Last saturday The Cure played their first concert on their European
tour. After canceling on concert (Strasbourg) and postponing another
one (Munich), Rotterdam was the first. The official reason for
postponing Munich was that "The Cure was busy on their successfull
Amarican tour, and needed more time to redesign the stage for their
European tour", according to Sascha Rueger, who I met, together with
Karsten Discheck. Well, there was indeed a new stage. I've seen them
in London on June 1st and there they had this broken rollercoaster
in the back, and this "tubes" coming out of the ceiling (everyone
who've seen them, know what I mean). This time the stage was much
simpler. Just a decorated ceiling with lights, and a white screen in
the back, used for projections. They used a curtain to cover the
white screen during the older songs. So every time the curtain
closed, they were going to play a non-WMS song. 

They're not as popular as they used to be. I think that's the reason
why they cancel shows, move to smaller venues, redesigned the stage.
In Rotterdam they played only once and it wasn't even sold out. In
this venue, there's the floor and two rings with seats. The second
ring was closed and I've never seen that before. I guess there were
about 7.000 people in a venue of 10.000. They used to play two times
this venue since the kissing tour, both sold out.

But I don't care. With no singles in the charts, only the die-hard
visit concerts and that's fine with me. Not to many 15 year old girls
complaining that they can't see Robert, screaming if they hear FIIL
and not knowing any song besides the singles, not to mention a song 
like forever. 

The concert itself was really great. The played for 3 hours. They
played a great set and the audience and the band were getting more
enthousiastic with every song. The setlist has been published
already (thanks Michael and Andreas), so I won't do that again,
apart from the fact that I didn't write it down. Unfortunately they
didn't play a single faith/pornography song. But that was the only
dissapointment. I was hoping for "forever" after "killing an arab",
but they left stage. I knew they would come back, and they did and
started "a forest". Close to the end of this song Robert played the
first notes of "forever" and I thought I was going wild. It was
more than 12 years ago that I heard this song live. That was on my
best Cure concert ever. This one is coming close. One of the best
concerts I've seen. 

That's it. Hi to Sascha and Karsten. See you again.