Palatine

About a year ago, I sheepishly wrote that I had never heard The Cure's "Disintegration", despite having had every oppurtunity to do so, no possible excuses exist for this, etc. I also wrote that it was unlikely that such a situation could ever happen again, which I do still believe, but fortunately I stopped short of saying that "Disintegration" was the last of its breed ...

Right now, I'm listening to the "Palatine" box set, the 4CD retrospective of Factory records. It was released in 1991 and yet I never found a way to hear it (bleh, no excuses, I know). What's more, I'm hearing most of these songs for the first time, because I don't own any Factory albums that weren't by Joy Division/New Order or Happy Mondays (I suppose Electronic can be counted in the JD/NO camp. And Cabaret Voltaire won't count since they never released an album on Factory). Even more pathetic -- I've never even HEARD any Factory albums that weren't by the aforementioned groups. ACR, Section 25, Durutti Column -- nope, non, nein. I know, wtf. I've never heard Stockholm Monsters, but I clearly recall hearing the Wendys and Northside singles on the radio toward the end of Factory's life.

You know, many of the tracks on Disc 1 sound a lot like Joy Division, which isn't a big surprise due to Martin Hannett's distinct production style. I think I'll stop writing about this now lest I look even sillier for coming to these realizations some fifteen years too late.

The sound was off on the TV, tuned to a rerun of "Frasier". It was the episode where Niles wants to finally tell Daphne how he's felt about her for all those years, but before that happens, Donny ends up proposing to her right in front of Niles, Frasier and Martin. Donny went down on one knee, with the camera shot cutting between his lovelorn eyes and Niles' dejected face, and that's when "Love Will Tear Us Apart" came up on winamp.