my life as a list (music)

The Cure turn 30 this year, which makes me think that the Stones must be approaching 100. A celebratory radio special had me lost in my own history – the body moves, the memories flow. I doubt there’s a single memory of mine that doesn’t include a soundtrack. I understand the role music plays because it’s always been beside me, strapped into the passenger seat. My first stories reside there. Wiggling + giggling to Ry Cooder’s version of ‘Little Sister’, my favourite when I was three or four. The forbidden record player: the turntable, the needle, the delicate mystery of its mechanics. So many albums in their glossy storybook sleeves; each one an adventure beyond my little girl understanding. Women backed up against the jungle in see-through underwear, an airbrushed superhero dancing across giant piano keys in even bigger platform shoes, soft-focus princesses + cowboy kings. My first rudimentary glimpses of sex, love, magic. And the magic remains.

Music has been one of the few constants. Music + friends + boys. Using the first to woo the other two. Crushes on a million musicians. Passions fuelled by favourite songs. Lust + loss + lyrics, all sweatily intertwined. The best kind of lifeblood. I don’t think of the Cure as my lifeblood, particularly. My friends Emily + Tina were truly obsessed. Bought all the albums, sourced rare live videos, pored over every detail. Once they signed up to something there was no limit to their intensity. I stood at the periphery: wore out my tape of ‘Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea’ + let my teen heart swell with the dark romance of it all, but usually from the privacy of my bedroom.

You flicker + you're beautiful
You glow inside my head
You hold me hypnotised, I'm mesmerised
Your flames, the flames that kiss me dead

A high school friend tracked me down last year (the facebook phenomenon), saying that the trigger had been a Cure concert. She couldn’t help but think of me as she watched Robert Smith moping around the stage, reliving the eyeliner days. It felt strange to have Mel link me to the Cure in the way that maybe I link Emily + Tina. I don’t own an album anymore, wouldn’t consider going to see them play live, but me + the Cure occupy the same space in Mel’s memory bank.

I remember a detested first year lecturer trying to win the class over with the Cure. Dropping in a line about them being the one band that was always cool, the constant throughout his teaching career. And he was wrong. At that point in time, in that brief window, he was wrong. I thought the Cure would never be cool again because in 1997 that was the truth. They were making shitty new songs, they were fat + old. They had fallen from the chariot + were being mauled by the hard hooves of the sell out. Then that window closed + another opened. Suddenly Vaughan is no longer wrong. He might even impress the class of 2008, although I’m sure he’s still a nob. Suddenly the Cure are everywhere again. A best-of pulled out as soundtrack to a friend’s dinner party. The classics making a return to the radio. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ catching my ear on a regular basis. Influence obvious in scores of hot new bands. And now the 30th birthday party. The surprise lesson, which I learn over + over + over again, is that nothing ever dies.