The Cure - 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me'

It's easy to forget what an awesome, world-conquering band The Cure once were. And although they are styled as being a none-more-Goth act, on their later albums, they are closer to vaudeville storytellers than adolescent doom-mongers.

I'm pretty sure I got this when it came out in 1987. It reminds be of being the sort of obnoxious, self-assured Goth-haired teenager that only gets produced in small towns. It's something to do with being so cocooned from the rest of the world that your home town becomes the entire universe. Wanting to be a big fish in a small pond, unaware that you will eventually be released into the ocean. And the ocean is big, cold, and full of things that, as pond life, you can't begin to understand. I think I might have stretched that aquatic metaphor to near-breaking point.

It was unfortunate that Salisbury was a garrison town, because my particular blend of sartorial statement (printed velvet trousers, huge white tail shirt) didn't go down well with the squaaddies in town on R&R - mostly Paras, unfortunately. A shove in the back, and a shaven-headed face asking 'does your mum know you've got her clothes on?' tends to focus the mind.

Happy days.