Last night’s show was AMAZING! But let me back up a bit…
We decided to head toward the venue super early to avoid the nastiness that is Friday rush hour traffic into the city. We left the house at 2:30 pm and arrived at 4 pm, stopping at a Thai restaurant for dinner. Then we went a few blocks down the street to a bar where Joe had a couple of beers and we played darts to pass the time. We got to the venue a little after 6 pm and waited for the long line outside to dissipate before leaving the cool confines of our car to deal with the 99° heat.
Once inside I hit the bathroom before we located our seats. We were in the nosebleed section – 215, Row J, seats 19 and 20 (which was only one away from being on the aisle). A guy who sat there briefly left, thank god, because his bright phone screen was distracting me.
Even though it felt pretty cold in the air-conditioned building when we arrived it was rather warm and stuffy inside, particularly in the balcony area. Turns out I didn’t need the sweater I brought along at all! Incidentally, I wore my favorite Cure-bird t-shirt and didn’t see one other person wearing one. Not even that many people were wearing Cure t-shirts at all, in fact. I have to wonder how many people even recognized mine other than the woman outside the venue who stopped me to compliment it. She got into The Cure in 1992 which is just a year after I did.
As always, the security at the venue was a joke. Pat-downs for the men and just a purse search for the women. No metal detectors.
The venue itself sucks because the hallways are too narrow to accommodate traffic. Plus there are literally two bathrooms in the entire place, both of which are on the 1st level on opposite ends of the building. We tried to go down there for some water and to use the restroom between the opening act (The Twilight Sad who was surprisingly good) and The Cure coming on and went right back to our seats because it was wall to wall people. I did end up going back down there by myself right before The Cure was due to come on but it was hell pushing through the crowd to even get to the bathroom. I couldn’t even tell where the line to get water was so I went back to my seat without any (and since it was so warm I was parched).
One more complaint before I get to the show itself – WTF is up with people constantly getting up during these events? Luckily most of the people in our row stayed seated like we did (I didn’t even end up going to the bathroom again until we got home hour four hours later) but so many people, many of the same ones, were up and down ALL night. You came to see a band – sit the fuck down and watch! Jeez! I’ve got lots of idiots blocking my recordings (and I kept my phone low so as not to disturb the people around me) because they couldn’t sit still.
And shame on the venue for not replacing the burnt out bulb over our staircase. Every other one in the venue was lit, but ours was in complete darkness so we had all these people shining their phone flashlights in our faces trying to read the row numbers to find their seats. The labeling could be better anyway.
Also, these two woman sitting behind us couldn’t STFU during the opening act. I was just about to turn around and give them a peace of my mind when they left because they weren’t in the right seats anyway. /rant
Now for the good stuff – the show!
This was my sixth time seeing The Cure live and I think it was their best show yet. Joe definitely thought so and he’s seen them twice before. They started the show with Shake Dog Shake which was a welcome surprise instead of something like Plainsong or Want. From there it just got better and better. I took a ton of video, recording a total of 16 full songs, which is way more than I planned on taking but wanted them for the memories. They aren’t really great, so check out this guy’s because they are professional quality!
Robert was talkative between some songs and even joked about how unintelligible he tends to be when speaking to the audience. During that segment we could actually understand him which was nice but he quickly fell back into his old pattern of mumbling as the evening progressed.
In all they played 32 songs, 10 of which I’ve never heard live before. One of those was The Top, which they haven’t played live in the U.S. in 32 years!!! Here’s a short snippet from my recording.
Pretty amazing, even if I didn’t get to hear A Forest like I was hoping. They’ll probably play it tonight at the second Chicago show. I know people will be periscoping it but I won’t be able to watch because we’ll be at B’s girlfriend’s birthday pool party. I’ll be interested to see the set list later tonight, though.
Here’s the full set list. I’ve highlighted the ten songs I’ve never heard live before.
Shake Dog Shake
Kyoto Song
Night Like This
All I Want
Push
Primary
Pictures of You
Like Cockatoos
The Perfect Girl
Screw
The Walk
Charlotte Sometimes
Lovesong
Just Like Heaven
Jupiter Crash
From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
One Hundred Years
Give Me It
1st Encore
The Top
2nd Encore
Want
Never Enough
Fascination Street
Burn
3rd Encore
The Exploding Boy
In Between Days
Doing The Unstuck
Friday I’m In Love
4th Encore
Lullaby
Let’s Go To Bed
Close to Me
Why Can’t I Be You
Boys Don’t Cry
And here’s a link to my favorite Cure fan site with details about last night’s show including links to other videos taken.
