Each month Topman CTRL's resident controller Huw Stephens invites an artist to take charge in helping him source the best music from the web and beyond - and that includes writing a guest column for Q. This month Radio 1 DJ and Bestival boss Rob da Bank is in charge, so here's his guest column about how he personally discovered the band that headlined his festival last year, The Cure. Head to Topman.com/ctrl for more.
This record arrived in the midst of my angsty adolescent years. I was a 15 year old semi goth, moody and head over heels in 'love' with my first girlfriend Sally, starting to experiment with what cider and whisky could do to my motor skills and buying shitloads of records at every available opportunity.
I can still recall the smell of the plastic sleeve the Disintegration picture disc came in and the texture of the writing on the sleeve. The reason I can recall it is because this particular record along with certain other limited edition nerdy bits and bobs like an original Velvet Underground album with pull out banana and my treasured Francois Kevorkian mix of The Smiths' This Charming Man haven't left my side since I bought them.
I bought the record as well as the cassette (I'm a The Cure completist) in Venus Records in Fareham, a small town in between Southampton and Portsmouth, and got the bus home as quickly as possible to listen to the latest opus from my hero Robert Smith and whoever happened to be in the band at the time (founding member Lol Tolhurst was fired during the making of the album). My own hair was a backcombed mop and I regularly stole my sister Rachel's eyeliner to go out of a night and dodge the bottles thrown at me by the village 'casuals' in their shellsuits, hands glowing gold with signet rings so this was my kinda record.
Robert Smith was nearing 30 and desperately worried that he would lose his magic touch after starting into a new decade and was dabbling with various mind bending substances so the result was always going to be quite far out and yet introspective.
Dark and gloomy was exactly what I wanted as a 15 year old in a small village and even mopey songs like Prayers For Rain became anthemic on my puny mono hi-fi system. Lovesong, Pictures of You and Lullaby are simply some of my favourite records ever.
When I finally managed to book The Cure for Bestival last year after eight years of begging, they opened their set with Disintegration album opener Plainsong I very nearly wept with joy. After the two-and-a-half-hour set of pure magic I shyly knocked on the door of The Cure's dressing room and was warmly welcomed with an open bottle of beer and regaled with football banter and music chat. One of my favourite memories ever!
Rob da Bank @RobdaBank
For more musical discoveries from Rob this month head to Topman.com/ctrl.
11:31 AM | 24/07/2012
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