Join the Dots is a 4 CD set of songs by The Cure, with nearly 5 hours of b-sides, rare singles, unreleased tracks, and remixes. It was released in 2004 with an MSRP of $55 US.
My biggest nit with this collection has got to be the inclusion of songs like 10:15 Saturday Night and Just One Kiss, which were already easily available on other CDs. Anyone who is willing to drop $55 on a 4 CD set of Cure B-sides probably already owns most, if not all, of their widely released albums, meaning these tracks are pure filler. Quite a few of the tracks have been released on CD before, but often on a single that is hard to get ahold of (such as This Twilight Garden, which appeared in the 1992 single for High).
Tracks that I found notable which I had not heard previously included Ocean, To The Sky, and A Japanese Dream, all of which are very much in the traditional "I am Robert Smith and I am very very sad about something" style. Hey, either you like it or you don't.
There are also a couple of decent covers, including Depeche Mode's World in My Eyes and Bowie's Young Americans, while the Hendrix and The Doors covers are interesting in a "look at that two-headed chinchilla" sort of way. And while the 10 second remix of their cover of Hello, I Love You is amusing, in general the remixes either sounded just like the original tracks with some minor tweaks, or were
noticeably inferior to the originals.
In summary: enough new (or rare) stuff for the completionists, but if you're not a freak for The Cure, there are better ways to spend your money, especially considering many of their earlier albums can now be purchased for $10 or less.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the ridiculously long track listing:
CD #1 - 1978-1987
- 10:15 Saturday Night
- Plastic Passion
- Pillbox Tales
- Do the Hansa
- I'm Cold
- Another Journey by Train
- Descent
- Splintered in Her Head
- Lament (Flexipop Version)
- Just One Kiss
- The Dream
- The Upstairs Room
- Lament
- Speak My Language
- Mr Pink Eyes
- Happy the Man
- Throw Your Foot
- New Day
- The Exploding Boy
- A Few Hours After This...
- A Man Inside My Mouth
- Stop Dead
CD #2 - 1987-1992
- A Japanese Dream
- Breathe
- A Chain of Flowers
- Snow in Summer
- Sugar Girl
- Icing Sugar (Weird Remix)
- Hey You!!! (Kevorkian 12" Remix)
- How Beautiful You Are (Clearmountain 7" Remix)
- To the Sky
- Babble
- Out of Mind
- 2 Late
- Fear of Ghosts
- Hello I Love You (Psychedelic Version)
- Hello I Love You
- Hello I Love You (10sec Version)
- Harold and Joe
- Just Like Heaven ('Chuck' Remix)
CD #3 - 1992-1996
- This Twilight Garden
- Play
- Halo
- Scared as You
- The Big Hand
- A Foolish Arrangement
- Doing the Unstuck (Saunders 12" Remix)
- Purple Haze (Virgin Radio Version)
- Purple Haze
- Burn
- Young Americans
- Dredd Song
- It Used to Be Me
- Ocean
- Adonais
CD #4 - 1996-2001
- Home
- Waiting
- A Pink Dream
- This Is a Lie (Palmer Remix)
- Wrong Number (Smith Remix)
- More Than This
- World in My Eyes
- Possession
- Out of This World (Oakenfold Remix)
- Maybe Someday (Hedges Remix)
- Coming Up
- Signal to Noise (Acoustic Version)
- Signal to Noise
- Just Say Yes (Curve Remix)
- A Forest (Plati/Slick Version)