The Cure is one of my favorite bands.  Sure, I wasn’t yet 5 years old when they released their first album, but that didn’t stop me from falling completely in love with them in my early teens.  I’ve lost a little of the fire over the last few years with their most recent releases, but I still can’t pass up a chance to see them on tour.  So, after fighting rush hour traffic and parking without incident, I got a drink for just under the price of a barrel of crude, rolled my eyes at the $45 concert shirts, and headed to the seats that I bought almost a year ago before they rescheduled much of their tour.  I had missed the opener, 65 Days of Static, but it seems most around me had as well.

It wasn’t long after we sat down that The Cure hit the stage to raucous applause, and 5 songs in as they went from “Fascination Street” to “The Walk”, I remarked to my boyfriend how relieved I was that they weren’t playing all new stuff.  He simply responded, “They know better.”  They must have, because the concert spanned their full 30 year history with a heavy emphasis on earlier stuff.

Porl Thompson definitely won Best Dressed for the night as he bopped about the stage like a man half his age, sporting head tattoos and a pair of fabulous glittery red heels that would have made Dorothy proud…and a little slutty.  Robert was Robert with the same baggy clothes, red lipstick, and black eye makeup that has been his trademark for so many years.  Simon Gallup looked like a kid on stage next to bald Porl and smooshy Robert as he strutted around like Billy Idol’s younger brother.  Jason Cooper was pretty hidden back there on the drums, and while I haven’t been impressed with anything they’ve done since he joined the band during the recording of Wild Mood Swings, I don’t blame him for those albums, and he did a great job on every song he played on.

My boyfriend isn’t a huge Cure fan, he was there as my date and to take pictures, but he did want to hear “Pictures of You”.  After “Lovesong”, I told him it wasn’t likely they’d play it, as that marked three songs already from Disintegration and we were only 6 songs in.  Because I can never win a damned argument with my boyfriend, they played “Pictures of You” two songs later, and I started to wonder if I’d warped back in time to The Prayer tour.  When he reached an arm up and clutched at the air, his fingers barely peeking out of his ridiculously long sleeve, during the chorus to “Catch”, I giggled like I was 15 again, staring at his poster on the ceiling over my bed.

As the show went on I heard so many favorites, “Push”, “Inbetween Days”, “Just Like Heaven” to name just a few, and I started to wonder what the heck they were going to do for the encore.  I had no freaking idea what I was in for, but as the third and final encore began I was verging on delirium, and when Robert and Simon’s guitar jam session at the end of “A Forest” ended, I was ecstatic.  There have been lots of rumors that this is going to be their last tour, and if that’s the case they definitely went out on a high note.

Here is the setlist for the show:

Main Set:

• underneath the stars
• prayers for rain
• fascination street
• the walk
• the end of the world
• lovesong
• to wish impossible things
• pictures of you
• lullaby
• catch
• the perfect boy
• from the edge of the deep green sea
• the kyoto song
• hot hot hot
• the blood
• sleep when i’m dead
• push
• inbetween days
• just like heaven
• primary
• shake dog shake
• the only one
• wrong number
• one hundred years
• baby rag dog book

Encore 1:

• the lovecats
• let’s go to bed
• freakshow
• close to me
• why can’t i be you?

Encore 2:

• boys don’t cry
• jumping someone else’s train
• grinding halt
• 10:15 saturday night
• killing an arab

Encore 3:

• a forest

Lot’s more pictures are available here.