The Cure, Mixed Up (1990)
I like this album – always have. I imagine it probably wasn’t all that popular at the time – a few purists, big time fans of The Cure might have had a moan about it not being “the real thing” or some such. But it was probably quite a pioneering album – the remix album, at a time when they weren’t (always) the done thing; hardly ever in fact. I guess that’s a bonus of arriving at a band later. So for me Mixed Up was among the earlier albums of The Cure I heard – I knew they were different versions, I knew at least half of the album’s original versions, maybe more. But I liked these elongated pieces. Much like how some of the remixes of Faith No More’s Album of The Year are preferable to the versions on the original album. Anyway, my copy of Mixed Up is signed – but that doesn’t actually mean all that much to me. A signed record is a cool thing to have (I guess) but I reckon a signed album only means something if you get it signed yourself – or it has some other story, say a friend gets you the signed record because they know you’re a fan or whatever. I like that this is signed but I’d have bought it without the signatures. You see I just wanted the album and this was the option available. I like to imagine – to give it a story – that a Cure fan managed to get this signed and was then teased mercilessly by serious-minded Cure fans telling him/her that this was the wrong album to get signed; forcing them then to trade it in. Not because that meanness gives me pleasure, more because I can see it happening. “Sometimes”, the man at the shop deadpanned, “a signed record actually lowers the price”.

Sample Track: A Forest (Tree Mix)

The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown