Aug. 20th.1989-Meadowlands,N. J. (Giants Stadium)

Nearly 50,000 fans were on hand at Giants Stadium Sunday night when the Cure
took the stage in a swirl of dry-ice fog and symphonic rock.A ghoulish figure
with charcoal-smudged eyes,clown-white face,and a tattered bouffant of
freakish black hair emerged from the mist,and thousands of idolaters
screamed:It was Robert Smith,the enigmatic singer,songwriter,and guitarist
whose melancholy vocals and existential lyrics have made him a death-rocker's
heartthrob for more than a decade now.

Sunday's concert marked another stage in one of the most significant
developments in rock music in the 1980s:the rise of so-called "alternative
music," artists inspired by the experimental and anti-corporate esthetics of
punk.

The Cure started in the south of England in 1976,during punk's heyday.By the
mid-'80s the band was having Top-10 U.K. hits and developing a rabid
following in the States.This year's "Disintegration" album has been a Top 50
pop record in the United States and No. 1 on the "modern rock" radio charts.

The band opened Sunday with the first track from that album,the ironically
titled "Plainsong." With its hauntingly beautiful melody slowly unfolding
in layers of rippling sound,it is an example of the Cure at its best.The
lyrics are snatches of a dialogue in which the communicants yearn to but
never quite connect."Sometimes you make me feel like I'm living at the edge
of the world ... 'It's just the way I smile' you said," Smith sings in a
quavering mournful tenor,as though his heart were filling his mouth and
about to break.

His songs ache with a romantic's alienation;his voice,and the band's
sensitive arrangements,bring the pain home.
"Disintegration" is the kind of album to play alone in your bedroom with
candles burning.Yet Smith and his four bandmates-including Roger O'Donnell
replacing the recently departed Laurence Tolhurst on keyboards-magnificently
conveyed the album's atmosphere in Sunday's 2 1/2-hour set,which also
included a slew of earlier songs.They wrapped the audience in lush sound and
held them spellbound with a show that was half cinema.Green,purple,and
yellow lights illuminated the fog,as in scenes from a sci-fi horror flick.At
other times,eerie white light bathed the set's sheet-draped amps and
haunted-house window shutters,casting greenish-gray shadows of the band,as
though they were moving in a "film noir."

Sunday's opening bands didn't have the lights and fogs of the headliners and
thus were not able to create as appropriate an environment for their songs;
alternative music's natural domain is clubs.Love and Rockets,another
doom-and-gloom English band,with a major radio hit with "So Alive," had to
rely on a simple three-piece lineup to act out their heavy-handed strategy.
Songwriters Daniel Ash and David J are ingenious at coming up with evil
hooks and simple,infectious grooves,as the roster of hits they played proved.
They are not inventive musicians,profound songwriters,or original showmen,
however.

The Pixies, a four-piece from Boston who are college radio darlings,were not
able to re-create the dynamics of their records on stage.Their material is
smartly crafted and,simply dressed in jeans and T-shirts,they did not seem
as affected as the pretentious Love and Rockets.Their records,including this
year's Elektra debut, "Doolittle," rely on a sarcastic ease with rock's
gimmicks and on singer/songwriter Black Francis' arch delivery.At the
stadium,the material lost its ironic perspective,and they sounded simply
like skilled primitivists.

Call it a Woodstock for the alienated.More than 49,000 fans turned out here
on Aug. 20 to prove that alternative music lovers,despite their fashionably
jaded demeanor,can muster as much enthusiasm for a stadium show as their
elders reserve for the likes of Bruce Springsteen.

Like a similar stadium concert staged by Depeche Mode last year in Los
Angeles,the large turnout here demonstrated that alternative music's appeal
is a lot stronger than many believe.And much to the potential delight of
advertisers,the young fans of the genre can't quite hide their affluent
suburban roots beneath those black clothes and spiky haircuts.

The show,heavily promoted through Long Island,N.Y.,alternative radio outlet
WDRE,opened with 4AD/Elektra's Pixies,who offered hints of melody in a
musical pastiche reminiscent of the mix the Beatles used to bury Paul.Love
& Rockets suffered a bit from its midshow placement on this hot and muggy
afternoon.But the crowd stirred for the ex-Bauhaus boys' "No New Tale To
Tell" and current RCA hit "So Alive."

As the skies darkened,the Cure emerged with one of the outdoor season's
most spectacular special effects packages--a living-color display that
enveloped the band in a swirl of smoke and laser lights.

Although screened by the special effects most of the evening,Robert Smith
and company had the tiers literally shaking with the heavy dance beat of
"Disintegration," their latest Elektra album.

Opening with "Plainsong," the Cure's generally angst-ridden oeuvre gave way
to a more joyous dance party on such cuts as "Lovesong" and "The Walk." The
controversial "Killing An Arab" ended the show,a final shower of purple
smoke putting the cherry on the cake.

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