The Cure: Classic or Dud?

^^^ this has been my experience, usually combined with a lot of irritated cursing

(As a witness I should add; I don’t have perfect pitch)

I assume someone with perfect pitch, confronting with a slightly different standard of tuning than they have learned, would simply say "these are the pitches, but they're all a quarter-tone flat/sharp".

Oh great, another opportunity to post my favorite John McPhee anecdote about Bill Bradley.

Last summer, the floor of the Princeton gym was being resurfaced, so Bradley had to put in several practice sessions at the Lawrenceville School. His first afternoon at Lawrenceville, he began by shooting fourteen-foot jump shots from the right side. He got off to a bad start, and he kept missing them. Six in a row hit the back rim of the basket and bounced out. He stopped, looking discomfited, and seemed to be making an adjustment in his mind. Then he went up for another jump shot from the same spot and hit it cleanly. Four more shots went in without a miss, and then he paused and said, “You want to know something? That basket is about an inch and a half low.” Some weeks later, I went back to Lawrenceville with a steel tape, borrowed a stepladder, and measured the height of the basket. It was nine feet ten and seven-eighths inches above the floor, or one and one-eighth inches too low.

Life is long and complex and there are many uncertainties in it.

But one thing seems certain to remain forever: a young-ish John McPhee writing about a young Bill Bradley will always provide - for me - a tiny glimpse of what expertise means. Because I am a dilettante and expertise will always elude me, but at least I will know a little bit about how to describe expertise using English sentences.

I love the story that was in the New Yorker about some neuroscientist working with Brian Eno to study how the brain perceives the passage of time. Eno told a story of Larry Mullen Jr. hating click tracks but being made to play along, yet complaining in one instance that the click was off. Eno kept insisting that it had recently been calibrating and was perfectly in time, and Mullen kept complaining that something was off. After the session, Eno told the engineer to check out the click, and indeed, it was off by an almost invisible amount!

“I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.” Mullen was playing drums over a recording of the band and a click track—a computer-generated beat that was meant to keep all the overdubbed parts in synch. In this case, however, Mullen thought that the click track was slightly off: it was a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the band. “I said, ‘No, that can’t be so, Larry,’ ” Eno recalled. “ ‘We’ve all worked to that track, so it must be right.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I just can’t play to it.’ ”

Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen’s satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. “The thing is,” Eno told me, “when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, ‘No, you’ve got to come back a bit.’ Which I think is absolutely staggering.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian

Oh yeah! I read that one too and had a similar reaction. A perfect parallel. Thanks Josh, because I'd forgotten.

i couldn't watch that rick beato guy for more than a minute, idk how anybody can stand that shit, excruciating

I sympathize, map. Clearly you just can't handle the life-changing message of how Steely Dan went from a Bbmaj6 to an F#min13, and how they inserted a 5/4 bar over that change, and that's why "Doctor Ricki Blue" is the pinnacle of 20th century art music.

Lol I told YouTube to stop recommending his videos awhile back

I've watched more than a few Beato videos but his mileage varies. Some songs he points out some things I'd never paid attention before (and I love when he has the song stems and can play parts individually), and other times he really has nothing to say. Pretty rockist, as y'all have mentioned

A great piece on Wish from a board vet!

https://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-cure-wish.html

I have always held that Robert / Simon / Pearl / Roger / Boris was the best lineup of The Cure. I now stand corrected:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TnmSyg5I_4

Pretty funny. Has any band ever sent another band onto one of those things in their stead?

Wow, what a combo - adorable. I had never seen/heard of that clip. Should have played Banafishbones.

Should have played Banafishbones.

this statement applies to every show the cure ever played. even if they already planned on playing that song. play it twice ffs.

absolutely classic clip. boris was such a professional that he can't even fake it badly! lol

i love that clip where they all wore dresses. i think it was a french tv performance of 'why can't i be you?' pearl (pre-transition) looks absolutely badass the entire time.

man what an amazing band. i love them all so much.

i was wrong! it was 'boys don't cry'!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcvHA6xOrkw

BEST BAND EVER

thanks for sharing those clips, i have not seen either one until now

I don't think I get the point about the 'close to me' clip. What's odd about it?

Bananarama's up there with them

The Cure live are sooo good.

What's odd about it?

Lol is completely ignoring miming in order to dance tipsily with Siobhan from Bananarama. Simon is holding his bass vertically in one hand while a shitfaced Keren from Bananarama claws arrythmically at the strings. Boris is gamely tapping away in time while Sarah from Bananarama leans on an amp, laughing her head off at Robert barely getting the trumpet anywhere near his face while attempting to mime.

Has any band ever sent another band onto one of those things in their stead?

The bloke who played every instrument on this top ten single has no idea who the people TOTP put on as him are. Similarly, it's hard to tell with the masks, but this might not be the exact lineup of The Clash that played on the record.

did anyone snag that “carnage visors” vinyl bootleg that came out recently?

? there’s what appears to be an official 12” at the Rough Trade store

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/the-cure/carnage-visors

whooooa nice thanks had no idea! just saw some Italian boot pop up on Discogs recently

Has any band ever sent another band onto one of those things in their stead?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ousaiByU1ko

Actual music videos with fake bands is a different thing imo

also nothing about that Carnage Visors vinyl looks official. No barcode, no record label, CURE1 cat #, off-brand typography, photo possibly sourced from newsprint, "thanks" to Fiction staff from 1981, two decades after Parry sold the company?

I don’t think RT would be carrying bootlegs

Well.

Simon Gallup says he has left The Cure. https://t.co/48f0ocjHxE pic.twitter.com/S9325RcDpT

— Chain of Flowers (@CraigatCoF) August 14, 2021

Read the thread

they really should just break up at this point. 1) I don't believe for a minute there are close-to-finished albums sitting around 2) sure I'd like to see them live again but I've also seen them a lot and there is not shortage of great concert video of them. But they should reissue Wish on vinyl first.

Yeah a completion of the Fiction years reissues would be rather nice and is long overdue. Whatever happens next, who knows. Maybe Robert can finally release that solo album…

Anyway, what's Phil Thornalley doing these days.

Roffle

A friend just told me they saw Lol in the Guitar Centre buying a bass???????

— Roger O'Donnell (@RogerODonnellX) August 14, 2021

All I want is Wish on vinyl and maybe a reissue of A Forest 12”, and a special release with Jumping Someone Else’s Train b/w Another Journey by Train on 12”.

As a passionate fan up to Disintegration and an increasingly dismayed casual fan since, it seems like a good time to call it quits.

A friend just told me they saw Lol in the Guitar Centre buying a bass???????
— Roger O'Donnell (@RogerODonnellX) August 14, 2021

A bassless rumor

Given the band is in essence exclusively a live entity, and given all the line-up changes in the past and present, I really don't see the band breaking up over this. If New Order can go on without Peter Hook, the Cure can go on without Simon. Should go on? That's not for me to say.

Didn’t Roger and Simon have beef years ago or am I misremembering?

As long as Fat Bob is there (and wants to be there) that'll be enough for a vast majority of Cure fans, many of whom probably couldn't even name the bassist.

times simon has quit the band previously (that we know about):

-after pornography
-after wish
-during bloodflowers sessions

and when his son was filling in on bass for some of the band's gigs in recent years, who knows what was actually going on.

i'm upset by this news, but not really disappointed. i think most longtime fans, when pressed, would acknowledge that the cure is essentially robert + simon.
what a shame that it's come to this.

He also quit during or after the Ross Robinson sessions, and I think Robert’s mentioned another in-between days albums quit-and-return this century.

A lot of fans of various groups can't seem to distinguish between "he wrote and played some great parts 40 years ago" and "he is a vital, essential member of the group today".

if i paid to see "the cure" and simon wasn't on the stage, i'd want a refund.

If they're not the cure after Simon leaves, then they aren't the Cure after Lol left either

Yeah I would not go see the Cure sans Simon

(it's hard enough watching anything without Porl)

Yeah the fact that Simon's been in and out, but that a lot of the 'out' times happened during lulls between big album cycles, means I'm more 'hmm, huh' about this rather than 'THE END' quite yet. I've been lucky enough to see them a number of times, including the once with Boris still on drums back in 1992 at the Rose Bowl, and ultimately their very odd dynamic between all the band members remains inscrutable.

What's the "betrayal" he says he's tired of?

robert collabing with shitty contemporary bands instead of him.