The Cure
Pillbox Tales 1977-1979
Arkain Filloux
"It has nothing to do with me if there's a lot of bootlegs of The Cure; I've never objected to them, no one's ever had their tape recorder confiscated at a Cure show, it doesn't bother me in the slightest". - Robert Smith in a 2006 interview on unofficial Cure recordings. Before then and since then I've read a fair amount of comments, both positive and negative, made my Mr. Smith himself concerning the distribution and sales of unlicensed Cure music. So as for what his beliefs really are, who actually knows, but this particular bootleg calls to me in a bittersweet way. On one hand I want to hear the Easy Cure (as they were then called) rock out on some demos -- on vinyl, but on the other hand I know I'm more or less paying for a cheap (and probably a digitally transferred) version of something that has needed to be on vinyl. It's not like I could pass up some Cure stuff that I don't actually have on a record, but this whole scenario is such a cash grab for the bootleggers that it's left me torn. Pillbox Tales presents seven studio demos of tracks that pre-date Three Imaginary Boys and Boys Don't Cry (The Cure's first U.K. and U.S. releases respectively) and it all sounds pretty great. It's packaged in a limited two color hand-screened cover with Three Imaginary Boys-esque artwork and it's brought to you by the same bootlegger(s) who brought you The Smiths BBC bootleg, a Pixies bootleg, Birthday Party Bootleg ( …the list goes ON and ON). Regardless of how many different phony European addresses these bootleggers think they can red herring the industry with, I kinda hope they get away with it?
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