This week on the Totally 80s Podcast, join host Lyndsey Parker (Yahoo Entertainment Music Editor/SiriusXM Volume Host) and the other John Hughes as special guest Jennie Vee, songwriter and musician (Eagles of Death Metal, Courtney Love band), discuss memories of The Cure, including favorite albums, Robert Smith, and the time Vee reigned victorious in Sassy Magazine's Biggest Cure Fan Contest.
READ MORE: February 1980: The Cure Release "Boys Don't Cry" The Album
ON HOW THEY DISCOVERED THE CURE:
VEE: "I was watching MTV. I grew up in Canada and we had a satellite dish and not everybody had that. And you had to have one to get MTV. So MTV was the source of everything for me."
"And I saw the video for 'Close To Me' and yeah, I was already, I was, I was drawn to it because I was already kind of that awkward, little child who felt out of place everywhere. So anything that seemed different to me, what seemed different when I was really young was like Buddy Holly or the movie Xanadu, like pop culture things, but the things that had kind of quirkiness to them. It wasn't until I saw The Cure that I really, really could super relate."
"It's so funny. I was 10 years old, I think, when I saw that video and I could relate to, you know, a 30-year-old man, like Robert Smith, but he was my guy. It's weird."
HUGHES: "It's funny that you say it because I think I was about 14 or 15 and I saw a video for 'The Walk' on MTV in light rotation. I'm like, 'What's this baby he's holding. He's in a kiddie pool?' And it kind of scared me a little bit, but I was fascinated, kind of scared. And then they put 'Let's Go To Bed' in rotation..."
PARKER: "That was my introduction, 'Let's Go To Bed.'"
HUGHES: "Right. It's that same band, but this song is super pop and catchy and I like it. And I went and ran out and bought the cassette for Japanese Whispers. All downhill [from there]."
ON THEIR FAVORITE CURE ALBUM:
VEE: "It will be The Head on the Door. That's my favorite Cure album. And that's my holy trinity / trilogy of albums by any artist - it's The Head on the Door, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Disintegration."
"It's funny because I actually have a habit of flying out to other countries to see bands and The Cure, I've done a couple of times. I went to the Hyde Park show a couple years ago, flew out to London. That was amazing. That was the 40th anniversary.
But a few years before that they did the trilogy of albums, they did the first thee albums, they did Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds and Faith at the Sydney Opera House."
ON VEE'S ENTRY IN SASSY MAGAZINE'S BIGGEST CURE FAN CONTEST:
VEE: "I was flipping through. 'Get mixed up with the cure. Prove you're the world's biggest Cure fan. And you're going to get a truly next step, like mystery prize.' I don't think that was the terminology, but they didn't say what it was..."
"So I thought, 'Oh my God, maybe it's a trip to London. Maybe you get to go to Fiction Records and hang out there for the day or meet the band or who knows.' IT was very mysterious. So I was already motivated. I'm going to win. I'm the world's biggest Cure fan. No problem, I got this."
"My teenage brain's going crazy And it's completely taken over my life. The contest came out in September, the deadline was December. So I had some time here to work on this and like Lyndsey, I also fancied myself a bit of a poet and I had collected many poems that - she loves this part - I signed them all in blood."
PARKER: "I do love that part."
VEE: "How old was I? 13. Yep. Signing my poetry in blood. So I had to expand that collection. I decided 365 poems dedicated to The Cure cure. That's a good number. And I was probably up to about a hundred or so. Furiously in school, after school, at any time, I was writing poetry and usually in response to a song."
"So I listened to a song and kind of stream of consciousness, write the song, sign it in blood, put it in the black Duo-Tang [folder] that I decorated with red nail polish. It was a whole thing. And then beyond that, I thought this isn't enough. What if somebody else out there, like Lyndsey, somewhere out there, has poetry like this."
"So I decided I needed to construct a doll house, a Cure doll house. And I remember reading that Robert Smith liked Christmas and Christmas lights and decorations..."
Listen to the rest of the podcast here.
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