reason for the band’s hiatus).

Read the rest at Post-Punk.com.

A Very New Wave Christmas is back!


Tim Pope interview



The Cure or The Smiths?

Big plans for 2018?

Muzikalia ran a story today about possible plans to celebrate The Cure's 40th anniversary in 2018. Just your usual speculation that we all do at the end/start of the year, but what caught my eye was a tweet from Lol. Seems like some "wild ideas" really ARE happening in 2018.


A post shared by Lol Tolhurst (@lol.tolhurst) on

Update (Nov. 26th, 2017): I know we've all had fun speculating on these posts from Reeves and Lol, but please keep in mind that they both have their own projects, and not everything is Cure related. Lol could be speaking about his 2nd book, his graphic novel that he's working on with Pearl, his Cured movie adaptation, or that studio project he was working on with Pearl. It could be anything.

Also, there's this problem of Lol & Robert not having had any contact in quite some time. From a recent Metro interview:

"What was Robert Smith's reaction?
 
I gave him the first copy of the book about six months before its release. He was on tour, very busy, and we have not had any contact since. But I'm sure I would have known if he did not like it."


So just don't get your hopes up too high. Even if there ARE major Cure plans in the works, we know how quickly they can change.  

And one more thing, we all know how much Robert loathes social media/"The fucking internet", and the leaking of any info before he posts it himself, so would Lol & Reeves really post these things if they're Cure related?

"And so it begins..."

A post shared by Reeves Gabrels (@reevesgabrels) on

A post shared by Reeves Gabrels (@reevesgabrels) on

Update (Nov. 26th, 2017): So what is Reeves really up to? From a Facebook post on Nov. 23rd - "I'm using this fantastic space for my various writing, recording, editing, mixing projects..."

That would seem to put to rest the speculation that Reeves was in England recording with the band. But it doesn't mean that he isn't working on demos or other Cure things.