(AV 31) The Cure –
Festival 2005
Unbelievably this is the first time I’ve ever watched a live
Cure performance on DVD. I did see the
band live around 20 years ago, I think.
It was an epic show made memorable by a set that rambled all over their catalogue
and had a clear but incredibly loud mix.
Fast forward to 2005, and it would seem that little had
changed. This DVD is a 2 and a half hour
extravaganza that pulls in a range of performances from 9 festival performances
in different European locales with vision collated from fans in the crowd, the crew
on stage and footage taken for the big screen at the festival venues. As the band wore the same stage gear, everything
blends seamlessly. However, despite the
best intentions of guitarist Porl Thompson, The Cure are fairly static on stage
but overcome this on DVD with frequent editing between the film sources and
with some post production effects.
The music selection concentrates on those tracks that did
not require keyboards with the guitars cranked to the max. Fascination Street is an early highlight, but
for the first hour only the ever reliable Never Enough truly stands out. A few tracks later, the entire show turns on
enthusiastic renditions of hit singles Just Like Heaven and In Between Days and
then the floodgates open rather dramatically.
An absolutely thunderous From The Edge Of Deep Blue Sea is then followed
by awesome versions of Faith’s The Drowning Man, the B-side and aptly named Signal
To Noise, The Baby Screams from The Head Of the Door and Pornography’s
magnificent One Hundred Years. The
encores are hugely satisfying, encompassing 4 tracks from Seventeen Seconds
(including the inevitable A Forrest), Disintergration’s Plainsong and title
track before Faith brings everything to a highly satisfying conclusion.
At some point during this gig, I figured I could listen to
the music whilst completing the reading of my first music book this year. I mean, just how much footage of Robert
Smith can you view in a single sitting? But it did give me the opportunity to finish
off:
(Bk 1) Pete Townshend
– Who I Am (2012)
The title says it all.
Townshend’s autobiography is a warts and all self-portrait that
simultaneously acknowledges that he cannot escape from the spectre of his band. (Much like the way the band’s 1978 album was
titled Who Are You; no questions marks, just a statement, Who- Are-You.) And this is a key issue. Townshend argues that The Who’s supreme moment was their performance at Woodstock and ever since the morning sun the sun rose as Roger Daltery sang Hear Me See Me there, the band
went into a downward spiral. The death of
Keith Moon further consolidated this feeling and he spent about 10-15
years attempting to keep the band out of his life before finally realising that it –
and Daltery – are the key factors in his professional life that he can never
escape. His private life, on the other
hand appears to be largely one, until recently, of great regret and was
certainly something that spilled over into his professional life causing him on
many occasions to doubt his worth as a father, husband, musician and
songwriter. He doesn’t appear to miss
anything of importance but, even at its great length, you get the
impression (which he does acknowledge at
one point) that it’s been cut down from a still greater length. (Let’s face it, if a
rock star’s autobiography merited a two volume job, it should be Townshend’s.) It certainly does get frustrating to get to
some asterisks in the text that refer you to his or The Who’s websites for
lengthier writings on those points. But
overall it’s a good read, though more self critical than you would normally
expect from a major rock figure.
Book read, I needed to take stock, select another book and
pack, because tomorrow I go on tour.
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