Archives, eh
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# The Cure are coming
The Cure are playing in Sydney. This puts me in something of a quandary, which D ably tapped into by asking “Do you want to go?”
Yes!!!!!!
And no.
First of all, despite not having been a teenager for quite some time now i I am still a fan. I have opinions on the best lineupii and my top five albums has had two Cure albums loitering in #2 and #3ii for ever. It’s been fifteen years since their last really good album of original music; the singles associated with various movies, charities, and tribute albums have been good, but not the full length albums. Despite this, I bought the last album knowing it was going to suck.
I went the last time they were in Australia in 2000. At least, I think it was the last time but there may have been another visit that I didn’t hear about until months afterwards. They were good, but..well…the lineup just didn’t work for me. They felt like they were just going through the motions. It is the same feeling I get when I watch the Trilogy DVD, just a bunch of aging guys woodenly playing a set of songs in a fit of vanity rivaling various royal tomb projects for its splendor.
Yet..it is almost the classic lineup again. Porl came back so the core three are the same as from the classic lineup iv and while I wish Boris Williams was behind the drum kit, it is the trio of Robert Smith, Simon Gallup and Porl Thompson that capture my imagination. Maybe because while it wouldn’t in at all with the music The Cure were releasing when Porl was playing, Lol Tolhurst’s drumming on Pornography stands out better in my mind than anything Williams did.
So yes, The Cure is arguably my favourite band, and yes I would love to see them. My problems are twofold. First is the most basic and once stated needs no further discussion – essentially I am cheap and $120 per ticket makes me uncomfortable. I am a man who doesn’t generally even buy the books he likes and who deliberately remains bored and confused by computer hardware because he is too cheap to pay for any of it.
But I think the other problem is that I don’t want to be disappointed. I was disappointed by the Trilogy DVD because the standard of the performance didn’t reach out and grab me – I have skimmed the shows and not watched it since. I was disappointed by Wild Mood Swings which wasn’t as good as Wish or Head on the Door, disappointed by Bloodflowers which wasn’t as good as Disintegration or Pornography, and disappointed by the eponymous album, The Cure, because it was just a mess. I don’t want to go to this concert, advertised as three hours of career retrospection – it is a long career at thirty years – and be disappointed, particularly since I will have paid $240 for the privilege. If I could I would get a copy of the new live DVD Festival 2005 owing to it being basically what they will be doing anyway, but I have until noon tomorrow – when the pre-sale tickets go up for..err…sale – to make up my mind.
Which probably means I will go. I mean, it’s The Cure. Even disappointment will be better than not going at all.
i Not quite half my lifetime unlike certain others I could mention but won’t name.
ii Smith, Thompson, Gallup, Williams, O’Donnell, which is to say the lineup that recorded Distintegration.
iii Disintegration and Pornography respectively.
iv I imagine some instrument tech is playing keyboards for live shows
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# Links for 2007-06-17
