Sept. 15th, 1989-Dallas,Tx. (Starplex Amphitheatre)
Taking The Cure at Starplex
Despite the band's uncertain fate,it still has a healthy glow
By Russell Smith / Pop Music Critic of The Dallas Morning News (09-18-1989)
As swan songs go, this one was a full-course symphony. The Cure held the stage for nearly three hours Friday night at Starplex Amphitheatre in what founder Robert Smith has promised will be his band's final concert tour.
The timing is climactic. The Cure's apparent impending breakup comes just as the band is achieving mainstream success. Its latest album, the aptly titled Disintegration, has proved the group's biggest commercial success; the Starplex show, in fact, was a sellout.
Three hours, of course, allows for plenty of ups and downs, and that's the way it went Friday night for The Cure -- wuthering heights and not-too-withering lows, heavy on the atmospherics and with an often stunning light show.
Most of the time, all eyes were on Mr. Smith, with his vampirish white makeup, a slash of red across his lips and hair like a lunatic bird nest.
Appropriately, considering the band's gloomy oeuvre, the show began at a dirgelike pace. For the most part, the concert reflected the darker, more serious side of The Cure -- its essence -- though that's not what comes across so much in radio and dance-floor hits such as Hot Hot Hot! and Let's Go to Bed.
Friday, The Cure tended more toward high-density jams than to bite-sized pop tunes. But not exclusively. Mr. Smith found ample time to yelp his way through bouncier fare such as Why Can't I Be You? and The Cure's little pop classic, Boys Don't Cry. Still fey, but feistier.
At its most monotonous -- the band isn't exactly all over the place stylistically -- the music has a tendency to recede oh-so-gradually into the fog and the colored lights onstage; it takes on a detached quality, a secret life of its own that achieves an almost hypnotic effect.
Back when Mick Jagger was a boy, they called it psychedelia.
The concert's most pleasant surprises came at the end, deep into the third encore, when The Cure reached way back to its first album and came up with the fairly blunt rocker Imaginary Boy. Better yet was an unexpected offering of Killing an Arab, one of the band's best and, unfortunately, most misinterpreted songs -- so much so that it was eventually wiped off The Cure's set lists.
The fact that the song turned up Friday night might be a hint that Mr. Smith means what he says about dissolving the band. Ah well, these things happen. Better now than when it's too late and the group has begun to lose its lustre.
After all, there are so many bad endings in rock 'n' roll. Perhaps, in Mr. Smith's mind at least, the memory of The Cure is worth that final ounce of prevention.
(Thanks to Brice for the review)