The Cure: Classic or Dud?

if you asked me the name of the cure's drummer I'm quite sure 'jason cooper' isn't a name I would remember, not would I ever associate that name with someone in the Cure. Poor guy.

Yeah, Boris is undoubtedly the first person I'd think of if someone asked me to name one of the Cure drummers. In a way, I kinda feel sorry for Jason in the sense that he joined the band at a time when gaps between albums were starting to get longer and longer, and he's spent quite a lot of his time in The Cure replicating Boris' and Lol's parts live. They haven't really created a sizeable body of work during his lengthy time in the band, and weirdly, I don't think a lot of Cure fans have taken to his drumming even after all this time. On the other hand, he's in The Cure, playing gigs to large crowds and probably earning a truckload of money.

I don't think Jason's ever really looked the part either... I remember seeing one press photo circa 4:13 Dream where the whole band were clad in their regulation Curewear, with the make-up and all that. Of course, Robert, Simon and Porl pulled it off as well as they ever did, but Jason just looked daft and uncomfortable.

Played "Disintegration" for the first time in ... probably a decade, the other day, and loved it.

And it did prompt me to ponder that I don't think I've ever seen "Robert Smith not being Robert Smith" ... by which I mean I have a sense of who he is and he's always been that.

Watch the videos to 'A Forest' or 'Play For Today', and marvel at the way Smith looks like an ordinary bloke in a post-punk band, as opposed to the more familiar birds nest hair and make-up that's become his trademark look.

Jason Thudfist is actually the second-longest running member of The Cure ever - Simon has left at least twice during Jason's tenure (there was a proper break around the Cogasm / Wrong Number period, and iirc an invisible-at-the-time dummy spit over Ross Robinson's involvement in The Cure).

my ticket:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/aVVIi1wa0l6LgVm4ZZ1x1PXOFQNR_oIP0g1o7VsEpy6N8rCOD__TGriCNyMBTu-fSemPHJWsvTqLTRObvM-sNKKn9HvcjdNP8QBM4dCitsRyqH_Gg5RdeFmi3HUWi_BloYj8LYAVzTonupr6nrY4p6JLFV6UZY8GU7C9z-mUA5UhZYECyt_DxkMzLxtKVPhNsWcl2bzPgHpsyKH2Aqcdp_yG9uU5RKDl_pdk0JG5z46tXo0axT7FJ-IlT4JTL0PIQRbGhzNJWDw_NhV8mp9bHWtaf4GKrS1HuXoQ_6PgEirJMKhMGut9iCCiZQHwQh7nIhkg8m6Pu-LNc6dhNcpjnGvFc9NPCeiKlgQPyLQWBeKF8_S6qYia7aG3RmwWTuGkglBAUi3LoU-ZkFDVchHmcTCW8LdK6dflPc3UZxX7DHb55JYbW1Yq2jcX1LnT4mOGnlJrNF66VuRlZDmEj0L7fnyDEB23mIPGOWZ9VNohRa4MeBijHev2epWur6j-4nmdxotyc38Jm5aXgamh1XPUlkIrgNsr56Mka46eV_CFpZg=w835-h470-no

Robert says they've decided to do different songs both nights, although we don't know that yet. :) So all of the usual suspects that were skipped last night, probably expect them tonight?

oh wow, i will have no idea what they are going to play by the time my show comes around. so excited, this is right around my birthday. so im being pampered, which mainly means i don't have to drive. win-win.

I try hard not to think about Tony Soprano when I see pics of Robert these days. I was going to post a photo but I decided it was a cheap shot (as if the comment's not a cheap shot already). And to clarify, I say this as an obsessive Cure fan up to (but definitely not including) Wish, though I also love the Trilogy DVD.

So, this is basically going to be the greatest tour, ever...

The Cure start with "Plainsong" tonight. They also played "A Night Like This" and "This Twilight Garden."

if they play those songs at my show. i could die a happy man. i also have no idea what songs they are going to play in their encoreS.

how can someone not love Wish

What a crazy goddamn setlist:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2016/kiefer-uno-lakefront-arena-new-orleans-la-5bf16b14.html

wow. looking forward to the shoreline show a lot. haven't seen them in ... 12 years? whenever that tour with Mogwai and some crappy bands was.

Curiosa. Which I avoided because why do I want to see a Cure festival set when I could have the real thing. As it were. (Mind you, that tour is where Ben and Aly met that eventually led to School of Seven Bells, so it was all worth it for that.)

listening to the S/T record for the first time since it came out and I kinda dismissed it. I am really enjoying it! getting super stoked about seeing em in LA on the 24th and working through the discography backwards. for a band that has been around forever its a pretty manageable body of work just looking at the LPs.

hoping they'll play Jupiter Crash on this tour.

The Cure start with "Plainsong" tonight. They also played "A Night Like This" and "This Twilight Garden."
― Bee OK, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 11:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if they play those songs at my show. i could die a happy man.

otm X 1000

Atlanta if you're reading robert

Ahhhh i can't wait to see them ahhhhh and yah Jason sucks

I saw them on the Curiosa fest and thought they were pretty good (a little before that I saw them in a club behind Bloodflowers; they were great). But then I saw them at a bigger place, as a 4-piece, in 2008, and was not feeling it for some reason.

Last time I saw them was 2008 in LA -- four-piece lineup as mentioned, their non-keyboard years, and I liked it for that reason. Stellar set and the new songs were great. I think for sheer stately wonder my favorite time seeing them was the Rose Bowl 1992, though I would have loved to have been at Dodger Stadium 1989.

my favorite show was the medium-sized stage tour they did in... 1998? I was in the 8th row for that one and it was fantastic

Yeah, anyone who caught that one I'm quite envious of. The other one I wish I had seen was the Reflections tour in LA but other factors prevented me from going, sadly.

ah, it was 1997: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/1997/orpheum-theatre-boston-ma-33d7e02d.html

hoping they'll play Jupiter Crash on this tour.

would lose my shit

are you talking about the pantageas show ned? yah i was there it was amazing.

i sorta love wild mood swings though. i was obsessed with it in high school bc i tended to be drawn to records that fanbases majorly hated

yeah Wild Mood Swings was my first Cure album that I paid attention to on release. Like, I bought The 13th CD single before the album dropped, and got WMS on release day. I feel that process of anticipating and being there when a new album comes out and hearing it fresh without any weight of history or consensus or reviews or anything is the best part of being a fan of any group.

My favorite is Jupiter Crashes, but I love Mint Car because its The Cure at their brightest and shiniest. I also have a lot of love for The 13th. Maybe my favorite Cure song with horns? Really the only song I actively dislike is Round & Round & Round. I also don't like that so many of the songs just have one word titles because it makes them hard to remember by name.

i loooove "the 13th"

Yeah, 'The 13th' easily one of my favourites on the album! 'Jupiter Crash' never really did all that much for me.

are you talking about the pantageas show ned? yah i was there it was amazing.

Very envious! Yeah I knew a number of people who went. Would have been a treat; I have a couple of good bootlegs from the various shows around the world.

I said Jupiter Crashes instead of Jupiter Crash and now I am embarrassed.

"The 13th" was definitely a skew-whiff effort in the best of ways, it really was unexpected in terms of what had come before as well as the context of 1996. And it just seems to float in its own universe.

Wish and Mixed Up were my first and favourite Cure records, because I was 13-14 when they came out, and emotionally they just seemed to *fit*. Weirdly, after that I bought a lot of the back catalogue but never any of the new releases - except the cassingle of The 13th.

I seem to remember the live versions of 13th had a female vocalist on the chors, and being disappointed she wasn't on the recorded version. Is that right?

"The 13th" was great and really elevated my expectations for WMS

When I got it and heard "Want", I was like "OMG YES YES YES THIS IS INCREDIBLE"

Then I heard "Club America"

I am still mad 20 years later

WMS has a bunch of good songs (Want, Jupiter Crash, The 13th, Trap, Treasure, Numb, Bare) and some songs that are ridiculous but I like anyway (Gone!, Round and Round and Round) but it also has some of the absolute worst things they have ever, ever recorded (Club America, Strange Attraction, Return, Mint Car, This Is A Lie) and my dislike for those songs has only increased as time has gone on, moving WMS from "their least successful album" to "unambiguously the worst album they've ever done and if I ever hear the whole thing again I may be force to cut someone"

I take it back about only disliking 'Round & Round & Round' on WMS. 'Gone!' is pretty terrible. And the lyrics to 'Numb' are unfortunate, to say the least. 'Treasure' is quite lovely!

awww, I like 'Return'!

tbf I didn't like "Gone!" that much until I encountered the Ultraliving mix

"Return" is, without a single doubt in my mind, the absolute worst song they have EVER recorded. I could probably write a novel about how much I hate that song.

I agree with Ned, re: 'The 13th' in that it was one of those singles that didn't seem to fit in anywhere... As the first new material from the band in ages it didn't really seem to logically follow on from Wish, but it sounded really out of whack with everything that was going on at the time. It was almost as if it been made by someone locked away in the studio and ignoring the outside world completely, only to re-emerge and be like "hey, have this!"

I like the sitar-y guitar part in 'Club America', but I've just been having a quick listen to Wild Mood Swings now and... a lot of this really hasn't aged very well, has it!?

Saw them from fourth row in June '92 at the Miami Arena. The set list.

check out all those Seventeen Seconds selections.

xxxp? i would read a synopsis of the "why 'Return' is the worst song The Cure have ever recorded.

As for the 13th, horn sections were kinda having a revival at the time with ska/swing/lounge music kind of bubbling up into the mainstream. so, its not totally out of step with the times. It still doesn't really fit in, but I can see the idea of thinking, "the kids will dig this!" at least from the point of view of a record company picking it as the first single.

and the Cur had always liked horns

'Mint Car' is still ace, IMO. I have never, and will never understand why folks dislike it.

"Mint Car" is saccharine nothingness, completely empty and shrill with none of the parts of the song coming together in any satisfying way. HOWEVER, all of its b-sides are amazing (particularly "Home").

"Return" takes that same saccharine nothingness, speeds it up, adds in an even uglier vocal and some of the cheesiest, most obvious keyboard riffs and horn blasts imaginable in a wholly self-satisfied, concentrated pile of aural garbage.