It's kind of strange how music will become dated, seemingly overnight, but then you give it a few more years and that dated quality seems to be gone. Right now, the music of twenty years ago really seems lost with that trebly, sharp quality, the synth sounds, the staccato, precise drumming, the vocals pushed so far to the front. I suspect that five yeras from now, you'll be able to listen to it again and it will sound really fresh and inventive, or at least good.

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A lot of it still sounds good to me! It's just that the music itself is totally overshadowed by the nostalgia it conjures up. Other Cure albums pull me right back into memories of e.g. 1989, so while I have sentimental affection for them, I can't listen to them the way I listen to new stuff. But for some reason, this one album has broken free of the past, and yeah it's fresh again.

Head on the Door was one of the earliest Cure album I loved, so maybe there really is a 20 year expiration date on nostalgia.

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The only Cure album I've really been able to get into is their first, but that's kind of the case with a lot of bands for me -- I'll love their first albums and then not so much after.

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I do think that part of that 20 year expiration date is that it takes that long to hear something (heard previously) with a new ear. Part of the nostalgia factor, for me, is the quality of the sound -- the recording techniques, the mixing, the effects used on instruments and vocals -- they all add up to that quality in sound which makes the recording so specific to a certain time and era that then brings me emotionally back to the time that I heard it. After a certain period of time has passed it's like all neurons have been replaced and, although there is the memory of that music, they don't personally remember it -- they've just heard about it from the neurons before them. I don't know, I think I'm probably just rambling. I just like to talk about music, I guess.

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The neuron thing is kind of how it feels for me too.

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Funny, I've had the Trilogy DVD on as "background" a lot lately...

If it weren't for the Cure, I might never have ended up in Madison.

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Hm, sounds like there's a story in there... how did it happen?

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Eighteen years ago, the Cure played a show in Cincinnati in their Wild Mood Swings tour. I had two tickets, and didn't have anyone to go with at the time, so a friend of a friend offered to come along. We hit it off, realized we both saw the world in a similar fashion, and became good friends.

Over the years, as happens, our lives went in different directions. She eventually moved to Madison and got married here. Thanks to the magic of the Inter-tubes™, we were able to reconnect and stay in touch - mostly through instant messaging and LiveJournal.

Then, about six months ago, I got out of a long-term relationship. She offered to have me up for the weekend to get my head on straight, and I accepted the offer. Shortly after, I went to New Zealand for a month, came back, realized that I no longer wanted the life that I had been living for the past thirty years.

I quit my job, came back up to Madison to visit for a few days and actually got so see and experience the city this time. I just fell in love with this town, it's such a nice change from where I came from, and I feel more at home here than I ever did in Cincinnati. My car broke down, and I ended up staying for a week and a half. By the end, I was looking for jobs and apartments. Everything just sort of fell into place.

Until I can get myself back to New Zealand, Madison is close enough.

If I hadn't been so obsessed with the Cure when I was a scrawny little goth kid, I would never have met my friend, nor I would I likely have had a reason to come to Madison in the first place.

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Great story :) And welcome to Madison!

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Thanks :D

Also - it wasn't eighteen years ago, it was more like thirteen, heh.

Maybe I'm not as old as I think...

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Have you seen that Vincent Starrett poem about Holmes and Watson that ends like this?

--
England is England yet, for all our fears--
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
--

I could quite happily swap "fabled" for "Fascination, "two for "songs," and 1895 for 1989.

I remember spending the night on the sidewalk outside Better Days records in Louisville to buy DISINTEGRATION as soon as they opened the day it came out.

And my brother will never come to WisCon, but if he did, I'd have him bring his mandolin and we'd do my bluegrass version of "Pictures of You" for y'all.

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That's gorgeous.

It was a hell of a year. There's a piece of me that lives on where it's always 1989, and it's definitely all swirling rainy night and ghostly lamps and exploding worlds in there. And you can guess the soundtrack.

One of these days, I would love to hear "Pictures of You" on your brother's mandolin.

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