When Prince and Morris Day Tried to Emulate the Sound of The Cure

Many fail to realize that Prince once tried to emulate The Cure. The sounds of their music was far apart, yet in 1984 Prince co-wrote "Ice Cream Castles" with Morris Day of The Time on the album of the same name. Morris Day recently told Rolling Stone that one of the favorite songs he collaborated with Prince on was "Ice Cream Castles."

[T]here were groups like the Fixx, the Cure [sic] doing those haunting, melodic songs and we wanted to do one of our own.

Robert Smith admired Prince, too. About a year ago I reported on my Cure blog that Robert Smith listed "Starfish and Coffee" as his favorite Prince song from the 1980s. When touring last summer in Minneapolis, Robert Smith again paid homage to the literary song. On his guitar was written a lyric from "Starfish and Coffee": "it was 7:45 we were all in line" Check out the photos at Glide Magazine.

Prince never wrote a Gothic song and The Cure never wrote an overtly sexy song. To at least some extent, however, Prince and The Cure liked each other's music and that's pretty cool.

#Prince #TheCure #TheTime

Review of Phantasmal: The Best Ghost Short Stories 1800-1849 by the Examiner

Phantasmal: The Best Ghost Short Stories 1800-1849

Every so often a review of one of my books is so well-reasoned that I share with my friends. This week was no exception when Denise Longrie of the Examiner posted a review of Phantasmal: The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849.

Ms. Longrie did a nice job in pointing out the scope of the anthology: story backgrounds, list of ghost stories considered, preface (though not mentioning annotations and author photos). She goes on to review each story in the collection and concludes by giving it 5 out of 5 stars.

The review was a positive light on a very hard day for me. Thanks, Ms. Longrie, for caring about the early machinations of ghost short stories.

So what does this have to do with The Cure? In the preface to the collection I titled it "All Ghosts are Grey" and, of course, mention The Cure.

#BestGhostShortStories #ExaminerGhostReview

The Cure Albums Ranked from 13-1 by PopMatters

Check out this link where PopMatters ranks every album by The Cure.

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/the-cure-ranking-their-albums-from-13-to-1/

This is how I rank them. In my view The Top is completely underrated. Agree?

1. Disintegration
2. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
3. Pornography
4. Head on the Door
5. Seventeen Seconds
6. The Top
7. Wish
8. Bloodflowers
9. Faith
10. Three Imaginary Boys
11. The Cure
12. 4:13 Dream
13. Wild Mood Swings

#CureAlbumsRanked #TheCureBand

A Great Remake of The Figurehead

Once in a while a band remakes a song by another band that is actually better than the original. The crackling, gritty, shattered Superstar by Sonic Youth comes to mind. Who doesn't like a gunshot at the end of a tune?

Rarely has a remake of a song by The Cure surpassed the original. I have my suspicions that it is because Robert Smith's melancholy voice is like no other and pairs with his band's melancholy music like a cabernet does a filet. That's why I was shocked to find a stunning rendition of The Figurehead by Astral Grey that is better than the original from the Pornography album. You can buy the song on Amazon here. I was unable to find it on iTunes.

I'm off to lose myself "in Chinese art and American girls . . ." as you take in the video.