decoded_ Something for your mind… Something for your mind…

I’ve been a fan of The Cure on and off for more than the last couple of decades, discovering them initially through high-school friends in the 1980s, shouts to Rebecca Penberthy. Disintegration would have to be my fave album by The Cure, followed closely by The Head On The Door. I’ve had quite a few chances over the past couple of decades to go see them live, but never made it happen. Over the last couple of years I’ve listened to The Cure more than I ever have, thanks to iTunes and my iPod. So… I jumped at the chance to finally see them live when our friend Rozie offered to get tickets for us whilst we were still OS. Thanks Rozie!

Even though I was seated far from the action on stage on Friday I really enjoyed their 3+ hours live show. I was very happy to hear heaps of my fave songs: Fascination Street, A Night Like This, Pictures Of You, The Walk, Lullaby, High, Love Song, Push, Hot Hot Hot, Inbetween Days, Kyoto Song, Just Like Heaven, Primary, Disintegration, Never Enough, Friday I’m In Love, Let’s Go To Bed, Close To Me, Why Can’t I Be You, A Forest, Boys Don’t Cry and The Kiss… which sounded massive, I love how intense that song gets!

They also played quite a lot of other stuff, much that I’m not so familiar with, maybe some of the songs from more recent releases, or stuff from when I was too absorbed in dance music to pay any attention at the time. There were quite a few slow, dark, deep songs, that really brought the mood down, things you wouldn’t really expect to hear during a huge concert performance, but respect to them playing what they wanted to. I would have liked to have also heard 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab, and The Caterpillar, but you can’t please everyone. I heard they played a couple of these on Thursday night. We got Friday I’m In Love, with it being a Friday night, Thursday missed out on that.

Their whole show was full of musical contrasts, much like their music/releases. It was quite a roller coaster ride of up/down moods and varying intensities, all with a fantastic light show and projections to match. Some very clever lighting programming, each song having it’s own unique look. At times the lighting and music together was hypnotising and mesmerising. I was absorbed in it deeply, I was seeing spots for hours afterwards from that light-show too.

My only dissapointments were that there were no keyboards on stage/no keyboardists. They did have some programmed synth, keyboard, percussion parts backing many of the songs, which sounded great, but they chose to use lead guitar to play all the main string, piano, synth, brass keyboard lines in many of their well known and much loved classics. How can lead guitar replace the lead synth line in The Walk or the brass/trumpet lines in Why Can’t I Be You?!? Why didn’t they just program those keyboard/synth parts as well, or get in a session keyboardist? I’m glad they didn’t play Love Cats, it wouldn’t work without the piano. I played keyboards in a live band called Napoleon Goes Solo in Adelaide in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s which used to perform many covers of songs by The Cure, so I knew those keyboard parts/sounds very well. I was dissapointed to not hear them. Shouts going out to Neville Hill from NPG, I hope all is well.

The concert sound was great, very loud! I’m glad I was wearing my musicians ear-plugs. The mix was very well done, some very cool mix-wide effects used during some songs, making for a huge, thick, wall of swirling, dense sound, and at other times a thin, fragile sound, reflecting the lo-fi production of their earlier work. At times I felt the mix needed more bass guitar, and shortly after thinking that the bass guitar level would rise, thanks sound engineer. Roberts voice sounded great the whole performance, and everyone played really well I thought, great drummer! You could feel/tell they were getting a little tired during the last encore after 3+ hours! They must have done 3 or 4 encores, I lost count!

I enjoyed their performance. I’m glad I’ve seen them live now. I just wish I had seen them live before their keyboardists/guitarists left. Might have to hunt down some older live DVDs. Any recommendations?