JonSnow said:

I would've loved to see "I Dig You" and "I'm a Cult Hero" on here. I know they're way dorky, but I have so much fun when those are on.

JonSnow said:

That looks pretty tight. When I've made mine, I include edits and add a lot of the promos, foreign singles and half hits.

I'll dig out my set and post my tracklisting when I find it.

JonSnow said:

yea , everything except, killing an arab, fuck fuckin politics !

JonSnow said:

Yeah, it's kinda bad. But no different than the other versions I've heard elsewhere. Maybe that's why it was left off the album. It's a little bass heavy and distorted. For some reason though, I still really like it.

GangstaFam said:

Ya know... i really like it too. I have no idea why. It sounds like a muddled mess, the lyrics are AWFUL... and yet, it just has a cool vibe to it.

I just did my own 1-disc version of 3iB. All of the album tracks, plus the singles and b-sides, and the studio outtakes. makes for a nifty 66 minute single CD.

I did the first part basically patterned after the US release of Boys Don't Cry, as that is the context that I know and like the songs the best... (not exact, but basically....)

1. Boys Don't Cry
2. Plastic Passion
3. 10:15 Saturday Night
4. Accuracy
5. Object
6. Subway Song

7. Killing an Arab (amplified it so that it would fit in soundwise)
8. Fire in Cairo
9. Another Day
10. Grinding Halt
11. Jumping Someone Else's Train
12. Three Imaginary Boys

Then the rest (13 thru 24) are "bonus tracks", LOL.

I"m such a dork. But i'm really digging it.

JonSnow said:

Ya know, I'm working on the same thing as we speak. Not dorky at all! Just practical.

I prefer the "Boys Don't Cry" order too. Aren't there a few songs on that version of the album that blend into eachother that don't appear that way on TIB? I'll have to listen to refresh my memory. If so, it's a bummer we don't get it remastered that way.

GangstaFam said
I prefer the "Boys Don't Cry" order too. Aren't there a few songs on that version of the album that blend into eachother that don't appear that way on TIB? I'll have to listen to refresh my memory. If so, it's a bummer we don't get it remastered that way.[/quote]

i think only 1015 and accuracy... which is the same on TIB... but i could be wrong about that..

JonSnow said:

I thought maybe Boys Don't Cry into Plastic Passion did. I'ma check too.

GangstaFam said:

I merged them together a bit on my version...

JonSnow said:

I'm totally making this tonight. I haven't stopped listening since I got it. Happy!

GangstaFam said:

Me too..

Can't wait for the next batch of reissues!!!!

JonSnow said:

Those are definitely the ones I want most. And with all 3 coming out on the same day, I'll probably explode or something.

I could care less about them re-issues.



Actually, I'd only think of maybe getting "Faith", cuz that's the one I like the most. Very dark, very Goth.



By the way, the latest UNCUT magazine special is devoted to the Goth genre. The Cure, without a doubt gets top honor in that category, but they also mention the other legends. (Bauhuas, Siousxie, etc.)

NWF said:

I couldn't care more. This is every Cure fan's dream and they're not skimping at all.

You know they are doing every album up through Bloodflowers, right? You don't care about any of those?

I got that mag too and it's a great read, especially cuz all the articles are originals from their time.

I finally did mine too. I made it roughly like the "Boys Don't Cry" album sequence but replaced "So What" with "World War". The 2nd half of the disc is extras. 29 tracks with a total running time of 79:42. I've been listening to it non-stop since it came out.

1. Boys Don't Cry
2. Plastic Passion
3. 10:15 Saturday Night
4. Accuracy
5. Jumping Someone Else's Train
6. Another Journey By Train
7. Subway Song
8. Killing An Arab
9. Fire In Cairo
10. World War
11. Grinding Halt
12. Another Day
13. Three Imaginary Boys
14. The Weedy Burton (intermission)
15. I'm Cold
16. Pillbox Tales
17. Do The Hansa
18. Object
19. Meathook
20. Foxy Lady
21. It's Not You
22. So What
23. Winter
24. Faded Smiles
25. Play With Me
26. I Want To Be Old
27. I Just Need Myself
28. I Dig You
29. I'm A Cult Hero

A really great review from Pitchfork:

The Cure
Three Imaginary Boys [Deluxe Edition]
[Fiction; 1979; r: Rhino; 2004]

Rating: 8.7

This review inaugurates what'll theoretically be a whole series of reviews, as Pitchfork follows Rhino's "revitalizing" the entire back catalog of the Cure-- each album wrapped in a modern package, with a bonus disc of associated rarities and a nice glossy linerful of notes and photos. Someday, as the president readjusts her bra, you'll scroll past ads for Suicide Women and find out what this publication really thinks of Bloodflowers; let's leave it to that future-critic to evaluate the Cure as a Big Historical Entity. For the time being, let's just note what this reissue program stands to remind us of: This is a band so idiosyncratic that people hardly even noticed as they remade themselves, drastically, again and again, with an ease that'd make Bowie blush. They made minimalist punk-scene oddities and great gloomy dirges; they made synthpop of both the fey new-wave and grim New Order varieties; they made strangely day-glo pop that used bongos and horns and occasionally pretended to be jazz; they made Disintegration. And all that in more or less its first decade, and all of it without sounding like anything other than The Cure just being The Cure.

So we start with this-- a straight-up, sonically-tweaked edition of the group's 1979 UK debut album. Later editions in this series will have the luxury of filling their bonus discs with high-quality outtakes and demos; to this one falls the task of collecting all the wobbly-legged rough takes every band gathers up in its infancy. The result is mostly anthropological-- and, yes, it's difficult to imagine anyone but die-hards and vintage punk enthusiasts needing a live rendition of a song called "Heroin Face". But the story told by the first half of these bonuses is a fascinating one.

Everyone familiar with bootlegs of a skinny 18-year-old Robert Smith and a band called the Easy Cure will recognize the sound, essentially that of the punk band that wasn't. Because no matter how much they try to sound hard, no matter how classically 1977 they get ("fiery" guitar solos!), and no matter how close they come to sounding like an Edward Gorey version of The Buzzcocks, you can hear something else bubbling up. And over the series of "home demos" that follows-- almost embarrassingly private ones, as if stolen from Lol Tolhurst's attic-- you can practically hear Smith realizing what that something is: He's interested in off-kilter pop songwriting, not the straight-ahead rush of punk; he's interested in slinky Roxy Music atmosphere and a dreamy, imaginary East, not gritty social realism. You might not spent hours relistening to a cheapy bedroom rough-draft of "10:15 Saturday Night"-- or even its first-run studio demo-- but as a chance to hear a band become itself, it's remarkable.

That's particularly true when the early result is something like Three Imaginary Boys, as original a record as anything else to spin off from the tail end of punk. These recordings are spare and simple-- just three guys in a room playing clean, clear lines and letting them ring. And yet everything snaps together like clockwork, from the ingenious songwriting to the precise performances to the decades-long thrill of Smith's voice. This is the simplicity of punk gone suddenly complex and spooky and sneakily psychedelic, whether it's on the creeping tick-tock thrill of "10:15 Saturday Night" or the sneering weirdness of "So What", which has Smith yelping the text of a coupon offer from a bag of sugar.

In spots such as the effortlessly, idiosyncratically gemlike "Fire in Cairo" and the bouncy, apocalyptic "Grinding Halt"-- both of which share some of the weightless charm that put "Boys Don't Cry" in the middle-school alternateen canon well into the 90s-- it's odd and quirky. In others, it spreads out the echo and gets slinky, trending toward later gloom. Is this what a new wave Wire might have sounded like, if they were better musicians and smoked opium and were interested in being sexy? Is this what a new wave Joy Division might have sounded like if they went for dreamy, guarded neurosis over the whole raw-passion thing? This is as bold as I'll get: Had The Cure retired after making this record, instead of complicating our appraisals with a whole ensuing career, this LP would be feted as an after-punk gem, a shinier oddball cousin to the current canon.

And through the second half of that bonus disc, we come to the less anthropological material that backs it up: album outtakes, rarities, live tracks, singles. The dream-pretty "Winter" fills out the echo and points to the future; "World War" might be the band's last raw sneer. We'll spare the incomparably geeky discussion that could be had about the singles, running to alternate international releases and outdated collections and recent box sets: Suffice to say that you do get "Boys Don't Cry" and "Jumping Someone Else's Train", the latter one of the band's snappiest, sharpest, and most natural early tunes. Listening to "Plastic Passion" or "Killing an Arab" will, for better or worse, involve purchasing other Cure product.

But this Cure product is a nice Cure product, no matter how little the casual fan needs basement-grotty demos or early live recordings. And it bodes well for a series of comparable packages, moving point by point through a catalog so broad and brilliant that it contains pockets and corners you can genuinely forget. Onward, then, until everyone's shocked and amazed to discover "The Caterpillar".

-Nitush Abebe, December 14th, 2004