Kyle Broflovski was right:

For those of you that don’t know, The Cure has been in Australia playing their album “Disintegration” from beginning to end as part of the 30th anniversary of its release.

Since they don’t want to play the same show EVERY place they visit this year, they are live-streaming the last Sydney show around the world on YouTube.

For free.

Tonight.

At approximately 3:00 AM Pacific and 6:00 AM Eastern.

Litre_cola and I thought that the event was worthy enough for us to take the day off and partake in a live blog in which the rest of you could join in.

We’ll each give you our individual takes on what The Cure has meant to us through the years and join you in the comments. One of us is most likely going to be high during the proceedings, so you have that to look forward to as well.

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Balls’ Take

The Cure was the first band I ever saw live in concert. It was at Dodger Stadium in September of 1989. The Cure was on their “Prayer Tour” which was mostly supporting the release of Disintegration in the US.

To this day, it’s the best concert I have ever been to.

Now, that’s not hyperbole or wistfulness arising out of a momentous First Time. The Cure played for almost 3 hours. Look at this set list:

• Plainsong
• Pictures of You
• Closedown
• Piggy In The Mirror
• A Night Like This
• Just Like Heaven
• Last Dance
• Fascination Street
• Lovesong
• Charlotte Sometimes
• The Walk
• A Forest
• In Between Days
• The Same Deep Water As You
• Prayers For Rain
• Disintegration

Encore One

• Lullaby
• Close To Me
• Let’s Go To Bed
• Why Can’t I Be You

Encore Two

• Homesick
• Untitled

Encore Three

• A Strange Day
• Hot Hot Hot
• Three Imaginary Boys
• Boys Don’t Cry
• 10:15 Saturday Night
• Killing An Arab

I still have a piece of a Dodger stadium seat that I took home as a souvenir from that concert:

From the link above, I can tell you that The Pixies, some band named Shelleyan Orphan, and Love and Rockets were the opening acts. I think the only band we saw play was Love and Rockets because I don’t remember any of the others. I think we got there late. Blame LA traffic.

I love to listen to The Cure and specially songs from Disintegration when I’m down. For some reason, it always makes me feel better and it brightens my mood. It seems the darker the songs and the darker the themes, the more it cheers me up. I’m weird.

Robert Smith has said that he wrote Disintegration as a reaction to his turning 30 and to the music world thinking he might make a pretty good pop star. The entire album is full of doom and gloom save for the one song he wrote as a wedding present to his wife: Lovesong.

He’s said that the album wouldn’t be the same without it and I agree. For there is no despair without hope. No pain without first having experienced joy. It is when good things get taken away from us that we feel the deepest pain.

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Litre’s Take

These guys have been a large influence in my life for the better part of 30 years. Usually when I get loaded up I come home and fire on an album in my ear phones and pass out. Disintegration is indeed their best album by far. 

Story I once took a 46 hour bus ride from Milan to Barcelona to see their farewell concert in 2000. When the bus arrived in Barcelona there was a bunch of Sri Lankan refugees aboard with shady papers. Guns were drawn and I had to crawl over seats to get out as they weren’t moving and I wanted the fuck off. There weren’t Euros yet, it cost me100 pesetas for the scalper ticket.. It was just when they released the Bloodflowers album and this was supposed to be their final show in Spain. I dug up the setlist and it was pretty damn good.

Out of this World, Watching me Fall, Want, Fascination Street, Open, The Loudest Sound, The Kiss,  The Snakepit, Maybe Someday, Shake dog Shake, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, In Between Days, Prayers for Rain, One hundred Years, End, 39, Bloodflowers.

Encore 1 : There is no if, Trust, Plainsong, Disintegration

Encore 2: M, Play For Today, A Forest, 

Encore 3: Faith.

The show was absolutely amazing. Some dude in the hostel I was staying at had pneumonia so gave me some Moroccan hash the day of so I had a really good buzz going in. Problem was that when the lights went down and I wanted to spark another I had dropped my lighter. These 2 20-something females were beside me who spoke no English or French, my Spanish is rudimentary so the only way I could request fire was show them my pocket full of joints and mime a lighter motion. They eventually picked up on it and we all melted in to our seats for the show. The band played so long that the metro wasn’t running so I had to walk 5 miles back to the hostel but it was like I was floating, it was bliss. 

I also saw them at Riotfest in Denver a few years back. That festival had a load of bands from different genres. It is not often that you get to see Wu Tang Clan, Slayer (Reign in Blood Album), The Cure, Clutch, NOFX, Rise Against in one weekend. The Cure played for over two hours on their evening and it was a perfect ending to a hard fought day of drinking, smoking, screaming.

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The Album

Balls: I bought and have kept over the years a book that Robert Smith put out that has the lyrics to all Cure songs from the beginning until 1989. The following pages show the lyrics to all the songs in Disintegration:

Note that Homesick was the last song on the album. Babble, Out of Mind, Fear of Ghosts, and 2 Late were written at the same time, but ended up being B-sides of singles released in 1989 in support of the album.

Here is a YouTube playlist with all songs in the album, in order:

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My best friend works maintenance at the Opera House and has sent me these throughout the week, he is a huge metal head and thinks that The Cure is wrist slitting music.

And Here Is The Live Stream:

Yours in the comments…

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