The Cure: Classic or Dud?

awesome, thanks!

Indeed!

New song debut last night in Hollywood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbJeqSa2t0k

Some info on the origins:
https://consequence.net/2023/05/the-cure-new-song-another-happy-birthday-live/

YouTube and the Internet seemed to kill bands debuting live songs in concerts, or doing work in process versions live. Are the Cure the last of the big bands to do this?

Are the Cure the last of the big bands to do this?

well, there's this other British goth band touring the US right now..

Yes yes but enough about the 1975

Sisters have no intention of recording any of their (last 30 years of) new material, aiui

There's an instrumental demo version of this new track dating back to the Bloodflowers era - things move slow in RS world - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsngrxuNQuk

bit of a boring one compared to the other newies

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/the-cure-hollywood-bowl-concert-review-1235624290/

Well that fucking ruled.

absolutely. I guess this was my fifth time seeing them: 89, 92, curiosa, whatever tour that was a few years ago where I gave you a ride home, and then this time. Easily the best show since 92. I wish they'd played Fascination Street but otherwise no complaints. I was up in the lawn again but it was a little less crowded than last time and the sound up there was really great. Robert was in such a great mood too.

I went to get lunch the other day and the woman at the counter told me she had just been to see Tom Jones at the Beacon Theater which she was very happy about and was also going to see The Cure at MSG so I will have to remember to ask her about that.

also, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, I think Fat Bob has shed a few pounds, he was looking rather trim on the screens (which I had to look at because the stage was five thousand miles away)

tix here still no cheaper than $300 for nosebleeds. but I guess they are coming back for a festival in September.

wait how is that even possible? are those resale tickets? they went out of their way to prevent that from even happening.

There's a few states with laws on the books that protect ticket resellers... Illinois is one of them.

yeah, Illinois, New York, Colorado ...

man that's lame. exchange tickets for good seats are still showing up for the bay area tomorrow. I'm tempted but getting out of that place is a traffic nightmare and I have an interview early the next morning.

A really nice recording of Saturday's concert appeared - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/pd49u4ko90radoi2msn62/h?dl=0&rlkey=owcv7sukoiiszu39p2i4c3w1a

6dl=fferent0&rlkey=owcv7sukoiiszu39p2i4c3w1ays

Calling him Fat Bob is just wrong, smh.

This is from this weeks show at the Hollywood Bowl (Encore 1):

I Can Never Say Goodbye
It Could Never Be the Same
A Thousand Hours
At Night
A Forest
A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpby7jpy5zI

iirc "fat bob" originated from siouxsie

(but yes agreed, not a very nice nickname)

Thank you MaresNest!

What a great show - and I say this when they're not even playing a single song from Pornography (which I would usually say is my favourite album of theirs).

I will also add the poster image from the first night is great -- I got an actual poster on site but very likely going to get this as well:

https://shop.thecure.com/product/X9CTTC182/san-francisco-night-1-event-tee?cp=105516_107541_113391

you're entitled to your opinion on that...I hated it, every other city got a more interesting poster

I happen to be visiting Portland and scored a last-minute ticket for the show tonight. Stoked!

this band are on F-I-R-E O-N tour right now

seven new or unreleased-as-studio-versions songs last night - a full albumsworth in playing time. and Doing The Unstuck in the hits section!

had PRETTY good seats tbh

Had some thoughts

https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-weekly-78-83927014

Yeah the Portland show was fantastic. How does he still sound so good.

^ DJP and Reeves’ wife to thread iirc

tonight

Been trying for last minute tickets, and man, does Ticketmaster suck. The second a ticket goes live, I click on it, and ... it says a fan beat me to it. So I refresh the page, and the same fucking seats are listed, the ones I missed out on. Huh? Another time there were rock star seats that went live, I missed out, then five minutes later ... they were back. Another time I had two ticks in my cart and went to pay and ... nothing happened. Just didn't process when I clicked the button. What is the business model for a fucked up site?

For the St Paul show it was easier to buy two tickets than one, but I ended up getting a not-bad club level seat. I read that there's a way to use a different browser to start (but not complete) a purchase of a group of seats, leaving one in a row, and then purchasing the one seat in your main browser... but I've never tried it, so I don't know if it works.

How was it geoffreyess?

Looks like I missed a great set here, 31 songs, two tour debuts, including "Like Cockatoos," which is a bummer, but the ticket hustle is just not worth it anymore.

i missed it as well because i too didn't have the energy to deal with the ticket situation.

How was it

Pretty great, first time seeing them. Though had to leave during the 2nd encore (at the 2.5 hour mark!) and apparently missed Friday I'm in Love, Close to Me, In Between Days, Just Like Heaven & Boys Don't Cry, lol. Maybe next time. Robert Smith sounds great, I enjoyed his self-conscious thinking-out-loud style of banter, and was continually amazed how good the band sounds pulling from any era, whether "Play for Today" or "Plainsong." But honestly the new songs were the highlights, loved "Alone," "Nothing is Forever" and "Endsong," hadn't seen any clips previously but they go well beyond "Disintegration Redux" for me, though would have to hear again to say how.

Nice new piece by Nabil Ayers

https://fortune.com/2023/06/21/robert-smith-the-cure-ticketmaster-inflation-revenge-spending-taylor-swift/

Bit the bullet to see them at Riot Fest in September. The set won't be as long, but whatevs.

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/the-cure-were-full-of-surprises-at-final-msg-show-night-3-setlist-video/

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"You're gonna be surprised!" Robert Smith told the Madison Square Garden crowd on Thursday night at the start of The Cure's final encore. "Maybe not at first, but you will be!"

This was the final show of the band's three-night MSG run and fans in attendance, at least ones who have been looking at other setlists on this tour, already knew something was up. Almost always on this tour, the main set and first encore are made up of The Cure's moodier material, with the extended second encore all the pop hits. On Thursday night they dropped "In Between Days" and "Just Like Heaven" into the main set. My friend and I turned to each other immediately, asking "What is going on?!?"

We'd find out after "Boys Don't Cry," which is usually the last song of the night. They then went into an extended dip into early classics with "Jumping Someone Else's Train" leading straight into "Grinding Halt," both of which made their tour debut on Thursday, followed by "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Killing Another" (aka a reworked, both musically and lyrically, version of "Killing an Arab").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcb19i7sWfQ

I saw MSG #2 on Wednesday. Bummed I missed Jumping Someone Else's Train, but Weds had a few gems they didn't play the other 2 nights.

It looks like they've been front loading the shows with lots of longer songs, new songs, fan favs, and album tracks, with a few moody hits like "Pictures of You" and "The Forest" every so often. Then they bust through a 30-minute rapid-fire "greatest hits" set for the 2nd encore (which feels more like a 3rd set).

I saw last night’s set @ Merriweather Post Pavilion between Baltimore and DC. 2 hrs 1/2 or more strong set but no “Jumpin”, “Grinding,” or “Killing.” Robert Smith was wearing a “Omar’s Comin’” t-shirt in a nod to the filmed in Baltimore show “The Wire”

Last date on the US tour and they break out Love Cats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1KWU9w3DRY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw52SlwKaRI

In Philly my wife got her favorite Cure song "Burn" which was really emotional for her and I was so happy for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdXlI6ZrVl8

I didn't get my favorite song "Killing an Arab" but they played it when we saw them here on the last tour 15 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUEgn0kPJoA

It's amazing how far phone camera technology has come since then!

https://consequence.net/2023/07/the-cure-record-setting-shows-of-a-lost-world-tour/

According to Billboard, The Cure’s “Shows of a Lost World Tour” sold 547,000 tickets for a gross of $37.5 million. Both numbers are new career bests: the band’s previous high-water mark for tickets sold in America was 402,000 in 1992, while they more than doubled the gross revenue of their 2016 jaunt ($18 million).

Despite these impressive totals, The Cure could have earned a lot more, but frontman Robert Smith intentionally left millions of dollars on the table so the band could offer reasonable priced tickets to their fans. Per Billboard, the average ticket price for the “Shows of a Lost World Tour” was $68.54 — 37% less than the average ticket price for the year’s other top tours.