Friday farce: Young Americans

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

*gasp*


Anyone who's ever been in a band will hopefully be able to relate to those moments in the practice room where suddenly, spontaneously, for no apparent reason, you all start playing some appalling version of some (often appalling) song and for a few moments there, a few minutes, even, it's fun and zany and wacky and a huge joke and you have thoughts running through your head like "hey we could totally add this to our live set.. that'd slay 'em dead" (a good thing) and then you all get kinda lost in the bridge except for the guitarist who - oddly - seems to know the song by heart and gets irritated that everyone else doesn't know the changes and.. then you all kinda stop and it dies off except for the drummer who tries to get it going again and then you all realise what a bunch of dicks you are and how awful it sounded and you should be shot for imagining that you should play this live and... yeah? well, not if you're The Cure.

No, apparently, if you're The Cure, you spend most of the late-80s directionless and casting around, trying to work out what to do next, firing and hiring members left right and centre, and putting out a couple of pretty bad albums (e.g. Kiss Me^3) in the process. And recording an utterly wretched full-blown studio version of a David Bowie classic (Allmusic.com song review).

The Cure - Young Americans (3.66 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

If you recall, David Bowie got a bit of a bollocking a few weeks back for his awful version of Pablo Picasso; well, now it's time he got one back! Yeah!

*retch*

This song is only available on a couple of obscure radio-station compilations, as well as the exhaustive rarities 4-disc boxed-set Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities, 1978-2001.

EDIT
Since Robert Smith altered the song's lyric to reference President Clinton, I assume it was not in fact recorded in the late-80s, but indeed much more recently. However that it sounds like it fell out of a timewarp from 1987 only adds to the ghastly comedy of it all.