The Cure at MSG! What a night. Their first US tour in many many years – I had to go.
A great set of my old favorites. I missed out on seeing them perform Love Cats (It was a different set every night – they performed it the next night), but I got to see songs the other nights did not see.
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member. Their debut single “Killing an Arab” in December 1978 on the Small Wonder label, and debut album Three Imaginary Boys in May 1979, placed the band as part of the post-punk and new wave movements that developed in the wake of the punk rock scene in the United Kingdom. During the early 1980s, the band’s increasingly dark and tormented music was a staple of the emerging gothic rock genre.
The Cure were one of the first alternative bands to have chart and commercial success in an era before alternative rock had broken into the mainstream. In 1992, NME declared the Cure had, during the 1980s, become “a goth hit machine (19 to date), an international phenomenon and, yet, the most successful alternative band that ever shuffled disconsolately about the earth”. Interpol lead singer Paul Banks was quoted as saying, “the Cure is the band that all of us in Interpol can say influenced us. When I was younger I listened to them a lot. Carlos as well. Actually, he took a straight influence from this band on the way he played the bass and the keys. To me, Robert Smith is also one of these examples: you can’t be Robert Smith if you’re not Robert Smith. It’s one of the bands with the deepest influence on Interpol, because we all like them. They’re legendary.” The Cure were also a formative influence on the Smashing Pumpkins. Frontman Billy Corgan has named the Cure as a primary influence,’ and drummer Mike Byrne described himself as a “huge Cure fan.”
Several references to the Cure and their music have been made in popular culture. A number of films have used the title of a Cure song as the film’s title, including Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Just Like Heaven (2005). The Cure’s gloomy image has been the subject of parody at times. In series two of The Mighty Boosh, the Moon sings “The Love Cats” over the credits. In the same episode, a powerful gothic hairspray, Goth Juice, is said to be “the most powerful hairspray known to man. Made from the tears of Robert Smith.” The Mary Whitehouse Experience often featured brief clips of the stars of the show performing comical songs and nursery rhymes as the Cure in a morose style. Robert Smith appeared in the final episode of the second series of The Mary Whitehouse Experience singing “The sun has got his hat on” before punching the character Ray (played by Robert Newman) whilst uttering Ray’s catchphrase “Oh no, what a personal disaster”. While not a parody, Robert Smith was the inspiration for the lead character of the film This Must Be the Place. Robert Smith was also portrayed on the South Park episode “Mecha-Streisand” (for which he himself provided the voice-over), where he transforms into the form of Mothra and battles Mecha-Streisand to save the day. As Smith leaves, the character of Kyle shouts, “Disintegration is the best album ever!”