John Peel Sessions, London, England

Grinding Halt/Desperate Journalist In Ongoing Meaningful Review Situation

Hey mister a review
A word salad
Is written by my friend
Ian Penman

He uses long words
Like semiotics and semolina
But I counter
With
Enigma
And metropolis

The lads go rampant on insignificant symbolism
And compound this with rude soulless obliqueness
(Everything’s coming to a grinding halt)
I use such long words

It’s all clever stuff
All this charming childish fiddling about aims for the anti-image
But it naturally creates the perfectly malleable image
Tantalizing enigma
Of The Cure
They try to take
Everything

But The Cure really
They’re just trying to sell us something
Their product is more artificial than most
This is perhaps part of their
Masterplan
But it seems more like their naïveté

(Everything’s coming to a grinding halt)
They’ve got willowly songs wallow
(Everything’s coming to a grinding halt)
In the murk and marsh
(Everything’s coming to a grinding halt)
Tawdry images
Inane realisations
Dull dull dull epigrams
Sometimes they sound like an avant-garde John Otway
Or an ugly Spirit

(No sound no people no speak no people)
Toy drumming
Sprightly bass
Primitive guitar riff

(No me no people no you no people)
Check the sheet out of my favorite book

People don’t forget the Penman
It’s just that in 1979
People shouldn’t be allowed to get away
With things like this
I say