The Seeker of Good Songs
Well-Known Member
Twenty-five years ago today, The Cure released Standing on a Beach: The Singles, a seminal compilation — and yes, we’re talking about the cassette here, not the Staring at the Sea CD — that stands alongside New Order’s Substance and Catching Up With Depeche Mode as one of the signpost compilations of the ’80s college rock era. Released May 6, 1986, the best-of — a stop-gap release between The Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me — neatly summarized Robert Smith and Co.’s career up to that point, presenting 13 can’t-miss pop-meets-goth singles, from “Killing an Arab” to “Close to Me,” that defined the Cure’s career up through its mainstream breakthrough.
It was a prefect introduction for the multitude of fans just catching on to The Cure, but the reason the cassette trumps the CD and vinyl releases is because of its B-side, which, appropriately, collected another dozen B-sides. And that’s where the true story of the Cure lies, in the contrast between the pop ambition of its singles and the more freely weird experimentation with what other bands would view as throwaway tracks.
So in honor of this anniversary, we present, below, a delightfully bad local TV news report about “a New Wave music group called The Cure” and their weird, black-encased fans that aired in Baltimore following the band’s July 11, 1986, performance at Merriweather Post Pavilion, just two months after the release of Standing on a Beach.
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