I've Got Your Old ID and You're All Dressed Up Like the Cure

I kind of love this piece by Kat Kinsman about how much The Cure meant (means) to her.

The Cure is a band that has meant (means) something to me, too: I listened to Boys Don't Cry on cassette until the tape was worn thin; it was the first album I owned on cassette that I replaced with a CD copy. The Cure concerts I saw remain some of my favorite shows, even though The Cure is one of the few bands I loved whom I never saw from the front row, whose members I never met.

There are lots (and lots) of bands I liked a hell of a lot, bands for whom I waited outside venues all day just to see their members show up for the soundcheck, bands about whom I thought I'd "literally die!" if I didn't see them every time they were in town, bands whose album covers and posters and t-shirts I treated like sacred artifacts. My Cure t-shirt I wore until it fell apart. Their posters hung on the walls of my bedroom, my dorm room, my first apartment, the corners tattered from thumbtack holes. The jewel case of Pornography has a crack straight down its front, from that time I stepped on it.

Something about The Cure felt less precious to me, and also more intimate.

Most of those other bands never even made it to my digital collection. The Cure is still in rotation.

[Related Reading: Old Fogey, FYI, Happy Birthday, Bob.]