40 Years of Seventeen Seconds

2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the second Cure LP Seventeen Seconds. A pivotal release for the band. With this album, they started to define their own unique sound and style. It is remarkable how fast the band produced the album. The recording only took about one week. The same goes for the mixing by Robert Smith and producer Mike Hedges.

If I’m right, Seventeen Seconds was the first Cure LP that was also being pressed in the Netherlands especially for the Dutch market. The manufacturing took place at the Polygram Record Service (PRS) plant in Baarn, not very far from Amsterdam. The outer sleeve was almost the same as the UK pressing. But the labels on the record itself were standard red Polydor labels, unlike the printed UK labels, which were in the same style as the sleeve artwork. This was probably to reduce costs.

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Hitkrant August 1980

Hitkrant1980v2The ‘Hitkrant’ is a Dutch pop music magazine, which already exists as of 1977. It is targeted at teenagers between 12 and 16 years old.
In August 1980, Hitkrant published a small article about The Cure. As far as I know, it is the first publication about the band in this magazine. Since then, several articles followed, not all of them being very serious.
The reliability of the contents of the August 1980 article can be questioned as well. Below is the literal English translation of the Dutch text.
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