Last Updated on December 1, 2025 by Black Sunshine Media
Discovery of the Week is a weekly series that digs through a box of 40 well-traveled CDs I’ve carried across the ocean for nearly two decades. Each disc has its own history—where I found it, why I kept it, and what it means to me. Some are classics, others are obscure relics, but all survived the endless purges and border crossings that come with long-term expat life. Through these records, I’m tracing the soundtrack of a life spent in motion, and in a way, trying to explain how music, memory, and geography blur together when “home” is always somewhere else. The Top by The Cure is one of the few records that survived thousands of miles and countless reinventions.
Starting Over From Scratch, Kinda
I’ll probably have to retell this first part of the story several times over the course of the Discovery series, but I first moved from San Francisco to Taipei in 2008 with my passport, a backpack, a roller bag full of clothing I’d never wear, and a laptop. That’s it. All my “worldly possessions” were stashed in my S.F. landlord’s garage until further notice.
Several weeks after arriving in Taipei, I rented a furnished rooftop apartment that didn’t have a sound system, so I bought a Philips CD stereo system with decent speakers—and several dozen CDs. I probably spent a grand on the whole thing.
Even though I had a lot of music on iTunes that I could have connected to the system, I preferred to play albums. Set it and forget it. Just put on a Flaming Lips record and let it play until the end. Get up and put on a new record. I thought of CDs like vinyl, without the intermission. My laptop was my world, so keeping it out of the equation worked for me, and the CDs gave me something to put on the bookshelves.
Rose Records was the prominent record store in Taipei, with locations scattered all over the city. The store’s inventory leaned heavily into Asian pop, dance, and hip hop, with a small rock section featuring a paltry selection of albums from Guns N’ Roses and Linkin Park. Rock music wasn’t super popular in Taiwan. In my book, Year of the Rat, I wrote about experiencing musical culture shock.
Excerpt from Year of the Rat (Chapter 2, “Now is Not the Time to Panic”)
“I would have listened to the radio, but there was only one English-language station, ICRT (International Community Radio Taipei, 100.7 FM), and they played the shittiest music ever made. I didn’t know the goddamn Carpenters would be the most popular band in the country—Air Supply running a close second. People were really excited about The Osmonds coming to town. They’d already sold out two nights at Taipei Arena, which seats up to 15,000 people. One night, I was at a bar that would become my hangout “spot” behind the Red Theater, and I sat through Kenny G’s Greatest Hits and ABBA’s Greatest Hits—twice for each. And nobody (locals) except my buddy Johnny Wong had ever heard of Jane’s Addiction or The Cure. Green Day was considered punk rock. I saw several kids in Linkin Park T-shirts. I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard “Loving You (Is Easy Cuz You’re Beautiful)” in bars, train stations, clothing stores, and of course, TGI Fridays. I heard a Muzak version of “Norwegian Wood” and teared up.”
Surprising Discovery at Rose Records in Taipei
In search of music to play at my new apartment in Taipei, I rode my bike around the city, sampling each of the Rose Records locations, and found one on Roosevelt Road, across the street from National Taiwan University (NTU), with an exceptional range of rock albums from blockbuster chart-toppers to obscure indie gems. The buyer for the Roosevelt Road location, a dude named Alan, was a massive rock n’ roll head. I met him several years later at a local bar. Super nice guy.
Anyway, the 2006 digitally remastered deluxe edition of The Cure’s The Top (1984) was the first record I bought in Taipei. And became one of the most listened-to albums of 2008–2009. I don’t remember what I paid, but it was probably on par with American prices. Twenty-something bucks. The price was irrelevant because I was shocked to find anything by The Cure in a Taipei record store. Once the CD was in my hands, I wasn’t about to let it go.
Standing on Business
The Cure (circa 1979–1985) is one of my favorite bands. I stand on business when it comes to The Cure. I think Robert Smith is the best post-punk and/or alternative rock songwriter of the 1980s. Period. My first Cure concert was at the Bismarck Theater in Chicago, IL, on The Top tour in 1984.
Psychedelic is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of The Cure, and that’s because they, meaning Robert Smith, only made one truly psychedelic record, The Top.
Pornography (1982) is their most important album; The Head on the Door (1985) is arguably their best album; and The Top (1984) is my favorite album.
Produced by Smith and David M. Allen, Smith played most of the instruments on The Top except drums (played by Andy Anderson) and saxophone (Porl Thompson, who then officially joined the Cure).
According to Robert Smith, The Top is “the solo album I never made” and “the worst record The Cure has made.” Smith has also called it “self-indulgent, totally demented, and fucking deranged.” And maybe that’s why it’s my favorite.
Robert Smith’s Psychedelic Period (1982–1984)
Between 1982 and 1984, Smith was living several musical lives at once: fronting The Cure, playing guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees, and forming The Glove with Steven Severin. The overlap of those projects created what Smith later called his “psychedelic period”—a period of exhaustion, overwork, and chemical indulgence.
Blue Sunshine (1983), the lone album by The Glove, was the first document of that mindset—messy, colorful, hallucinatory record steeped in surreal imagery and studio delirium. Smith later said, “I honestly don’t remember making a lot of that record. We spent like six weeks in a semi-delirious state.”
That same energy bled directly into The Top. In interviews, he’s been candid but nonchalant about the drugs:
“The last time I did acid was at Christmas. I don’t take a lot of drugs… The Top was pretty drug-orientated, but only ’cos it was fun.”
Drummer Andy Anderson reportedly brewed a pot of magic mushroom tea every morning, and Smith himself was juggling two bands and barely sleeping. The result was a queasy, kaleidoscopic album where songs like “Wailing Wall,” “Piggy in the Mirror,” and “The Caterpillar” sound like they were written in the same dream.
If Pornography was the band’s descent into an alcoholic darkness, The Top was the acid flashback: psychedelic rather than gothic, chaotic rather than controlled. By the time The Head on the Door arrived a year later, Smith had rediscovered melody and structure. But The Top remains his strangest moment—a snapshot of an artist both unraveling and reinventing himself.
The Package
- Disc 1 (The Original Album, 1984) contains the remastered album, which I’m told is slightly, probably imperceptibly faster than the original.
- Disc 2 (Rarities, 1982–1984) contains demos, alternate mixes, and a pair of live bootlegs.
Overall, it’s a nice package for a Cure enthusiast like myself, but there’s very little new or special here. Some of the rare tracks like “Throw Your Foot” and “Happy the Man” appeared as B-sides on 12-inch singles and EP releases. Even the live bootleg of “Forever” appears on the cassette version of Concert and Curiosity (1984). The casual fan isn’t missing anything.
The artwork by Parched Art, the driving force behind most of The Cure’s album designs, was produced by Andy Vella and Porl Thompson, the latter would join the band on guitar and marry one of Robert Smith’s sisters.
The gatefold is typically colorful and vague, but the booklet has a nice write-up about the making of the album.
The Top: Deluxe Edition Track List
| Disc 1 – Original Album (1984, remastered) |
| Shake Dog Shake Birdmad Girl Wailing Wall Give Me It Dressing Up The Caterpillar Piggy in the Mirror The Empty World Bananafishbones The Top |
| Disc 2 – Rarities 1982–1984 |
| You Stayed… (demo 1982) Ariel (demo 1982) A Hand Inside My Mouth (demo 1982) Sadadic (demo 1982) Shake Dog Shake (demo 1983) Piggy in the Mirror (demo 1983) Birdmad Girl (demo 1983) Give Me It (instrumental demo 1983) Throw Your Foot (1984 B-side) Happy the Man (1984 B-side) The Caterpillar (Flexipop version) Dressing Up (live bootleg) The Wailing Wall (live bootleg) The Empty World (live bootleg) Bananafishbones (live bootleg) The Top (live bootleg) Forever (live bootleg, 1984) |
“Self-indulgent, totally demented, and fucking deranged.”
— Robert Smith on The Top
A Record Worth Carrying?
Listening to The Top now, decades and continents later, I can still feel the pulse of that early Taipei apartment and strange new beginnings.
