RANDY RUSSELL: All of my favorite love songs are sad songs—because how do you write a happy one that’s not gross?—the exception being this song “Cupid Come” by My Bloody Valentine. I love the tension, which could be sexual, and could be bending on the verge of breaking. I don’t know what it’s about, really, and I don’t want to know. I have always thought that it starts out with a woman singing and switches to a man singing, maybe even in the middle of a phrase, but I don’t know. I don’t know how the guitars sound like that, or how the drummer keeps from falling over. Popular culture has done terrible things to Cupid, but here Cupid comes from a coffee cup, which is something I can relate to. And sugar. Sickly, heavy hearts—when I look at you it pins me to the ground—mirror me your memories—it’s all very drippy and sticky and infected. I’m trying to understand, and the more I listen, the less I do, but the more it makes sense.
JEFF CURTIS: I am convinced that all of My Bloody Valentine's songs are about sex on drugs. Some explicitly so, like this one. It’s also a love song, because, hey, Cupid is in it! But is he singing to Cupid? It sounds like he's trying to seduce a girl, but then, holy cow, the entire climax of the song comes to a head with the line, "forget your vanity / Cupid come"—in other words, Cupid, let loose, don't take this "love" shit so seriously, enjoy the moment, lose yourself in the wigged-out, drugged up lust that's going on here—consummate the trip! Maybe he's talking to himself ... trying to get over how much he's into this girl he's trying to seduce (or likely has already successfully seduced, but now wants to bring things to a resolution), but he's too uptight, and he's trying to get over his embarrassment of being with this really great girl and just fuckin' shoot his wad already, to put it crudely. It's when you can totally lose yourself in the physical expression of your love for each other that love truly manifests itself. On drugs.
Randy Russell appears as a kind of anti-Cupid in the film Modus Operandi (DVD coming out on Valentine’s Day 2012 from Kino International) and has recently completed a novel, The Doughnuts, for which he has engaged the services of a dozen bakers to mold into deep-fried rings of poison pleasure.
Jeff Curtis hosts the WHAT YOU NEED radio program on WRUW FM 91.1 Cleveland, where he sometimes plays My Bloody Valentine records. You can listen here: www.wruw.org.
Randy is a regular listener to Jeff’s weekly radio show.
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