Woody Cavenaugh

I don't know how it happened, I don't know when it happened. The first I was ever aware of a band called the Cure was in high school while involved in the theatre department. Back in those days now known fondly as the '80's Cure fans were easy to spot. They would dye their hair black, wear black cloths and wear black eyeliner. They wouldn't have mullets. I wasn't a part of that set. I was my own strange bird. I wore bright colors, toyed with a mullet and hair styling product and listened to one hit wonders as my bread and butter music. I built my musical taste on Men at Work, They Might Be Giants, and Weird Al Yankovich, but the meat of my musical Big Mac was Bow Wow Wow, Midnight Oil, Men Without Hats, Walls of Voodoo, The Other Ones, Taco, Falco and the rest of those glorious songsters. If I heard a Cure song on the radio I might not even know it. I did eventually buy the cassette single "Friday I'm in Love", but I certainly didn't but a cure album or 45.
Now I keep my hair carefully styled with a product called "Bed Head", I have learned to clash in as few as two colors and I openly mock the hollow shell of a style that has now degenerated into something refered to as "Goth". I also listen to DayGlo Radio on winamp. This station is refered to as "80's With Attitude" and pretty much sums up what I want to listen to. Now that I have this radio station I don't even need CD's at work. I just tune in and enjoy.

So over time listening to this station I found myself occasionally turning it up or looking down at the task bar to find out who it was that did that really cool song I just turned up. A shocking ammount of the time the song was by the Cure. So I requested and got from Sara The Cure's Greatest Hits on CD. Imagine my surprise when I knew most of the songs on the CD. How could this be? I'm not a Cure fan. (Of course I'm not a Cure fan.) My friend in highschool Dot with the black dyed hair, black lipstick and black eye pencil (This was in 1986-1990) she was the Cure fan. She had all of their albums and copies on cassette. I liked her because she was cool, she was smart, she was fun to hang out with, and she wasn't afraid to be herself! We never dated of course, this was high school, you know the rules, you could be friends and be different, you must be part of the same homogenius group to date. I was truly blessed to have a friend who was a Cure fan and another good cute friend who was into hair bands. I was a well rounded theatre geek...who had a spiked mullet, and drove a customized '65 Fairlane. (I also didn't date much.)

So here I am 15 years after the fact suddenly comming to grips with the fact that I was a closet Cure fan. I mean you can't tell from looking at me, I'm wearing blue-grey suede shoes for heaven's sake! My hair isn't dyed! Of course, on the other hand I go through a great deal of effort to make it appear that I spend no time at all on my hair.

If the Goths find out I'll never live it down! Hey, wait a minute, Goths won't know who the Cure is. My secret life is safe afterall.

Odd Dayglo's stream appears to be down. Good thing I have this 80's hair station bookmarked. Nothing says Tuesday morning like Van Halen (David Lee Roth ONLY) and Def Leopard.