Walk-in clinic, Peckwater Health Centre, 6 Peckwater Street NW5 2UP, Thursday 27 January, 4.30pm-6pm, A vaccination clinic for people under 18, ages 12 to 17 years welcome Walk-in, no booking required - Pfizer

"Paul Morley’s vitriolic review of the Three Imaginary Boys album in the NME so incensed The Cure that Robert Smith immediately exercised his right of reply while recording a BBC session on 9 May, the day that the music press hit the stands. The backing track of “Grinding Halt” was pressed into service to serve as whole “new” song that John Peel played as the final track in the session a week later, on Wednesday 16 May. Smith quickly constructed a stream of invective that quoted liberally from Morley’s prose and threw in a few extra barbs that bear closer examination. The title of was “Desperate Journalist In Ongoing Meaningful Review Situation”, a dry reference to a music press in-joke, namely the “ongoing interview situation” which saw a journalist following the artist around for a few days to get some “colour” for a piece. It was so ubiquitous a phrase in the late 70s that Nick Kent actually uses it in his piece on The Cure in the NME the following week: “The interviewer senses that the ongoing interview situation is not one that they feel particularly at home with.” The “desperate journalist” part was The Cure’s own invention and has given name to a London band, formed in 2012. The lyrics were as follows: “Hey mister a review of Word Salad” (this is what every lyric site says the line is, but is it actually “A mystery review”? That would fit the confusion that the paper’s album reviews page caused Smith. Answers to NME, Kings Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London) “Is written by my friend Ian Penman” (As I detailed last week, Morley’s review appeared on the same page as Ian Penman’s review of Fischer-Z’s debut album, Word Salad, another exasperated rant at the music industry rendered incomprehensible). “He uses long words like ‘semiotics’ and ‘semolina’” (Penman’s review ends with the words: “Fischer-Z: where Semiotics is semolina”.) “But I counter with ‘enigma’ and ‘metropolis’” (Not the most difficult of words to get your head around, not even within the review. The female model in the album cover’s photograph for “Foxy Lady” is mentioned “striding along a metropolis pavement” and we’ll get to “enigma” in a moment) “The lads go rampant on insignificant symbolism and compound this with rude soulless obliqueness” (A direct lift from the review) “I use such long words” (Smith’s riposte) “It’s all clever stuff, all this charming childish fiddling about aims for the anti-image but naturally creates the perfectly malleable image” (Another direct lift, read from the page) “The tantalising enigma of The Cure” (Morley’s words; this would be a great title for a Cure Greatest Hits compilation) “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 naivety” (Morley’s words… but Smith jumps from the beginning of one paragraph to another as if his eye is distracted by a particularly aggravating phrase further down: “They try to take everything from the purpose and idea of the rock performer but try so hard they put more in than they take out…”) “Oh god really these songs are made of murk and marshes / Tawdry images.. Inane realisations… Dull dull dull epigrams” (Smith adds his own exclamation of disgust before quoting again: “Willowy songs wallow in the murk and marsh of tawdry images, inane realisations, dull epigrams.” ) “Sometimes they sound like an avant-garde John Otway or an ugly Spirit” (John Otway being the eccentric singer who worked with Wild Willy Barrett (who appear on the 20 Of Another Kind compilation alongside The Cure) and Spirit being a Los Angeles prog rock outfit. Ironically, The Best Of Spirit is reviewed by Max Bell on the same page of reviews) “Toy drumming… Sprightly bass… Primitive guitar riff” (more quotes from Morley: “Most of the time it’s a voice catching it’s breath, a cautiously primitive guitar riff, toy drumming and sprightly bass.”) “Shep The Sheepdog’s my favourite book” (A recently-published picture book for children by Julia Graham – could this have belonged to one of Robert’s young nephews? As I said last week, this is a bit of a petty piece of mockery from Camus fan Smith) “People don’t forget the Penman!” (Lol or is it Dempsey yells this in the background? My money’s on Tolhurst, who has previous form for this – see the cries at the end of “Do The Hansa”) “It’s just that in 1979 people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with things like this… I say” (The opening of the final paragraph of Morley’s review; given a half-hearted final jibe by Smith)"