#atozchallenge #wis B is for Babble

[I'm trying not to duplicate bands on this challenge but this track was too good to pass up, and it dovetails nicely with another point of reference I wanted to make.]


This weird little track--even by Cure standards--was found on the b-side of the US single "Fascination Street" and the UK single "Lullaby", both released in April of 1989. I bought the "Lullaby" 12-inch single at Main Street Music in downtown Northampton, MA, one of many countless purchases at that beloved and sadly missed store. I first heard it on an afternoon show on Amherst College's radio station, WAMH 89.3, where it was the deejay's favorite track at that moment. It's very unlike many of the Cure tracks of that time, where it contained both the weirdness of their previous b-sides like "New Day" or "Splintered in Her Head", but driven like the album tracks "Push" or "Shiver and Shake". Coupled with the main single tracks, these were the first new songs that fans were hearing after 1987's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, and you could instantly hear the difference in production. While Kiss Me and its singles were mixed very tight--little reverb and quite noisy and cramped in places--these singles were drenched in echo and given a hell of a lot of space to breathe. It was the first taste of Disintegration, one of their best and most revered albums.  That record would be that autumn's soundtrack for me, a melancholy goodbye to much of my personal life at the time.

This came out during my last semester in high school, when all sorts of things were in flux. I'd be graduating in a month and leaving the small town education system behind for the bright lights of Boston. I'd be finishing up my tenure at WCAT (at least until I returned in 1995). I now had a steady girlfriend, but as she was a few years younger than me so our relationship would end up being long-distance come September. Some of my best friends from the year previous might be coming home for the summer, but it would most likely be one of the last times, at least until futher notice, that I'd see them all in one place. On the one hand, I was looking forward to getting out on my own and living the college life I dreamed of, but I was also saddened that I'd be leaving my past behind. I wasn't quite sure how to feel.

The radio-based mixtapes I made that year bore the name of The Last Home Year Cassettes in a (hopefully) prophetic and (admittedly) overdramatic realization that I wouldn't be around to listen to my favorite college station when it went back on the air come September. Keep in mind, kids, this was back in 1989, WAY before you whippersnappers could easily listen in from all over the world via streaming audio! I'd be heading in the opposite direction of many of my friends who had headed west to college, where I'd be well away from all the people and places I'd come to enjoy immensely for the last three or four years. I'd have all the great new and used record stores in the Boston area, but I'd be nowhere near Main Street Records. I'd have WFNX and WBCN, but I wouldn't have WAMH, WMDK and WRSI. I'd have all sorts of things to do in the city, but I'd be nowhere near the Pioneer Valley. This would take some time getting used to.

[I should add that in a fit of irony and perhaps a lot of pique, when I moved back home in 1995, that autumn I made a few more radio tapes and called those The Last Home Year Cassettes as well, but that's another post entirely.]