The Cure - Galore The Singles 1987 - 1997

For statistics: 'Galore' is already the second singles-compilation of the English wave-heroes and includes 17 singles from 87 - 97 and one new songs. The new track is called 'Wrong number', and it seems to be an intelligent lead towards the techno-age - with sequencers, sharp guitars and apocalyptic loops. But the characteristical voice of Robert Smith and the playful keyboards are unmistakable. The Cure will always be The Cure. At least up to 1999, the date of their departure, that should be forever. If you take a look at the commercial failure of the three singles of 'Wild mood swings', it is understandable. And you don't write songs like 'Why can't I be you', 'Catch', 'Lullaby' or 'High' everyday. 'Galore' varies between all moods and styles. It is a strange kaleidoscope, that affords an insight into the psyche of a one-man band, which invents again and again. Not that much one-dimensional like 'Standing on a beach', it clearly shows, The Cure are at all one thing: a superb pop band.

On the radio station WHFS in DC they played the four most requested Cure songs and they are-

Music: Alternative band will leave the pop singles at home, says singer Robert Smith.

What: WHFS 1997 Miss Holiday Nutcracker, featuring the Cure, the Verve, Sugar Ray, Everclear, Save Ferris and Days of the New

When: Sunday, Nov. 30, 6 p.m. (Doors open at 5: 30 p.m.)

Where: Patriot Centre at George Mason University Tickets: $27 Call: 410-481-7328 for tickets, 703-993-3000 for information

Sundial: To hear excerpts from the Cure's new release, "Galore," call Sundial at 410-783-1800 and enter the four-digit code 6175. For other local Sundial numbers, see the directory on Page 2A.

By J.D. Considine SUN POP MUSIC CRITIC

Like many people at this time of year, Robert Smith of the Cure is beginning to worry that he may not achieve one of the goals he'd set for himself: to perform 200 songs by Christmas.

"We've actually played over 150 songs in the last 12 months," he says, over the phone from a London studio where he and the band are rehearsing for a nine-date U.S. tour. "We're gradually working our way through the entire back catalog. Hopefully, we will have gotten through close to 170 by the time we finish these American dates."

That the Cure would even have 200 songs to play is, in itself, fairly amazing. Given the relatively ephemeral nature of alterna-rock acts -- few of which manage to endure beyond a half-dozen albums -- the Cure's 20-year, 17-album career is almost miraculous.

So it shouldn't seem surprising that despite being 30 songs short of his stated goal, Smith still has hope. "I think we're going to do a couple of London shows," he says. "We might try and throw in some very old ones then."

Smith's obsession with back catalogmakes a certain amount of sense, given that the Cure's current album is a greatest-hits collection called "Galore." The band's second such anthology (the first was the 1986 release "Standing on the Beach"), it boasts all the band's best-known singles, including "Love Song," "Mint Car" and "Friday I'm in Love."

But don't expect to hear any of them on the band's current tour. "For this tour, it's the more obscure, heavy stuff that we've been rehearsing," he says. "Normally when we come to America, we're touring behind an album, and there's always a whole set of new songs. By the time we fit in the crowd-pleasers, it doesn't leave much space left to experiment.

"So we thought that we'd just play songs that we'd always wanted to play over the last 10 or 15 years but never found space in the set for."

Although Smith is hesitant to give away too much about the set list, he mentions such dark-night-of-the-soul epics as "The Holy Hour," "Shake Dog Shake" and "One Hundred Years" -- songs dating back a dozen or more years -- as being among the titles the band is preparing.

Smith admits it's a tad perverse to build a show around such obscurities. "Ostensibly, we're still promoting `Galore,' " he says, and laughs softly. But having done a handful of hits-oriented shows earlier this fall, Smith feels that he's done his share of playing hit machine.

"We did a few shows a few weeks ago where we concentrated exclusively on singles," he explains. "We based it around most of `Galore' and some songs from `Standing On the Beach.' It was very upbeat. I was kind of feeling like I used to feel when I was 17.

"I mean, I do enjoy playing the singles," he adds. "But it was pretty weird just playing singles. It was a bit like the human jukebox, you know? The Cure as karaoke machine."

Normally, of course, the Cure doesn't have to choose between pop hits and obscure fan favorites; it plays for several hours, and draws from both sides of the catalog. Last year's tour, behind the album "Wild Mood Swings," saw the band playing 30 or more songs each night. "And we rehearsed over a hundred," says Smith. "It was dead good."

But because this current tour consists of radio station festival concerts, like tomorrow's WHFS 1997 Miss Holiday Nutcracker show in Fairfax, Va., the band is being restricted to a mere 90 minutes. Sometimes even less. "We did shows recently where we only had an hour," he says. "It was incredibly frustrating, because we'd just get going, and then have to stop."

Hence the decision to focus entirely on one type of music. "By the time you've done three seven-minutes songs, you realize that you've gone a quarter of the way through the set," says Smith. "It's very weird."

However, even as he looks forward to playing these older, darker songs -- "As a singer, it's much more gratifying doing those longer, more emotional songs, than the jumping-around-the-stage stuff," he says -- he worries a bit about doing a show that plays into the notion that the Cure is a goth band, a bunch of Gloomy Gusses who do nothing but wear dark clothes, play drony music and mope.

"It's always struck me as very strange that people try to paint us into this dark corner," says Smith. "The British press, in particular, have always tried to make us into a goth band."

In fact, one wag in the press went so far as to dub Smith the Pope of Mope, a tag he finds frankly ludicrous.

"I don't mope about all the time," he says. "I mope very infrequently, in fact."

Still, he tries not to take it to heart. After all, the press appear to be in the minority on this point. "The general public don't know us as a goth band," Smith proudly points out. "They just think I look a bit weird. But we do pop songs."

Just not on this tour, is all.

Robert Smith gets happy

After 18 years, the Cure's leader discovers fun

By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff, 11/28/97

Robert Smith spends the beginning or end of almost every Cure tour fretting and moaning that this is it. Over. Finis. History. Thanks for the memories.

End-of-the-Cure fatalism is a long, rich tradition, and the 38-year-old band leader is given to making his musings public.

Not at the end of last year's tour, however. ''First time I didn't think that,'' says Smith, with a laugh at his own expense. Smith is the black-clad, ruby-red-lipped guy at the core of the 18-year-old Cure, its singer-songwriter-guitarist, its Face. The man whose band, along with Joy Division, helped guide early English post-punk music toward atmospheric mood pieces, toward a fertile ground of despair and futility. Last year, he found himself having, well, fun.

''Last year's tour of America was the most fun I've ever had on a tour,'' says Smith. ''I don't think we could do it again, 'cause it was very cavalier, a this-is-it sort of attitude.'' Maybe they couldn't do it quite that way again, but at least the unit is in working order. The band - bassist Simon Gallup, keyboardist Roger O'Donnell, guitarist Perry Bamonte, and new drummer Jason Cooper - is more than halfway through making an as-yet-untitled new album. They hope to complete it in February and get it out by June. Following the World Cup championship (June 1-July 12) - Smith's a rabid soccer fan and the English are favorites - they'll begin a major tour.

As it is, the Cure, which just played club dates in New York and Los Angeles, is winding up a week of rehearsals in its London studio, readying for a quick return to the States for nine radio station-sponsored Christmas events including WBCN-FM's ''Xmas Rave'' Tuesday. It headlines a sold-out Orpheum show with Tanya Donelly and Tara MacLean.

Smith likes these multiple band events. ''People in bands come up and are very nice to us,'' he says. ''If you turn up and watch other bands, there is a real sense of community. There's no kind of competition. You always want to be the best band, but you're really pleased if other bands are playing really well because it means the audience is up and everyone's having a good evening.''

The album the band is supporting, ''Galore,'' is another compilation, the group's third ''singles'' collection. How do you support a hits package? In New York and Los Angeles, the Cure played the hits, 12 from ''Galore,'' eight from the previous best-of, 1986's ''Standing on a Beach.'' ''I think it was a concept concert,'' says Smith, of this give-the-people-what-they-want gambit. In town Tuesday, Smith hints at something darker, and, typically, somewhat perverse. ''The set we've put together is the heaviest set we've ever played in America. It's wall-to-wall guitars and noise, including three or four old songs we've never played in America before, `Shake Dog Shake' and `100 Years.' It's a chance for us to go out and play our old stuff without worrying what people think, or whether it will sell records. It's just something to enjoy.''

Enjoy. Ponder that little word for a moment. Do you find it odd when used in the context of a man who wrote a song called ''Fun eral Party'' and began another with ''It doesn't matter if we all die?'' The proto-Goth Cure has always appealed to, as Details so eloquently put it, ''those picked last for basketball. The Beatles meet Sylvia Plath.''

Smith had a chance to look back at what he's created and his public image when he viewed Mike Leigh's film ''Career Girls,'' released last summer. It's about two women who reunite six years after college and still deeply connect with the Cure, and each other, through the Cure. Six Cure songs are featured.

In the film, says Smith, he's seen as ''this iconic figure who doesn't change. There's a part of the film when they see a poster [promoting the song] `The 13th' and one of them says, `Is he still doing that?''' (''That'' would be the jet black, fright-wig hairstyle, the lipstick and eyeliner. An effeminate, bruised look on a guy built like a linebacker.)

''Like I'm an unchanging man in a changing world,'' Smith muses about the movie. ''It was very weird, because it was wrapped up in what I represented at the time, which was a kind of disaffected youth, and I was perceived as being the same now. It's weird, because I know I'm not. I realize it's there, but to see it up there on the screen, to have it driven home like that. I've never really felt like that, even when I was 17 or 27.''

But Smith understands the process, the identification. ''People empathize with you as a singer and you can communicate certain emotions,'' he says. ''People think I'm singing to them and they think I feel that way too.'' Sometimes he does, maybe, but not all of what Smith pens should be heard as the absolute truth. He claims poetic license - ''I tend to embellish.'' He likes to party; he likes his pints.

Still, Smith admits, as a fan, he's fallen into the same trap as many of his fans do. Recently, too. He met David Bowie and sang ''Quicksand'' with him at Madison Square Garden in January for the Bowie tribute show. Meeting Bowie offstage, Smith says, ''changed my impression of what he was like as a person. I still had an idea of what I wanted him to be like, but I found him to be different and probably not how I imagined him to be. I thought he'd be very cold, aloof, distant, and clever. But he's very genuine.''

Actually, Smith has done a pretty good job of countering the mope image by crafting upbeat songs like ''Friday I'm in Love,'' ''Hot! Hot! Hot!, and ''Just Like Heaven.'' ''Galore'' emphasizes this side of the Cure. ''Sometimes, I've got no control over it,'' Smith says, of his creative muse and the contrasts contained within his music. ''Sometimes I would prefer it to be heavier. ... But I've never done anything with the group that I don't want to do at that time. So, if we want to do a song like `Friday ...' we just do it and don't worry about the consequences to our future career or credibility.''

The Cure recorded one new song, ''Wrong Number,'' for ''Galore,'' and it features Boston-based guitarist and Bowie gunslinger Reeves Gabrels. They met at the Bowie tribute, quaffed beers, hit it off, and Gabrels joined the Cure in London during a tour break to lay down this track and two others likely to appear on the upcoming album. ''Wrong Number'' has a hard edge and a techno beat, ''a marriage of rock and dance'' says Smith. ''It's something to do with the makeup of the group as it is at the moment, particularly with Jason on drums. He's still in his 20s and doesn't have the hangups [of some older drummers]. A different generation feels kind of threatened by machinery.''

The Cure, observes Smith, is the kind of band that wanders in and out of the mainstream's gaze. ''I think that we've sort of bridged a gap,'' he says. ''We've been outside; we've been very commercial, whatever that means. I like the idea of moving between. More often than not, we're way outside, which has an upside and a downside. It allows us not to worry about being fashionable, being in, being hip because we very rarely are. The downside part of it is that whenever we do tap into something that is contemporary we get critics who think, `Oh, they're trying to get into the techno-rock hybrid, ' quite conveniently forgetting the stuff on the ''Mixed Up'' album, which is in the same vein, and all the remixes we've been doing back to 1982. I mean there was only us, New Order, and Depeche Mode as rock-pop bands remixed by really good club DJs.''

The Cure's upcoming album will be its last for the labels it is currently signed to worldwide (Elektra in the United States). As the Cure remains a hot commodity, Smith expects that its current labels will be going all out to impress the band and make this disc a hit. ''Normally,'' he says, laughing, ''we just sort of chuck it out there and hope for the best. I think they're going to try hard and impress us.''

Will the Cure be impressing their fans? Some of them. But they may not thoroughly captivate the slice of fandom that's buying ''Galore.'' Smith is viewing the upcoming album almost like ''my invented trilogy, to follow up from [1989's] `Disintegration,''' which was a semi-continuation of the dense, dark sound of 1982's ''Pornography.'' ''The writing is heavier than what I've been writing over the past five years,'' Smith says. ''Not gloomier. Just a bit more powerful. Just taking fewer prisoners.'' Just another chapter in the Cure's book of wild mood swings.

This story ran on page C16 of the Boston Globe on 11/28/97.

It's back to '87 for The Cure on new `Galore'

by Sara Sherr For the Daily News

The cover of The Cure's new singles collection, "Galore" says it all. An antsy little tyke is sitting on the beach (a play on the name of the group's first singles collection, "Standing on a Beach," perhaps).

He's holding an ice cream cone and staring into the sun, as if the vanilla smeared on his face is all too much -- or maybe he just needs his diaper changed.

Goth kewpie doll Robert Smith and company have been writing miserable songs about wonderful things -- and vice versa -- for new generations of alienated college freshman since their Buzzcocks-y beginnings in the late '70s.

This batch of breakthrough material -- not the stuff of "Standing On a Beach" -- covers their career from the 1987 dorm-room classic "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me" to their techno-ish new single, "Wrong Number."

So if you've traded in all the spotty stuff in between, this is worth having just for the highlights.

Although Cure fans and Marilyn Manson fans share the same wardrobe, "Galore's" music is more pleasant to listen to, even with the smarmy horns of "Why Can't I Be You" and "Hot Hot Hot!!!"

The Cure are better when they're funky by accident, like the labyrinth of sound on "Fascination Street" or the creepy-crawly "Lullaby."

"Just Like Heaven" is easily one of the best singles of the '80s, especially when Smith gets all giddy over someone who promises to run away with him if he does that trick that makes her scream. For a moment, you nearly lose yourself too.

The Cure with Sneaker Pimps and Love Spit Love appear at 8 tonight at Upper Darby's Tower Theater, 69th and Ludlow streets. But the show is sold out.

Galore

Top 200 Albums chart : drops 28 spots to #96 (4th week)

Galore Video Collection

Top Music Videos chart : drops 6 spots to #12 (2nd week)

Wrong Number

Modern Rock Tracks chart: drops 1 spot to #11 (8th week)

Rock Big Picture chart: up 2 spots to #12 (8th week)

Hot 100 Airplay chart : drops 3 spots to #69 (7th week)

AIRWAVES - With Hits "Galore" And New Set Planned, The "Never Fashionable" Cure Endures

BYLINE BY CHUCK TAYLOR

NEVER ENOUGH: For someone whose stock and trade image embodies darkness and gloom, the Cure founder/lead singer Robert Smith is finding life just like heaven amid a just-released greatest-hits perspective, the band"s first U.S. club dates in a decade, and a new studio album due in 1998.

Add to that the fact that the group is celebrating its 20th year after selling some 24 million albums since its first single, "Killing An Arab," charted in 1979. Since that time, in fact, the Cure has become the virtual sole survivor among its class of alternative pioneers born out of the early 1980s.

Smith attributes the Cure"s endurance to the fact that the group has never been deemed a trendy rock icon. "We have never been a fashionable band," he says. "Perhaps there have been times in different countries where we have been more in than out, but we"ve never relied on that. I think that has helped with the longevity--people judge what we do with the music."

The other factor: "I still enjoy the music, and I still want to do it."

The band"s 18-track retrospective, "Galore," released Oct. 28 on Fiction/Elektra, covers what are arguably the band"s most salient years, from 1987 to now, and includes modern rock staples like "Friday I"m In Love," "Fascination Street," "Pictures Of You," and "Why Can"t I Be You?" It picks up where the Cure"s 1986 platinum "Standing On A Beach--The Singles" (covering tracks from 1979 to 1986) left off.

The new album, which debuted at No. 32 on The Billboard 200 in the Nov. 15 issue, includes one new song, "Wrong Number," which peaked at No. 8 on last issue"s Modern Rock Tracks.

The cut was recorded in the summer during sessions for the Cure"s next project, which Smith hopes will hit the streets by late spring or early summer 1998. In its original form, the midtempo "Wrong Number" included horns and female backing singers. Says Smith, however, "There was a different song lurking in there."

After its demo version was recorded with the band--whose current lineup, with Smith, consists of longtime bassist Simon Gallup, guitarist Perry Bamonte, keyboardist Roger O'Donnell, and Jason Cooper on drums--it was presented to Smith"s co-producers Mark Plati and longtime contributor Mark Saunders, who sped up the song 10 beats per minute. Then, additional guitar licks were added by ex-Tin Machine member and David Bowie collaborator Reeves Gabrels.

When Smith took the reworked track back to the band, "I played it for them, and they said, "Oh, that"s it, that"s the single (for "Galore")," " he says.

Lyrically, "Wrong Number" was based on a couple of phone calls Smith had back-to-back with friends, during which he would say one thing and the other parties either weren"t listening with an open mind or drew far-out conclusions. "I took these two completely unrelated conversations and put them together," he says, illustrating that "things can get to a point where you can have huge arguments with people, look back on it, and realize that you were arguing for the same thing. It happens to the best people at times."

Still, Smith stresses that the track is more about rhythm and instrumentation than the message. "I was much more concerned with the beat and the whole vibe of the song. That was more important than the individual words. With this one, I sort of returned to a kind of songwriting I had done in the early days: a jumbled incoherence. I wasn"t quite sure what I wanted to say. There was just more of an essence."

The process of songwriting over the past 20 years, Smith says, has evolved dramatically, actually becoming an increasingly challenging task for him. "When I first started, with the first few singles, I wanted to be the Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello. I was writing very upbeat, three-minute pop stuff," he says. "But within a few years, my life took a downturn, and I felt pretty miserable. There was that struggle with who you are, what you are doing, those things. That"s what I wrote about.

"But as you grow older and supposedly wiser, you"re supposed to know answers to questions you posed earlier in life. I suspect most people don"t," Smith adds. "Now, my standards have gone up. My subjects have become broader. I don"t need a mini-breakdown to write a song. As I"ve gotten older, I"ve become interested in more things, and my horizons have broadened. The palette has more color in it."

Overall, Smith thinks this second singles collection is stronger and has had more impact than "Standing On A Beach," adding that 70% of the tracks figure into the Cure"s live performances now. Even so, he says, it"s tough for him to break the group"s work into such "easy slices. I think the band had a period from "86 to "92 where we remained pretty consistent. For me, it"s been different since then.

"There are certain things musically that we often come back to, emblems and musical motifs that just attract me. There"s one particular early-"80s sound and a late-"80s sound, based on the kinds of instruments, but if you look at the whole body of work, it"s impossible to say there"s a definitive Cure sound--except for my voice."

As to being influenced by what"s fueling modern rock radio now: "I mostly disregard what is supposed to be contemporary; it"s not of great concern to me," he says. "The music that I listen to--dance and classical stations--isn"t necessarily what I write."

The band, meanwhile, has endured numerous personnel changes through the years. However, Smith says that the current lineup is the best in years. "For the first time, with the particular band we have assembled at the moment, there"s a kind of coherence that really brings the sound together," he says. "I think there have been times in the past where the individuals" own diversities have made that difficult."

So far, Smith has written six tracks for the upcoming project, which the group recorded during three weeks this past summer. He says that fans can expect to recognize the band"s signature calling cards, though, as with "Wrong Number," the new songs are being produced with more of a dance lean than some of its recent efforts. Again, Smith hopes to have Gabrels contribute guitar to several songs.

In the meantime, the Cure will busy itself through December playing nearly a dozen radio-station holiday shows in major markets. "I expect it to be the heaviest, darkest set we"ve ever played," Smith says with an air of delight. "We want to do something that people will meet with a bit of emotional impact. We plan to throw in three or four songs this band has never played before--things I haven"t sung in 10 years."

Already, the Cure introduced "Galore" with two full-length, sold-out shows in October in Hollywood, Calif., and New York--its first U.S. club sets in a decade. The New York gig on Halloween was cybercast on the Internet and broadcast live on more than 60 radio stations nationwide. Both were primarily filled with songs from the collection. Reviews gushed about the band"s tenacity and persistently tight live skills, and Smith"s increasingly personable, energetic onstage demeanor.

"There was an upbeat vibe at those shows," he acknowledges. "It was good fun, just us onstage with our crowd."

That crowd today consists of many of the thirtysomethings that have held hands with the band since the "80s, as well as an influx of fresh-faced fans of the latest thing. "One reason we"ve been commercially successful over the years is that we"ve been able to hold on to that smattering of older people lined up against the wall avoiding the chance of physical harm," Smith says with a laugh.

In either case, young or old, Smith says that proponents of the band will likely remain attentive because, over the past 20 years, the Cure has not attempted to reinvent its mission.

"I would hate it if we matured into a middle-of-the-road rock act. That doesn"t appeal to me," he says. "I feel the same as I did 10 years ago. I"m still doing it for the same reasons--that"s to make something. We"ve been fortunate that a number of people have enjoyed what we"ve done through the years."

Subj: THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO STILL CATCH THE HFSMAS HOLIDAY NUTCRACKER

Date: 97-11-27 00:19:17 EST

EXCLUSIVE INFO FOR HFS BACKSTAGE MEMBERS -

HFS HAS JUST RELEASED 140 TICKETS FOR SUNDAY'S HFSMAS HOLIDAY NUTCRACKER AT THE PATRIOT CENTER, THIS INFORMATION IS NOT BEING ANNOUNCED ON THE RADIO.

TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE NOW THRU TICKETMASTER! GOOD LUCK!

ANNOUNCEMENT:

'Tis The Season To Play Radio Station-Sponsored Concerts

Powerhouse lineups with The Verve, 311 and Green Day make rounds of holiday shows.

Addicted To Noise Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports : Picture yourself on a typical day in L.A. Smog is in the air, and cars are clogging up the freeway. As you sit though another traffic jam flipping the radio dial, you hear an announcement about upcoming ticket sales.

You can't believe your ears.

"Coming to the Universal! A stellar one-night lineup! Jane's Addiction! Chumbawamba! The Verve! Smash Mouth! Sarah McLachlan! Sneaker Pimps! Fiona Apple! Jamiroquai and Matchbox 20!"

Wow, you think, they're announcing Lollapalooza awfully early this year. And then you remember that it's not even December.

That lineup is actually the slate of performers for KROQ-FM's eighth annual "Almost Acoustic Christmas" concert -- and that bill is only the first night, to be held on Dec. 5 this year. The following evening boasts an equally impressive lineup of David Bowie, Everclear, Green Day, Portishead, Third Eye Blind, Save Ferris, Live, Sugar Ray, 311 and the Aquabats.

While the "Almost Acoustic Christmas" counts itself as the first alt-rock radio winter festival concert, almost a decade after its inception it is by no means the only show of its kind. In fact, almost every major media market with a modern rock station hosts a similar concert, many of which are charity benefits and correspond to comparable summer events such as KROQ's "Weenie Roast" and Washington, D.C.'s "HFStival."

Mary Kay LeMay, marketing and promotions director for WHFS-FM in Washington, said the popularity of the winter and summer concerts has spawned a seasonal route for bands that want to travel from radio event to radio event. "For some bands there is a circuit, but [the radio station concerts] are all different as well," said LeMay, who organizes her station's "Holiday Nutcracker." "There isn't just one tour that goes from radio station to radio station. Each individual station does their own."

A glance at the list of this season's shows reveals that several bands are hitting the circuit. Everclear, for example, have established an itinerary that includes radio station festivals in D.C., L.A. and Boston, while Save Ferris hit D.C., L.A. and Philly. Meanwhile, the Cure stop in D.C., Boston and Philly.

LeMay said that WHFS consulted with other CBS-owned stations such as KROQ and Boston's WBCN-FM to ensure that the stations did not schedule conflicting events that would prevent bands from hitting a holiday shows in a number of cities.

Some markets have found such great success with the concerts that they are scheduling tandem events with specialty themes. This year, San Francisco's Live 105 (KITS-FM) will sponsor the "Electronica Hanukkah" (with DJ Shadow, Crystal Method, Sneaker Pimps and others) in addition to their standard "Green Christmas." In Washington, ska pioneers the Specials and Save Ferris will appear at WHFS' first "Skanukkah."

KROQ music director Lisa Worden attributes the success of her station's events in part to their ability to draw big-name artists. "People look to KROQ to supply them with something like that," Worden said. "I don't know if they would get a show like that without us. And you get all this for a really low ticket price, too. It's not like you're paying 60 bucks like you do to see the Stones."

But as shows such as the "Nutcracker" and "Acoustic Christmas" have become increasingly popular with listeners, they've become increasingly controversial within the concert industry.

"It creates an unrealistic public perception of what the market value of these artists really is," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the trade magazine Pollstar, which covers the concert business. "If you can go to a show and see six or seven pretty well-known acts at a bargain ticket price, it makes it more difficult for the concert promoter who's trying to sell your normal two or three act show at what would be your normal ticket price."

Radio stations incur relatively small costs to stage the seasonal festivals, since their own operations offer a built-in advertising outlet and since record companies often encourage bands to perform at reduced rates (or for no fee at all) to generate increased airtime -- none of which sits well with concert promoters, who want to bring the same artists back for standard length, standard cost performances.

"From a concert promoter's perspective, when an artist plays one of these radio shows, it eliminates the possibility of them coming, at least in the near term, and playing a full show," Bongiovanni said.

But Jim McGuinn, program director for WPLY-FM in Philadelphia, countered that the holiday festivals have the potential to help local promoters down the road. "My hope is that by the Cure doing a 3,000-seater and it selling out so fast, it puts the demand back in their career," said McGuinn, whose station is hosting its third annual "Y100 Feastival" beginning this week. "So when they do come around for a proper full show a year from now, people remember it as, 'Remember that incredible show that sold out so quick we couldn't get tickets? We've gotta go see 'em this time.' "

Some bands are finding the concerts as irresistible as their fans. WBCN program director Oedipus said that he had to turn away some acts for this year's "Xmas Rave," which features 29 bands in 10 venues across the city.

"I find it a win-win for the bands, the listeners and the radio station," he said. "The way we do it, bands get an enormous amount of exposure, airplay and attention for a long period of time. The fans get to see these fabulous bands. The record labels, they win because they get the airplay and they can do special retail programs. And the radio station wins because of their association with the bands."

And whatever mutual back-scratching is going on between the bands and the radio stations, don't forget that most of the shows benefit organizations such as the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank, which will receive all of the proceeds from the "Y100 Feastival." In addition to raising funds for the anti-hunger group, the radio station is asking all concert-goers to bring canned goods for donation at the "Feastival" events.

This year WBCN's "Xmas Rave" will raise funds for the National Tay Sachs and Allied Diseases Association, the Sunshine Foundation and the Boston Living Center, said Chachi Loprete, WBCN's promotions director.

"Last year we raised $15,000 for each of the three charities involved," Loprete said

THE MAN FROM UNCLE by Bob Gordon

The X-Press Interview - Robert Smith, The Cure.

(From X-Press Magazine, Western Australia, issue #562. 20 Nov 1997)

"I have no idea really about singles in general, it seems strange as we've released a singles compilation. I know when I've written a single but I have never sat down and _written_ a single."

Haphazard as Robert Smith may sound down the line from London at 2:30am, The Cure's new Release 'Galore', a singles collection spanning the years 1987-97, seems to prove that when it comes to the singles caper, he does indeed seem to know what he's doing.

Despite the differing perception of The Cure as being at turns, gloomy, whimsical and alternative the band has long attracted and sustained stadium sized success, while holding onto the left-of-centre fanbase from which the group drew it's initial appeal almost 20 years ago. But please don't call them Goths.

The band's first singles instalment, 1986's 'Standing On A Beach' holds pride of place in many and varied CD collections, such is the crossover power of that strange phenomenon known as The Cure. 'Galore' splendidly follows suit.

Diehard fans may be pleased to learn that a b-sides compilation is a strong limited edition possibility for next year. Others will be happier to know that Smith's priorities lie with the band's next album of new material, due in mid 1998. A taste of "new" Cure is found on "Galore" with "Wrong Number", a track featuring David Bowie's guitarist, Reeves Gabrel. A gushing Smith rates it as one of his favourites three Cure singles from the last 10 years.

This week's X-Press interview with the 38 year old Robert Smith took place after he all-too-aptly called the wrong number. A more down to earth enigma you'd be hard pressed to find.

-X-Press: If you compare 'Galore' to the previous singles collection, 1986's 'Standing On A Beach', in what ways is it different and how do you think it depicts the changes in you?

-RS: Crumbs. I think it's better, for whatever reason that's worth (laughs). it's difficult to say, 'cause I never really know quite what I mean when I'm comparing one piece of music to another. It's more accomplished... I think there's certainly more depth to it that the first one, there's just a more noticeable change. It's more varied with 'Galore', I can recognise who I was whereas I remember putting together 'Standing On A Beach' and really wondering what on earth was going when I was listening to some of the earlier stuff.

-XP: A common perception about The Cure is that the earlier years were gloomier and the later years have been happier, or at least more upbeat. Is that necessarily true, or is it just a different kind of gloom?

-RS: Or a different kind of happiness? I think it's simplistic and not true at all actually. When we started out I liked as much and as varied music as I do now. I liked Hendrix and I liked the Buzzcocks and somewhere between the two I wanted us to fall, but we did 'Boys Don't Cry' as an early single and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train'. Essentially I wanted us to be a pop group then I changed and wanted us to do something a bit heavier and through the years I've kind of fluctuated in that manner. It's reflected how I've felt for a particular period, sometimes only for a matter of weeks when I'm writing songs, the rest of the year I write nothing.

It's always very unfair, I think, to kind of sum up how the group's reflected how I've been and what the group's done in terms of "happy" or "sad". It's much too simplistic. Like 'Galore', our latest release, I mean how do you place that? Where does it fall? There's an awful lot of stuff that fits uncomfortably in between those two extremes. In fact, for me, most of them fit in between those two extremes.

-XP: On 'Standing On A Beach' there was an old man on the cover and on 'Galore' there's a baby. Is that significant?

-RS: Well, it was either that or a mound of sand with a cross in it (laughs). We thought the baby would be a lot more cheerful. It was just a slight twist. I wanted the same beach and unfortunately the bloke that was on the original cover's dead now so he couldn't have made an appearance. I wanted it to have the quality of certain photographs I've got of myself at a very young age sitting on the beach. That technicolour thing, how all children see the world, very bright colours. Just something that's very attractive and carefree, but also at the same time very greedy and almost overbearing, which is how I think the album is.

-XP: With all the songs lined up together do some speak to you or take you some place else more than others?

-RS: For different reasons. One that immediately springs to mind is 'Just Like Heaven': it meant a lot to the group and has done so for years. I think it's the one song that's been the constant in every set that we've played since 1987. It's one of my all time favourites and it just reminds me of a period in time that I felt the group was at last managing to do something that I felt we always could do. I kind of thought we'd started to really make good music.

In a very sort of stupid way I think 'Friday I'm In Love's a good song because it also reminds me of a deliriously happy day. For that same reason I really like 'Mint Car'. But most of the stuff I'm really proud of isn't in the singles collection because it's the more emotional stuff, the stuff which we've never released as singles.

-XP: The background to 'Pictures of You' is interesting, whereupon reading the essay, 'The Dark Power of Ritual Pictures' you threw out all your personal photos and videos. Do you recall the state of mind you were in to do something so drastic?

-RS: I'd forgotten about 'Pictures Of You' ... the whole 'Disintegration' album in 1989 and the tour that followed was probably the most difficult year I've had, certainly in the last 10 years. For a variety of reasons: there were a few people that were close to me that died; I turned 30 and I got very wrapped up in, I don't now, the wrong kind of things.

-XP: So 'Pictures Of You' arose from that incident?

-RS: Yeah and I regret it. I destroyed most of my past in that year. I turned 30 as I said and I just wanted to sever a lot of ties and a lot of people and things that I'd grown too dependant on.

Looking back it was a bit of a mistake. Some things I was right to do, but it was a bit drastic really. I burnt all the cine-films of me when I was young and stuff like that which was a bit stupid really (laughs).

I just should have put in a big box and locked it away for 20 years and gone back to it when I was in a better state of mind. But if I'd done that I would obsessively thought about the big box. I just had to kind of get rid of things.

-XP: How much do you owe to the mysterious, scary Uncle Robert, cited as the inspiration behind 'Lullaby' and other songs?

-RS: Not all that much unfortunately, he's no longer with us. He was alright. We didn't see him that much, we didn't live in the same part of the country. I just remember his visits being quite frantic.

I think looking back and judging by family mythology, he certainly has some of the drinking genes I've inherited (laughs). I didn't realise it at the time, I think a lot of it was alcohol fuelling his antics. I just thought he was a very loud, funny, boisterous individual. Now I realise he was just pissed a lot of the time.

Which is not a bad thing. I suppose it some ways I equate it as a kind of particular smell which I realised later in life was the smell of warm beer and cigarettes. But it has good connotations for me, people laughing and having fun. But if he'd been staggering around beating me about the head I maybe wouldn't have enjoyed drinking so much (laughs).

-XP: I believe you're an uncle some 17 times over. You're not scaring the hell out of the kids are you?

-RS: No, I'm carrying on the great tradition of Uncle Robert actually (laughs), hoping they associate the smell with good fun as well. I'm trying to be 'the uncle' I suppose. I wished he'd hung around longer.

I like taking the kids out, looking after them on weekends and stuff... teaching them the wrong things in life.

-XP: 'The 13th' was written after you sung 'Copacabana' at a talent contest in a bar in Rio and lost. Obviously a tougher audience that your normal Cure show?

-RS: I was just up for it really and again, I'd had a couple of Pina Coladas too many. I honestly did no worse than anyone else that got up, apart from two - this brilliant guitarist and a really good woman who sang. But most of the people who got up were either completely out of it or just totally hopeless. Or a combination of both. The band knew 'Copacabana', I was hardly going to ask them to play 'A Forest' or something (laughs). As it was most of the crowd were pretty slack jawed, they weren't a Cure crowd. They weren't tough, they were just plain shocked I think (laughs).

The saddest thing was that I knew quite a lot of it. I kind of dredged it up from somewhere. It was frightening, I thought "I didn't even realise I knew this song" and was sort of lustfully singing along. It was almost like an out of body experience.

-XP: I believe that while writing for 'Wild Mood Swings' (1996) you felt you were struggling, lyrically to surpass 'Disintegration' or 'Wish' (1992). Does the body of work haunt you when you're trying to write new material?

-RS: I feel that I held the group back a lot with 'Wild Mood Swings' because I made everyone wait months and months while I'd get the words exactly as I wanted them to. It was for purely selfish reasons, but then I figured that if I had a different approach to how I was doing it I'd have different goals, so therefore I wouldn't worry so much about what the narrative was.

Like 'Wrong Number' is essentially meaningless in certain respects. It's about miscommunication, so it can afford to be meaningless because it doesn't actually say anything (laughs). That's my way out of it, but with some of the new stuff I'm worried less about the narrative structure. In the old days I used to worry about communicating a sense of something through words or phrases, whereas over the years I've developed a style of writing that's a lot more straight forward, much more obvious. So I'm going back to how I used to do things. It's easier, because it means I can throw more things in. Actually, in some ways, it means more to more people. I've got too specific over the last few albums.

-XP: Are you annoyed when people perceive The Cure solely as being you?

-RS: Um... I make a distinction in my own mind between the fact that the group wouldn't exist without me and the fact that it is a group. So it's never just been me, I've never been a solo artist. I can reconcile it, it doesn't bother me too much. People pick on me 'cause I'm the singer and I talk the most and I s'pose I write the words and I'm by far and away the best looking (laughs).

-XP: Have you ever felt that it was over?

-RS: Yes, quite a few times. Probably at the end of every big tour we've ever done I've thought 'that's it' and said as much. Then a few months later I'm back doing it again.

I think, very obviously, I'm nearer the end now that I was when I started, but as to how near I am I don't really know.

-XP: What of the concept of going solo? Is it a consideration or do you like the group mentality too much?

-RS: In the context of playing or being in a live environment I'd much prefer being a group so I always have been. I'd hate to play shows as a solo artist. I think it would be much too much bare. Not with things going wrong but the attention. Mentally I'd be very unprepared.

But certainly doing stuff outside of the group... what I really want to do is write a film score. I would probably do that on my own. I wouldn't feel the necessity to a have a group set up to do something like that. It's just that over the years it's been much more fun because The Cure is essentially based around a group of people who are friendly with each other. It's not based on virtuosity, it's based on attitude.

-XP: Your video director Tim Pope has said of the band that "The Cure are one of the stupidest bands you could ever work with yet they are also one of the brightest and most intelligent". Do you agree with his summation?

-RS: (Laughs) How does that work then, eh? God he comes out with them!

I know sort of what he means. I think there's a part of the group that's always been there which I take very seriously, there's certain aspects of the music that I think is important, to me anyway. There are other sides to what we do that I think are completely absurd and making videos is part of that process. That's the part that where we come into contact with Tim, so he does see a side of the group which is, in essence, foolish.

But he also understands the longevity we've had and that the kind of fanaticism that's developed around the group over the years from time to time can't be solely be based on this idiot persona I put forward in front of the camera, that there is more to it. He's also seen that side as well. But I don't know about one extreme or the other. I just think we're pretty... (pauses) somewhere in between, actually. Generally. Like fire and ice, lukewarm water. That kind of deal.

-XP: Do the Goth stags still annoy you? or are just putting up with them?

-RS: I never hear of them unless I'm doing interviews.

The bizarre thing is that the general public - whoever they are - know the group through the singles that are on 'Galore', from the past 10 years. People will come up and say "You're the group who did..." and in the past it might have been 'Boys Don't Cry' or 'Lovecats' or it could be 'Lullaby', 'Just Like Heaven' or 'Friday I'm In Love'.

It's always been the singles, or the videos. They don't come up and say "Oh you're the band who does the eight minute version of 'The Same Deep Water As You' (from Disintegration) on stage aren't you?" It's something that I'm honestly never aware of unless it's levelled at me in a question. It's never been true. People who are into the band realise there's more to it than the pop side of us. There is a kind of darker, more emotional side - certainly in concert and on record as well. But you have to be into the band to want to listen to that anyway and I don't think at that point you think "is this goth or not?" It's not something we ever worry about.

-XP: You've said that one of your traits is an overwhelming dissatisfaction in the face of achievement. At times like this do you allow yourself a little enjoyment out of this thing?

-RS: That's me at my worst saying things like that. I derive a huge amount of satisfaction of making something out of nothing. That's why I still do it. When I've written a good song I think it's good it gives me as much pleasure as anything else in life, because it didn't exist and now it does. It's what motivates me still, it's why I'm still doing this.

I think what I was getting at is that the sense of achievement, as in the accolades you get, or the fact that you've done something that other people like - which enhances it all and makes it more enjoyable - isn't really at the core of what I do.

What I do is for very selfish reasons. When other people get into it I enjoy it more, but it never justifies what I do. It never vindicates it.

"News from Seattle...the promoters of 107.7 The End's "Deck the Hall Ball," which has been sold out for the last few weeks, decided that they'll release 500 more tickets for the show tomorrow, Monday, 24th. They didn't say WHEN tomorrow they'll release them, but it will be tomorrow for sure. The tickets will be available through Ticketmaster as before."

From Q magazine, December 1997

GAMEBOY

Crawley existentialist and painted peacock Robert Smith has returned to muse on the significance of arcade games, greatest hits and love. Sarah Bailey gets to level one.

The news that you are to interview Robert Smith in an amusement arcade is accompanied by a vision of gothic terribleness: a bloody-lipped drama queen making a scene on the dodgems, the inevitable retinue of wan French teenagers taking the opportunity to chuck themselves under the wheels, panstick everywhere...

Then the taxi rolls up. A big, shy-looking bloke in apricot lipstick falls out and announces that as he went to bed at 6am, has a dog of a hangover and is about to make a tit of himself on a virtual jet ski for the sake of promoting the Cure's new compilation album, he needs a pint.

You breathe a sigh of relief. "As each year goes by, I get happier. It's weird. I thought I'd be incredibly depressed by this stage in life," he muses, between sips of beer. He's in love with his wife Mary. "Not in a Disney way, but in a comforting way. We've been together 20 years, longer than the group." He blushes into his beer glass. "God, I'm old-fashioned."

A rum and coke later, Smith is finally shoe-horned out of the pub and into the Pepsi Trocadero Funland at Piccadilly Circus. Smith is crap at all the games. "It wasn't until I got half way through that I realized it wasn't a racetrack, it was a two-way street. I used to be very sporty, hard to believe I know. I think when I retire in a couple of years I might take up sport again."

Retire? Sport? Oh yes, it seems for some years now Smith has been planning the Cure's millennial meltdown. Date: April 1999 to coincide with his 40th birthday. Hey, what the hell. As the current release, Galore - The Singles 1987-1997, only reminds us, he's been a cuddly pop gonk for nigh on twenty years now.

In the future he'd prefer to score music for films. "Something where I don't have to be so much of a personality and answer questions about which hair gel I use."

There will be two more albums. "I want to make a greatest hits album before I leave the label, so I don't have to fight about it afterwards."

So when did Mr. Happy last cry? "Three nights ago. I was looking through my telescope at the stars. I'd listened to the first two Thin Lizzy albums and I just started crying, but in a good way. It showed me that I still like the same things. In some ways I've changed dramatically and in some ways I've stayed exactly the same as when I was 15 - emotionally retarded."

"the nov 19-26 issue of the aquarian has an interview with robert, perry and roger form their hotel in NYc, the day before the halloween show. highlights: robert says they don't play All I want anymore cause he can't remember how to playt he guitar intro. He was asked what he says at the beginning oof Hot, Hot, Hot ("she may be the face you can't forget") and says it has no relation to the song, its from Charles Aznavour, a french cabaet singer, he says he'd probably been drinking wine and was halfway through singing the song when the soundman started the tape.

Perry talks about being invited to play the sisters of mercy shows (he didn't) and Roger says you can't knock goths cause their identifiable and they look great- when they arrive at shows he says "i'd rather see a bunch of goths outside than- never mind." Robert says they'd like to do something next year to make up for all the people who didn't get to see the club dates. roger says he finds american journalists "open and honest" (!) as opposed to the "closed minded bunch you meet specifically in England"

robert says Lets Go to Bed was a conscious attempt to destroy the "mr. gloom and doom image" a little babble about psychedelic drugs and doing "E" as a group but mainly sticking to alcohol. He says he'd much rather be in england finishing the new album but he's outvoted 4-1 cause the other members want to play the radio shows. he said he'd like to finish the somgs, remix them dance style and release a double cd of the regular songs, the dance mixes, and the band playing those same songs live."

* Single collection 'Galore' debuts at the SRP-chart at # 27.

* The single 'Wrong number' in it's first week is at # 88 in the 'best selling single' chart.

The Cure are in the December 11 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine (on the cover are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards). There is a nice picture of Robert from the recent LA concert. Here's what the little article says:

It was hits galore as the Cure played two club shows, in Los Angeles and New York, to promote their latest singles collection, Galore. At New York's Irving Plaza, the crowd of goth kids and over-the-hill frat boys rejoiced as the band opened with "Why Can't I Be You?," threw in the classics ("Let's Go To Bed," "A Forest", "Pictures Of You") and closed with a blow-the-roof-off-the-dump version of "Killing An Arab." "I enjoyed it more than any other concert in years," says singer Robert Smith. "I came fizzing with energy." Next up for the Cure will be a new studio album, a collection of B sides and their idea of Lollapalooza: "I'd like to tour with a bunch of bands we like," says Smith. Such as? "Dinosaur Jr... the Smashing Pumpkins would be great, but they are much too famous!" Billy?

Galore

Top 200 Albums chart : drops 23 spots to #68 (3rd week)

Galore Video Collection

Top Music Videos chart : debuts at #6

Wrong Number

Modern Rock Tracks chart: drops 2 spots to #10 with a bullet (7th week)

Rock Big Picture chart: drops 2 spots to #14 (7th week)

Hot 100 Airplay chart : holds at #66 with a bullet (6th week)

Metallica, Jewel, & The Cure Help Launch Warner Music Group Web Site

Warner Music Group debuted their new Web site -- a gateway to all the the Warner Music Group labels and their artists -- on Tuesday (Nov. 18) at www.ear1.com with a cyber listening party for Metallica's new Re-Load album at 10 p.m. (EST), 7 p.m. (PST).

The inaugural week of events also includes the cybercast of the Cure's Oct. 28 interview with KROQ's Kevin & Bean from the House of Blues in Los Angeles on Thursday (Nov. 20)

Also, from now through Dec. 16, users who join the site's Insider's Club (which, of course, is free) will be entered to win 1,000 CDs. The grand prize will be announced Dec. 23.

Concert Bookings Down From '96 But Still Strong At America West

(Amusement Business - November 17, 1997)

BYLINE BY James Zoltak

PHOENIX -- America West Arena will have staged as many as 27 concerts by year"s end, and although that doesn"t match the torrid pace set in 1996, President and General Manager Bob Machen is still pleased with the number.

"We did, in the last calendar year, 39 concerts," he said. "This year is going to end up being about 26 or 27. It"s down, but it"s still an incredibly satisfying number for all of us. That was just an incredible set of circumstances for us in "96 to be able to do what we did."

Why are America West"s numbers so strong in an era when most arenas around the country are hard pressed to fill dark dates, especially during the summer months?

"It"s a combination of several things," Machen said. "People that come here have realized how great an experience it is -- the performers and the managers and so on. We also happen to be on a favorable routing for anything that"s coming from the East going to the West Coast, and we"re very aggressive about trying to get events into this facility."

America West Arena Booking Manager Ralph Marchetta is constantly going after shows that could be routed through Phoenix.

Machen rattled off a list of acts -- including Widespread Panic, Clint Black, Boyz II Men, DC Talk, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Pearl Jam, Sting, Michael W. Smith, Yanni, The Cure and Neil Diamond -- he wants Marchetta to pursue for the coming months.

"These are acts I know from different sources are going to make either commitments or are going to be routed through this area within the next three or four months," Machen said. "We"ve had most of those here before, except Pearl Jam."

Cure frontman Robert Smith hopes to release a double album of B-sides, outakes and behind-the-scenes studio clips on his own label or on a band label. The album may be released next year. Smith says he wanted to release the rarities album with their greatest hits collection, "Galore," but their labels wouldn't go for it. "(After) the next studio album we're out of contract with everyone...and I've got the rights to put together a B-sides compilation." Smith adds that the disc will also be available over the internet.

Wrong Cure

The Cure release a new single Wrong Number on 24 November. The track, which features Bowie cohort Reeves Gabrels guesting on guitar, is taken from The Cure's new album Galore - The Singles 1987 - 1997. Available on cd, cassette and 12" Wrong Number has been remixed by Adrian Sherwood, Transparent Sound, Mark Plati, Omid Nourizadeh and Robert Smith. Which is quite enough remixes for anyone.

The Cure still going strong

After 20 years, frontman Robert Smith is still having fun with the music and the band

By JANE STEVENSON Toronto Sun

The Cure's Robert Smith wants you to know his British pop band, which came to prominence in the '80s, is anything but passe.

Particularly in light of some serious Cure-bashing in English director Mike Leigh's latest movie, Career Girls, an otherwise hilarious film about the reunion of two women who were Cure-loving college roommates.

"He (Leigh) invited me to the screening in the summer in London to show to distributors and I had one of the weirdest afternoons of my life," says Smith, down the line from New York City.

"There's one bit in the film when they see a poster for The 13th, the first single from the last album, and she says to her friend, `Are they still releasing records?'

"And I thought that was really unfair -- `The unchanging man in the changing world.'"

Smith, on the phone to talk about The Cure's recently released greatest hits collection, Galore, is starting to sound defensive.

And really, who can blame him?

"It was the only part of the film that I thought, `It's really re-enforcing the popular misperception that if I've stayed in one line of work that's had the name The Cure I can't possibly have developed in any way through the last 20 years, which is so far away from the truth.'

"The experiences I've had, because of The Cure, they've been so many many and varied, that I just suspect I've developed an awful lot more than most other people I've known in the last 20 years."

It's true that Smith's trademark goth look and dreamy, often gloomy pop have gone in and out of fashion in the last two decades. But there's something eternal about his shock of teased black hair, pale white face and smudged red lipstick. It's almost like you can't imagine the music world without him.

"I do a job I really, really love and I kind of have fun with," says Smith. "People think you can't be a grownup unless you're moaning about your job."

Which isn't to say Smith, now 42, necessarily feels like an adult. The cover of Galore features a diapered baby sitting on a beach eating an ice-cream cone, but the married Smith says he's not ready to become a parent.

"I'm big in the uncle department. And I prefer it. I like having the kids for weekends and not having to tell them off. I just like taking them out and teaching them bad tricks. I hate the idea of being a dad. I'm too undisciplined and too selfish to be a father."

The Cure did perform concerts in New York and L.A. in support of Galore, but the closest thing Toronto audiences will get to a Robert Smith experience in the next six months is on the new record, which basically picks up where the 1986 Standing On A Beach singles compilation left off.

In addition to the new song, Wrong Number, which features the distinctive guitar playing of David Bowie's axeman Reeves Gabrels, the track listing includes the hits Why Can't I Be You, Just Like Heaven, Fascination Street and Friday, I'm In Love.

"The last time I did a promotional trip was for Standing On A Beach in 1987," says Smith. "And I came on my own and I did North America, and went completely insane over like a 10-day period. So this time I thought I'll bring everyone over with me so it's more fun."

Still, an in-store autograph signing in L.A. brought about a strange occurrence when some legal papers were served on Smith.

"Someone sort of broke though the security and sort of thrust something toward me," he says. "It's an incident that happened last year. I think only I was there. Someone started hitting me on the back of the head outside a hotel and someone else turned around and hit him back. It was actually sorted out on the night and I thought it was all over. I just think it's a bit of a publicity stunt. I don't expect we'll see it again. I suppose we sort of forget that America is a very litigious country. You can get sued for sneezing."

Wrong Number has turned out to be The Cure's biggest North American hit in five years -- it's currently moving up Billboard's Modern Rock charts and sits at No. 9.

Smith says the song's early Cure sound isn't necessarily the direction the band is taking on their next record, which they are currently working on and is due next spring. A tour of festivals is to follow.

"It's difficult to say because Wrong Number didn't sound like it does until Reeves started playing on it," says Smith, with a laugh.

Smith certainly seems taken with Gabrels, whom he calls "a nice bloke." They only met for the first time in January when Smith was asked to take part in Bowie's 50th birthday party concert at Madison Square Garden.

"I was there for like a week and I had a couple of evenings with him. I just found I clicked straight away. I just really got on with him."

For Smith, personality always takes precedence over musicianship when it comes to The Cure.

"People that've been in the band and people that work with the band, it's entirely to do with personality," he says. "There have been very few virtuosos in the history of the group but there have been a lot of really nice people. The Cure backstage is a notoriously fun-filled zone."

As it turned out, Smith brought the house down with his Bowie duet on Quicksand, outperforming other special guests that night like Frank Black and Billy Corgan.

"I was very, very apprehensive before I did that," admits Smith. "I didn't want it to go wrong. I wanted it to be really good. It was being filmed; I was very aware that this was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. And because we were doing Quicksand particularly, that I'd learned phonetically when I was about 14 years old, I could not get that version out of my mind. Even when I was walking on stage, I was thinking, `I'm going to sing the wrong version.'"

Smith also didn't think his first meeting with Bowie -- they interviewed each other for a London radio station a few years back -- had gone very well.

"I was very nervous about meeting him and I drank too much and listened to the tapes afterwards. We spoke for about four hours, and I was incredibly reactionary and rude," says Smith.

And drunk?

"Basically, yeah, at the end of the four hours I was," he says. "And he (Bowie) told me he liked it. He kind of found it refreshing that I was disputing virtually everything he said." Naturally, the eventual invite to take part in Bowie's birthday bash came as a complete surprise.

"When he phoned up, it was completely out of the blue," says Smith. "I mean I got a message on my answering machine saying, `This is David Bowie.' And I actually thought it was someone messing about."

THE CURE FILE

FORMED: 1976, Crawley, Eng.

HISTORY: Singer-songwriter Robert Smith began learning guitar chords from his older brother at age six and formed Easy Cure by age 16 with schoolmates Lol Tolhurst and Michael Dempsy.

TOTAL SALES: 25 million.

CONTROVERSIES: When their 1979 single, Killing An Arab, reappeared on the 1987 retrospective, Standing On A Beach, some American deejays used the song to advance anti-Arab sentiments. Later Tolhurst unsuccessfully sued Smith in 1993 over songwriting royalties after he had left The Cure.

"On Tuesday there was a good interview with Robert on JJJ radio here in Australia. I didn't tape it or take notes, but some of the more interesting things I remember he said were:

- The internet has cramped his style with the press. He used to be able to lie freely during interviews in different countries, for example saying to an interviewer that the next album would be full of folk/acoustic songs. The problem now is that as soon as he says anything it's passed around the world on the internet so he gets caught out lying. I guess this means he doesn't have to stop lying, he just has to lie consistently.

- The new studio album has been less collabarative than previous records. They spend a couple of weeks doing their own thing, and then get together for a few days to stitch it all together.

- He hates being pigeon-holed and labelled. The style of his music reflects his state of mind at the time. The Love Cats/Lets Go To Bed and Mixed Up releases were specifically aimed at breaking the mould he'd been cast into. He said he was particularly suprised and upset about the amount of bad press he got for Mixed Up. They like dance music/mixes and have been doing dance type mixes on their singles for ages, so the release of an album of remixes shouldn't have been such a big surprise."

Looking for the Cure (Nov. 2nd,1997)

In the histories of pop, the Cure is barely mentioned. But Robert Smith knows his band's place - centre stage. Story by Michael Epis.

'BETWEEN THE CLASH and the Curve." That's the spot Robert Smith assigns his band, the Cure, in the grand scheme of things. The question is occasioned by the appearance of Galore, a collection of Cure singles from the past decade, with one new song (Wrong Number). Behind it lies the fact that the Cure, a band whose 18 albums have sold multi-millions over the past 17 years, rate not one mention in the 800-plus pages of the recent Faber Book Of Pop, nor did they get a look-in in the recent TV series on rock's history.

"Yes," says Smith, taking up the gauntlet, saying that in the book he's reading at the moment, on English pop culture in the two decades since the emergence of the Sex Pistols, "we have two-and-a-half pages and the Smiths have a chapter and a half". Not that he's counting.

"Rather than believe that that is the case in real terms, I suspect it's more that the author, when he was at college, listened more to the Smiths than the Cure. I know myself what we've done; as far as I'm concerned we're right at centre stage, the most important band in the world," he laughs, acknowledging that it is his own subjectivity that counts.

"It's not anomalous really," says Smith, warming to the topic of why his enduringly successful band, which carved out a distinctive, high-grade take on pop in the '80s is being ignored by the history-makers.

"I've gotten used to it. I'm not that bothered to be honest. I've always done it for my own reasons, not for posterity. I'm still doing it for my own reasons, because I enjoy it."

Despite a reputation for arrogance, and for keeping a keen eye on what the press is saying about him, Smith sounds convincing, unperturbed about how the critical world rates the achievements of the band in which he has spent all his adult life. While having long expanded beyond their cult following - 1990s Wish was a No. 1 album in the UK and No. 2 in America - Smith maintains that the band has never been fashionable.

"Some people just don't get it. But maybe there's nothing to get, because of the fact that I've done everything throughout the years purely for my own enjoyment.

"It's been done on a whim, in a haphazard manner, sometimes much more seriously than at other times. There isn't anything cohesive about it apart from me.

"And the Robert Smith who sang on Pornography in 1982 isn't the Robert Smith of now. I'm inhabiting the same slowly decaying body, but mentally I'm worlds away. If we'd disappeared quickly we'd be much easier to write about, we could be romaticised like the Smiths, but we've always kind of jumped about too much."

Jumped about they have. One of the enduring characteristics of the Cure is its unusual capacity to attract members from diverse audiences, without alienating longer-standing fans. Boys Don't Cry (1980) boasted the instantly memorable title track, and was followed only months later by the moody Seventeen Seconds, which set many a young adult brooding about his or her existence.

The claustrophobic production and aural grandeur of Pornography marked the Cure as a band apart, capable of painting on the big canvas, yet shortly thereafter the irresistible Love Cats was marching up the singles chart. Within a few more years Smith and Co. rode a wave on the back of the 12-inch single into the nightclub world, from where they leapt to mega-status with Wish.

Smith's band - it has always been his, notwithstanding the significant contributions of others - formed the soundtrack for so many parties through the '80s and into the early '90s because of the happy cohabitation of these distinct parts. Smith's voice, limited in range and depth, shares the spotlight with everything else; his lyrics can be worth attention, but they are never allowed to take up too much space.

Perhaps most important of all, the Cure realised early on that the dominance of the guitar is what stops people dancing; it was the Cure who turned things on their head by making the guitar, sometimes, an instrument supporting the keyboards. Yet the guitar remained the basis of so much of their music, without them ever being a guitar band.

The Cure wasn't quite all things to all men (and women), but they did attract teenyboppers and existentialists alike (the latter loving Killing An Arab, inspired by Albert Camus' The Stranger). Smith agrees that their audience, while having had a visually identifiable hardcore following, thanks to their Gothic dress sense, is heterogenous.

"I actually like that," he says. "On our US tour last year we met people we knew from our first tour in 1980. In some cases they're now bringing their kids to the concerts, which is pretty disconcerting at first, but is also quite charming. We have fans in their 50s who write in and get nostalgic about the old days, who can't tell their friends they've bought the new Cure album because they'd be laughed at.

"We've been successful at developing and keeping an audience because our ethic, the way that we do things, is that we've been seen not to compromise, to do things exactly as we want them done, to succeed on our own terms."

Then there is the other side of the coin, one developed more through the media. "We are supposed to be very mysterious, reading French Romantic poetry by candlelight," Smith says, furthering the image by invoking it, even if the mention is slightly dismissive.

Yet the question of the band's achievement is premature, says Smith, "even rude, because we're still going". Indeed, the next album, due in April, is well-advanced, 15 songs recorded, seven of which he says will definitely be on it. The recording experience has been a new one for Smith, who complained during the making of last year's Wild Mood Swings that the process simply got more difficult as time went on.

This time, however, rather than go into the studio and record an album over months, they're taking it one song at a time, recording and mixing it over four or five days, having a break, then moving on to the next one. He likens it to the recording of their first album - the difference being that in those four days they recorded 12 songs.

"Rather than trying to do something different in the same room, all you have to do is open the door and wander into a different room, with a different set of toys, with different wallpaper and a different view out the window. Recording this way: it's much quicker, less laborious and more spontaneous: a totally different way of working."

Smith has been taking the tapes home, and working there, clipping bits from one abandoned song for use in another: "The songs are interchangeable, in certain keys and bpms (beats per minute)." Sampling his own songs is allowing the freedom of creating from smaller working parts - and writing lyrics last. That freedom - and also the determination not to name songs too early has freshened his attitude.

"I've also learnt to play cello this summer," he says. The results will be on the album: "I haven't been spending hours practising and no one else is going to suffer."

Smith intends to tour the album here next year, although fans won't have to wait that long to hear them live, thanks to their website and an American fan, who compiled a list of Cure bootlegs, including concerts, studio out-takes and interviews. The list came to more than 700 albums.

"I was absolutely staggered. There were whole tours, every date, available on bootleg. It's like my entire life's on tape. It's pretty terrifying. He had the nerve to quote me an all-in price, in the thousands of dollars. I admired his cheek, and ordered a few select ones."

Some of those, along with the Cure's own tapes, will turn up on their website, from which they can be downloaded free. "By Christmas there will be four shows - one from the last tour, two from the Wish tour and one from Disintegration. My aim is to have one from every tour, going right back to the beginning. The bootleggers will be up in arms - we're doing them out of business."

And will the Cure play a stadium gig or something more intimate? "We won't have a choice, 'cos no one likes us anymore." Always the charmer.

Galore

Top 200 Albums chart : drops 13 spots to #45 (2nd week)

Wrong Number

Modern Rock Tracks chart: up 2 spots to #8 with a bullet (6th week)

Rock Big Picture chart: up 2 spots to #12 with a bullet (6th week)

Hot 100 Airplay chart : down 2 spots to #66 (5th week)

As always, the Cure's Robert Smith isn't afraid to speak his mind. In our recent interview with Smith, he went on about how PolyGram (the band's U.K. label) wanted Galore, the band's second singles collection, to be a straight-up Greatest Hits set instead. But since Smith ultimately wields the power, so he got his way. "I have power of veto over everything with 'the Cure' in it," he says. 'I want things to be done in the way that I want it done... PolyGram have been completely negative about [Galore] because they wanted a Greatest Hits or nothing. They suspect we probably won't re-sign after the next album, and they want a big money spin on [Galore] for Christmas so they can sell it to shops as our career- closing CD, because they think the band's on the slide. I wouldn't let them have that, so they said they wouldn't release anything. I'm like, 'Great, don't then.' But of course they are, because they're going to make money on it." Smith went on to explain that he likes the chronological singles compilations rather than a best- of/ greatest hits concept, which cherry- picks the most successful songs, because "for me, it's better. There's a purity about it. You can kind of follow it. I hate collections that jump about from year to year. I want to hear the progression, see how that person develops. They're not used to anyone thinking that way and the artist doing something about it. That's why I never got tied up in contracts that offered me the world. I didn't want the world. I only wanted complete control over my own destiny. I wanted my own life. I didn't want someone else's life with a lot of money. So we didn't get advances, but we got the best royalty rate on the last album, [better] than most other artists in the world." And what is that royalty rate? "It's up in the 20s, which is still not big. Every artist should get 50."

The Cure Headline Christmas Concerts

In the wake of the Cure's two sold-out club shows in Los Angeles and New York, radio stations across the country have been scrambling to land the group for their annual Christmas concerts. And the band has happily obliged -- for nine markets, at least.

The Cure U.S. dates:

Nov. 29, WPLY, Philadelphia, Tower Theatre

Nov. 30, WHFS, Washington, D.C., Patriot Center

Dec. 2, WBCN, Boston, Orpheum

Dec. 7, KDGE, Dallas, Bronco Bowl

Dec. 8, KOME, San Jose, S.J. Event Center

Dec. 9, KNRK, Portland, Oregon, Rose Garden Arena

Dec. 11, WKQX (Q101), Chicago, United Center

Dec. 12, WPLT, Detroit, the Palace

THE RADIO CURE

The importance of U.S. radio station sponsored concerts is being underscored by the fact that The Cure is doing a short tour of nothing but such events starting at the end of this month. This is not being viewed as an actual Cure tour since multi-act radio shows aren't exactly conducive to headliners performing a full set with their normal production.

"Just thought i would let you all know the Australian single is out the cover is green. Listing is: Wrong Number (single mix) Wrong Number (analogue exchange mix) Wrong Number (p2p mix) Wrong Number (crossed line mix) Wrong Number (isdn mix)

Some info: The Wrong Number Analogue exchange mix is the original way Robert recorded it and its awesome!!!!! female back up singers , very jazzy kinda like Gone but 1000 times better ! The p2p mix is Roberts mix of the song, its pretty good especially the change "are you ready for one more trip too the moon" over and over this mix goes for a while Crossed line mix reminds me of Jamiroquai , very laid back feel but very dancy ISDN mix is just the single mix with a dance drum beat and a slowed down drum beat in the chorus..

"I got a copy of the Galore video today (thanks Dave), and there are NO INBETWEEN BITS! This really sucks... I already had good quality versions of all the videos on there too. Keep in mind that it does include the Gone and Letter to Elise videos which most people don't have, so I suppose it's not a total waste... The Mint Car and 13th videos are not the original versions found on the website either! They are just the MTV versions.

I rarely criticize The Cure, but knowing that Roger spent the whole swing tour videotaping with a little Super-8 camera I think that they got real lazy by not including home video footage."

Fanatical Cure Fans Terminally Obsessed

Frontman Robert Smith says band appeals to those who love their music as well as anti-commercialism

Addicted To Noise Senior Writer Gil Kaufman Reports : Cure mastermind Robert Smith may have just the explanation for why fans of his dark pop are so rabid about the band that the build-up to its two recent U.S. club dates practically turned into mini-riots.

"I think there are two driving forces to our fan base in the U.S.," said Smith just a few weeks before the incidents in New York and L.A. "One is an almost indefinable sense of an ethic that is at the core of what the group does and how we're perceived. We've never used sponsorship. We never take tour support. We never allow music to be used for [advertisements]."

In remaining true to their music and only their music, he added, the Cure are bound to attract fans who feel a special affiliation with their sound and purpose. In other words, the Cure speak to their fans on many more levels than just musical.

"But we're idiots in that way," he continued. "We're kind of like old-fashioned fools because we haven't been drawn into that crass commercialization of everything that you do, which, unfortunately, many groups do end up doing. Even though they've already got more money than they know what to do with."

The Cure, who have even avoided putting out greatest hits albums during their long career, are currently promoting their second collection of singles, Galore-- The Singles 1987-1997 (Oct. 28), which features the song "Wrong Number" , a song which has been on heavy radio rotation and is currently climbing the alternative rock charts.

On Oct. 24, hundreds of Cure fans, many of whom spent a night sleeping on the sidewalk, were turned away by police from a line to buy tickets for the band's Halloween night show at New York's Irving Plaza. Close to 1,000 fans went home angry and empty-handed after only 250 pairs of tickets were made available for the show. More than 30 officers were dispatched to the scene to disperse the disappointed mob.

Just three days later, during an in-store appearance at the Sunset Boulevard Virgin Megastore in L.A., a melee erupted when 3,000 fans attempted to gain entrance to the store. An estimated 500 of them had received wristbands from the KROQ radio station to participate in the event, but only 300 were allowed to enter the store. Eventually police helicopters and dozens of officers in riot gear were called out to quell the angry mob.

But if you ask Smith, he'd tell you it's not surprising. The Cure has made a career of giving its fans something to feel passionate about, he said, for better or worse.

"I've met people who think I'm an idiot for not taking that sponsorship money," Smith said. "I could have made 50 times what I have if only I'd sold the group's name, but I think it's demeaning.

"But that's not the point. And it's only the people that understand the point that understand the group," he added. "They can appreciate that what we've done has been done on our own terms. They like that. They like that the idea of the group succeeding without bowing down before money or the business. That's why they stay with us."

Of course, hand-in-hand with that, Smith said, goes the music: a unique blend of upbeat pop and downbeat ideas that have captured the hearts of millions around the world since the band released its first single in 1979, "Killing an Arab".

"The greatest soap-boxing in the world won't make people listen to you if you haven't got good songs. The two are inseparable with us and without the former you won't get the fan base that will stay with you, even if they think some of the early singles are lightweight or they want you to go back to something you did three albums ago. They're still prepared to stick with the group because they know that I'm writing songs and recording them not to be famous, but because I want to." [Sat., Nov. 8, 1997, 9 a.m. PST]

"I now understand why people are driven to murder.

If I had my ticketmaster operator in front of me right now I would kill her with my bare hands.

Tickets for Dallas sold out in 5 minutes. I got through on the telephone and the operator gave me Section U, Row B, Seats 15-18. Then the operator said to me "I thought this show was general admission?". I said "I did too, but just give me those tickets". She told me to hold on a second and proceeded to check for general admission tickets *AFTER RELEASING MY TICKETS*!!!!!!!!! Then she says "duh, general admission is sold out.... oh, now your tickets are gone too." And that's it... no fucking tickets."

Last night 102.1 The Edge from Toronto broadcast part two of an interview they did with Mr. Smith in Gotham City last week before the Irving Plaza concert.

He said that their U.S. label, Elektra, was more supportive of the concept of Galore (singles, not necessarily greatest hits) than their labels in other countries. That's why we are seeing them in the states and not anywhere else during this promotional tour. That's also why he has been particularly receptive to the U.S. media for this project.

He also indicated that most artists do not have as much input into what they can release and how it is promoted as he does. He said he is older than most of these recording industry types and more experienced and he knows what ideas will work and which are "rubbish" when it comes to the business end of The Cure - and he is not afraid to tell them so. (Does this mean we have Robert to blame for releasing The 13th and Mint Car as unsuccessful singles and for them playing at half empty arenas in some U.S. cities last year? Hmmm.) On the other hand, it was he who wanted Wrong Number as a single, when the label said it had "no hook".

He said he is not ready for any comprehensive box sets or b-sides projects yet, as he thinks that may imply an ending and they aren't done yet. After the new album next year, he said he may turn his attention to b-sides and other "rarities".

He said that The Cure's last three albums are his favourites! (But later he also said, half jokingly I think, that he hasn't written a good song in years. And later he said that Bare was one of the few songs that he wrote in recent years when he was introspective or sad. Most of the songwriting is now done when he is in a good mood, as the mere process of creating "something out of nothing" makes him happy.

This next album will be the last one The Cure is obligated to on any of their labels' contracts. After that, if the band continues on, Robert implied that he could release things in a different manner. Though it was unstated I took this to mean distributed via the 'Net, or distributed from his home, which is now outfitted with high tech recording and mixing equipment, relocated from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman's house. (New members of Babble who know nothing of the making of WMS can feel free to say what the fuck is he talking about now.)

The next album will be more of a "piece". I took this to imply like in a classical composition or ambient piece of music, where the "songs" flow, because he said the songs will indeed flow. But that's just me guessing. He said he is writing and recording music much differently now in his home recording studio. He said the sound quality is so good, even on his "demos" that it would be good enough to release right from his home.

NOW, 2 DAYS, 2 CONCERTS

AT THE SAN JOSE STATE EVENT CENTER

ON DEC. 4TH, It's GREEN DAY * EVERCLEAR *MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES * OUR LADY PEACE & SNEAKER PIMPS * All for $19.98!!

ON DEC 8TH, It's An Evening with THE CURE for $19.98!!

OR You can see BOTH shows for JUST $32.50 !!

Tickets on sale this Sunday at Bass and the Event Center Box Office without the service charge. Both Almost Acoustic Christmas Concerts Benefit ARIS and The San Francisco Aids Foundation.

WILD MOOD SWINGS

Robert Smith admits that boys do cry, but they sometimes smile, too

On a surprisingly warm day in late October, Woody Allen has turned a short stretch of Manhattan's 55th Street into a rain-soaked alternate reality. For about 40 yards, a beautiful fall dusk becomes a dreary chasm of drizzle. The contrast suits the Cure's Robert Smith, who happens to be sitting at a table in the bar of an adjacent hotel, nursing a glass of milk filled with vanilla ice cream after a long day of promoting "Galore," his band's new greatest-hits-since-the-last-greatest-hits album. Like Allen's carefully crafted rainy day, Smith is living proof that things aren't always what they seem. Portrayed as a messiah of melancholy, Smith is not only quite alive but well-spoken and cheery. "I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not," he says. "But the thing is, I don't write songs about it."

With the 38-year-old Smith, there have always been two sides to every story: his music, his personality, his life -- right down to what he wears to bed at night. And this air of mystery, along with 21 years' worth of dark, memorable songs, has been the driving force behind the Cure. Now, as the band heads into its third decade, it seems as strong as ever. A new single, "Wrong Number," successfully fuses electronic bells and whistles with beat-friendly guitar licks and typical lyrical Smith-isms while -- given the near-riots caused in New York and Los Angeles over in-store appearances and recent club dates -- the band's popularity hasn't waned at all. Just beyond Allen's faux rainstorm, Smith comments on his life, his fans and what he wants on his tombstone.

You guys still have a manic following after 21 years. Does that surprise you?

I've kind of grown used to it in the strange way I've grown used to a lot of things we do. If I take a couple of steps back, I think, "What the fuck is occurring?" but yet I can't take it for granted. Like people breaking down in front of me and bursting into tears -- all that side of it. I've learned to cope with it. There is just something about the band, the ethic I suppose, that appeals to a certain type of person and they want to live that out. They usually disappear; there are one or two people that have been around for at least 15 years [who] are just insane.

Who has more rabid fans, the Cure or Morrissey?

I'd much rather have our fans than his -- our fans are generally quiet, well-spoken and friendly and not pretentious in the slightest. Hopefully, that reflects the nature of the Cure. Despite what the mainstream media would have you believe, we're a very natural group. The people who have been in the group over the years have been there because they have been friendly with each other. There has been no sense of purpose other than making music together. I think if Morrissey's fans reflect what Morrissey is like as an individual or the way he projects himself as an individual then ... uh ... I'll stop there.

Has the death of Princess Diana influenced your thoughts on celebrity?

I don't have any interest in it. I think the royal family as an institution is totally redundant. I would say the same thing if it were the 17th Century and I'd probably get my head chopped off for it. I have as little interest in any member of the royal family as I do the family down the road. Essentially, I don't want to see pictures of anybody on the beach looking fat with their kid. I'd rather read a book.

Over the years, you've always been tagged by the press as this melancholy guru of death. Do you think that's a fair assessment of Robert Smith in 1997?

It was never a fair assessment. Because the general public, if they are aware of the Cure, are aware of the group through the singles and the videos. [When I'm recognized by] cab drivers, they'll say, "Oh yeah, you're the bloke that did 'Friday I'm in Love!' And it used to be "Lovecats" or it might be "Lullaby" or something. But I've never had a cab driver who turned to me and said, "You're the bloke who's the Godfather of Goth -- the doom and gloom bloke!"

What's a better description?

I actually think I'm quiet, but I'm pretty well-balanced. The persona that has developed -- which is essentially driven by the songs and the group -- is a lopsided view, because it's the nature of what I do. But both sides of the group exists -- there is a dark side and light side -- as there is to my life, as there should be to everyone's life. You don't spend all your time running around with a grin on your face, and I don't know anyone who runs around crying all the time. It's a mixture. The music has always kind of reflected how I felt at that particular time. In 1982, we did "Pornography" and in 1989 we did "Disintegration;" those two years for different reasons were bad years for me and the albums reflected that.

Do you find it ironic then that "Disintegration" was one of your most successful studio albums?

I remember playing back "Disintegration" when I finished mixing it. I played it, and there was total silence and then mild applause. Afterwards, it kind of filtered through that it was commercial suicide -- the worst thing I could do to follow up "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me." It was at that point that I realized no one understood exactly what I was doing. It made me feel very vindicated when people took to it, when it actually started to sell millions. And the record company turned to me and said, "See, we told you it was a fantastic album!" And I just thought, "Wankers!"

Given the public's perception of you and the way you perceive yourself, how do you think your epitaph will read?

I don't think anyone in the English media would be bothered to write an epitaph for me, to be honest. I don't even think I would bother writing one myself. Generally, in books that are written about what has happened in pop music for the last 15 or 20 years, you'd believe people listen exclusively to Smiths albums. So we get, like, two lines and they get four and a half chapters. In America, it's a different kind of emphasis, really. They sort of recognize that we've had an influence, however subliminal, on those that have come after us.

So no epitaph?

I'd have one of those new [tombstones] with a screen on it and I would have a video biography of me.

What would it play?

Imaginary scenes from my life acted out by someone else.

KEVIN RAUB

Galore

Top 200 Albums chart : debuts at a disappointing #32.

Wrong Number

Modern Rock Tracks chart: down 1 spot to #10 with a bullet (5th week)

Rock Big Picture chart: up 1 spot to #14 (5th week)

Hot 100 Airplay chart : up 1 spot to #64 with a bullet (4th week)

Now, for the Cure's Robert Smith, he's been grooving on lots of dance music these days, but he didn't have much to say about electronica. "We played with the Chemical Brothers at this KROQ thing earlier in the summer," says Smith about the KROQ Weenie Roast in Los Angeles. "I thought they were brilliant, but I was really glad I was in the Cure and not in the Chemical Bros. It's just a different thing, no better or worse. It's sonically brilliant, but I wouldn't have the same feeling [I have] after having done a Cure set. There's very little emotion in it, it's more cerebral. You don't listen to dance music and start crying. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.."

CURE CRUX PLAN

THE CURE have a new greatest hits album coming, ad Robert Smith thinks it's better than the last one. Dave Thompson shuts up and lets Smith explain himself.

"This Galore collection is kind of weird." Robert Smith, never a man to overstate the obvious if the understatement sounds just as good, is inspecting the latest Cure release. "The record company wanted a greatest-hits album, a career compilation, but it's really just the last 10 years of singles, the companion peice to Starring at the Sea, which was the first 10 years."

Ten years. Seventeen hits, and an 18th that should be: "Wrong Number," recorded with David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels, rounds off the album as a fitting companion to those songs we have already loved.

"It's terrifying, listening back to [Galore]," admits Smith. "It's 10 years condensed into 75 minutes; it seems weird. But I think it's better than [1986's] Staring at the Sea; there were some songs on there that weren't good singes, things like ‘Primary' and ‘Hanging Garden.' They were poor singles, and they weren't written as singles. But they were the least obscure tracks on their respective albums.

"But going through it, things like ‘Just Like Heaven,' they mean alot to me on an emotional level, so it does make a more worthwhile collectionthat the last one did. I don't think it'll do as well as that; I think it shoudl do better, but because of where we are now, compared to where we were then, I think Staring at the Sea will still be the biggest selling cure album."

By past mighty standards, 1996's Wild Mood Swings did not do well. Uniformly disregarded by the press, it entered the charts at No. 1, then plunged straight down from there. Is Smith downhearted?

"It kind of reflected a trend, I suppose. I was told, ‘Oh, it was the lack of hits, and blah blah blah,' but I think we took to long amking it, and even though I wouldn't go back and make it any other way--because it was really good fun--I did accept the criticisms. But I've never yet evaluated a Cure album by what's it's done globally. 17 Seconds did something like 25,000 worldwide, but it couldn't take away from what it meant to me. So I'm not going to worry about the Cure slipping down into the second division; it doesn't bother me because I never expected to be in the first division anyway."

Smith promises the band's next album, scheduled for an April 1st release, will be "such a different step away from what we've been doing that hopefully it will be comparable to Disintergration and Pornography.

"I've set up my own mini-studio at home. I'm putting together preformances, rather then just songs which are demo ideas. And I don't take them to the group and ask them to interpret it. I don't have to go through the interminable process of starting off with something, then going all around the houses and ending up with something that's almost the same, but maybe not quite as good. I've kind of gone back to the benign dictatorship of old. Essentially what i'm doing this year is purely to please myself."

Smith also insists that the band make the most of even these limited opportunities. "I hit 40 in 1999, and I decided a long time ago that i'm not going to be sitting there at 47, strumming an acoustic guitar thinking about what the next single's going to be."

In the meantime, of course, there's same old material to think about. "[When] comparing Galore to Staring at the Sea, I know some people are going to think Sea is better," Smith concludes. "But I think that's purely because of what it means to them and what it represents--a golden age or something. But taken purely on face value, what you'd actually like to listen to, I'd much rather listen to Galore then Sea."

One final question: Why does the Cure's greatest-hits collection have the same title as Kirtsy MacColl's? "For the same reason George Micheal released an album called Faith." ATL

They just released a new album and played two special club gigs in New York and Los Angeles. Now The Cure will be spending the holidays with their fans.

The Cure will play a slew of radio station holiday festivals starting in late November to celebrate the release of their new decade retrospective, Galore, according to Michael Pagnotta, the band's publicist.

Although a few dates still have not been announced, many of the radio stations have already put their shows on sale; others will go on sale later this week. (Ari Bendersky)

Cure headlining gigs during the holidays:

Nov. 29 - Y100 FEASTival, Tower Theater, Philadelphia - w/ Sneaker Pimps, Love Spit Love. (tix on sale now)

Nov. 30 - WHFS Holiday Nutcracker, Patriot Center, Fairfax, Va. -- w/ The Verve, Sugar Ray, Everclear, Days of the New, Save Ferris. (tix on sale Nov. 8, $26.99)

Dec. 2 - WBCN X-Mas Rave, The Orpheum, Boston, Mass. -- w/ Tanya Donelly, Tara MacLean. (tix on sale Nov. 6, $25)

Dec. 9 - KNRK Snowball, Rose Garden, Portland, Ore. -- w/ Everclear, Ben Harper, Save Ferris. (tix on sale now, $25)

Dec. 10 - KNDD Deck the Hall Ball, Mercer Arena, Seattle, Wash. -- w/ Everclear, Sneaker Pimps, Less Than Jake. (tix on sale Sat. Nov. 8, $30)

Dec. 12 - WPLT Holiday Hootenanny, The Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan -- w/ Toad the Wet Sprocket, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Duncan Sheik, Huffamoose. (tix on sale Nov. 8, $14.96, $29.96) (all concert information courtesy of the radio stations)

The Cure Try To Cope With Fan Affection

November 4 [10:00 EDT] -- The Cure enters the Holiday home video sweepstakes next week with a VHS companion to their new greatest hits collection "Galore," and the band marked the release on Halloween with a concert and in-store appearance in New York City.

Both events prompted overt displays of affection from the band's rabid fanbase, a phenomenon that Cure frontman Robert Smith is still trying to figure out some 21 years after forming the band.

The reception the band received at New York's Irving Plaza was similar to the stir the band causes elsewhere on the road, but the commotion at New York's Tower Records earlier that day was a bit disconcerting to Smith.

"When we do a concert, I can figure it out, because I think, 'well if we play well and the songs are good, then people get excited about it,'" Smith told MTV News. "When you're just sort of sitting somewhere, walk in somewhere and people get excited, I find it difficult to cope with, still after all these years, because it doesn't make sense. I wake up and look at myself and think, 'Yuck.'"

The Cure is now finishing up work on a new studio album, and hopes to launch a tour next spring.

in the new Alternative Press, there's a short talk with Robert about Galore...pretty standard interview and a godawful picture of him, but some notable quotes:

One final question: Why does the Cure's greatest-hits collection have the same title as Kirsty MacColl's? "For the same reason George Michael released an album called Faith."

*and*

Smith promises the band's next album, scheduled for an April 1 release, will be "such a different step away from what we've been doing that hopefully it will be comparable to Disintegration and Pornography."

WHFS has finally confirmed that the cure will be playing at the HFS Holiday Nutcracker at the Patriot Center on Nov. 30. Tickets go on sale Saturday, Nov. 8, 10:00 a.m. at ticketmaster.

The announcement was made this morning for 96.3 The Planet's 2nd Annual Holiday Hoot'n Nanny.

Date: Friday December 12th

Where: The Palace Of Auburn Hills, Michigan

Tickets go on Sale This Saturday for $14.96

Line up: The Cure,Toad the Wet Sprocket,Big Head Todd and the Monsters,Duncan Sheik,Huffamoose.

"KNDD just made the announcement for Seattle's Deck the Hall Ball. THE CURE will headline, they mentioned that the cure wanted to do 'a real set' and play for more than an hour and a half), also in the lineup is less than jake, sneakerpimps and everclear.

Tickets on sale Nov 8 at 11am at Ticketmaster. $30 in advance. Mercer Arena. Show at 6:30pm, December 10th.

After the announcement they aired a short interview with Robert; he talked about the situation with ticket sales for the concerts last week, and that the band was humbled by the fact that fans were queued up for hours to get a ticket."

(Note: so it looks like everyone can stop worrying about a 45 min set.)

The Cure To Headline Seattle Christmas Show Break out your black clothing and heavy eye makeup. In late November, The Cure plan to hit the American roads for a mini-tour to support their new greatest-hits collection, Galore. At this point, details of the road trip are sketchy, but on Monday, one date was firmed up when Seattle deejay Andy Savage of KNDD announced that Robert Smith and Co. will be headlining the station's annual Deck the Hall Ball. The show will take place at the Emerald City's Mercer Arena, where the Cure will be joined by Everclear, the Sneaker Pimps, and Less Than Jake. Tickets go on sale Saturday, November 11.

The Cure is currently in the U.S. promoting Galore with a series of shows in New York and L.A. As Robert Smith recently told Wall of Sound, the round of dates including the Seattle show will be a bit different. "We're going to be re-working some of the singles, sort of like re-mixing them onstage," he said. "We're embracing some new technology. I think when we come back in November and December, we'll be a bit further down the line. It'll probably be more satisfying."

The Cure
Galore: The Singles 1987-1997
Polydor 539 652-2

The recurring beef with Mike Leigh's movies is that too often he opts for the crude stereotype in preference to more subtle characterisation. No surprises, then, that in Career Girls, his latest, the musical choice for the protagonists, Annie and Hannah, during their college lives is The Cure. Who better to provide the soundtrack to the fumble out of adolescence; the cider swilling, beans-on-toast fuelled social competence that, for many, passes for student life and sometimes beyond? After all, Robert Smith has been working this patch for 20 years now, going from stricken young post-punk from Crawley with a weakness for the Boots cosmetic counter, to a genuinely global, stadium-sized star. And still he has the smudgy lips.
What might have been simply a protracted exercise in narcissism has instead been deftly turned into the hesitant but reassuring voice of the perennial outsider. At heart he's just a big old romantic; a slave to the thrill of anticipation more than the done deed, because it's bound to end in tears. It always does, as Pictures Of You isn't slow to point out.
Galore simply takes up the baton where Staring At The Sea left off in 1986: a chronological collection of the past decade's singles starting with the brassy, romping Why Can't I Be You? right through to the pristine Wrong Number. Wisdom has it that much like Henry Ford's apocryphal sales pitch (any colour so long as it's black), The Cure have worked from a similarly exclusive funereal palette. The evidence of the spunky Hot Hot Hot!!!, the unrequited jollity of Just Like Heaven and, best of all, the 215 seconds of refined pop pleasure that is Friday I'm In Love, however, tell rather a different tale. While the albums as a whole have never exactly been a bunch of sunbeams, their singles have rarely been less than quirkily accessible and partial to cheesy flourishes, such as the off the wall trumpeting on the Close To Me remix.
Last year's Wild Mood Swings suggested Robert Smith might finally be having trouble staying 17 forever, a point borne out by the underwhelming Gone and Strange Attraction. Indeed, whether the never ending puberty and the spidery, fairy tale weirdness can continue to be considered suitable subject matter for a man who turns 40 in 1999 remains to be seen. In the meantime there's quite enough for any self-respecting Freudian to be getting on with here.

Rating: 4 stars

LES ATTRAPES-COEURS DE ROBERT SMITH, THE CURE interviewed by Emmanuel Tellier

translated from « les inrockuptibles » magazine no 123 (22-28 oct.)

What was the first record you ever had ?

RS : People are always surprised when I say this but I swear it’s true : i’ve started listening to rock music when I was 6. Of course, at that time, the two unavoidable bands were the Beatles and the Stones, and I dived straight into this music. My older sister and my older brother had all their records and instead of listening to childish little songs, I was listening to some rock. My brother was also crazy about Captain Beefheart, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, so much so that when I was 7 or 8, to the despair of my parents, I became some kinda little devil fed on psychedelic rock (he laughs)... Soon I started to buy records on my pocket money - the first one was Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust . And the first concert I attended was Hendrix on the Isle of Wight - I was 10 ; I used to know all the lyrics by heart, and to sing them in my bed at night, without getting anything of what they meant.

When one is 9 or 10, what do they know about rock music ?

RS : Not much, personally I was just excited about the sound volume and the electricity. I used to approach music very physically : I liked the melodies, the drums sound, the guitars row. when you’re this age, you’re unable to have an intellectual or romantic vision of rock things. When I was 6, I didn’t even know where the USA was, how could I have had a thoughtful vision of Captain Beefheart’s records ?! For me, people like Hendrix were aliens. They’d not live like us, speak like us, eat like us. I wasn’t allowed to try to understand too much, to come too close to the mystery or there could have been serious trouble (he laughs)...

Had you got any other passion ?

RS : I was already mad about football and those two passions were for me an undivisible unity. George Best, John Lennon, Mick Jagger were as sublime and mysterious to me. These people weren’t like us : they were superhumans. What actually is fabulous, is that the pop culture of the late 60s was articulated on this kind of people : it was a period with a wild class. It’s a pity that this dimension of mystery has disappeared nowadays.

when did you start seeing the rockworld in a more realisitic way ?

RS : At about 13 or 14, I started to play and learn frenetically, but that didn’t kill this innocent, totally immature relation between me and my records. I’ve remained very naive, very dreamy for a long time - i.e. refusing to admit that the musicians I liked were paid to do recordings and play concerts. Now, my nieces and nephews (who start to become more and more interested in rock music) refuse to see me as an adult or a professionnal : for them I’m a big kid doing music for fun. Rock music is not a job for them. Exactly the kind of perception I had when i was 14 or 15... The other day I took twenty children or so (all my nephews and nieces) to Eurodisney Paris. I spent two fantastic days where I fell back to childhood, while taking care of the adminstration of our trip as well : I bought the tickets, sandwiches, drinks, paid for the hotel and the train. And at the end of the stay it struck me that the kids had absolutely not realized that we had spent two days in some commercial surroundings, completely controled by marketing and publicity. They’ve visited Eurodisney in the same way that I used to listen to the Stones at 10 years old : without giving any interest to the scenery nor to the wings.

When you were 15, was your passion for rock music easy to share with ?

RS : With my family, definitely. My mum and dad, who were both playing an instrument, were encouraging us to talk the records we liked - I remember staggering talks about Slade and Gary Glitter. And my parents were lending us their stuff; my mum made me listen to a lot of classical music to enable me to have a larger vision of music. At school, I found a few mates who had the same tastes as I. As my dad was making his own beer in the garage, we’d steal five to six a week and sell them to old blokes of the area, and with the money we’d buy records. I probably bought about one hundred records like that, far enough to feed my passion. For me the 70's weren’t at all the awful period that is being described nowadays. I spent great moments thanks to a lot of records of that time.

What place do books have in your life ?

RS: I’ve always been used to reading an awful lot. At home there wasn’t any TV : the only entertainments, then, were reading and records - which I never saw as something imposed but always as a pleasure. Our house was filled with books. I’ve read all the English classics and a good deal of American ones too. I sometimes tried to write some small stuff, some short stories. The other day I was tidying my attic and I found some notebooks in which I had written loads of poems about football, guitars, rock music.

And what about cinema ?

RS: It never really interested me - apart from 2001, space odyssey , that I saw millions of times. I still am an insatiable reader and I still listen to most of what is released in rock, techno and I also am quite a fan of jungle, so all this doesn’t leave me much time for cinema. The first time I got money with the Cure - it was in 1980, a year after Three Imaginary Boys - , I bought myself a video player and tried to catch up by subscribing to a videoclub. Up till now it still is my main way of consumming movies : I watch them at home, at my own pace, usually 20 years after their official release.

Finding the Cure
Robert Smith's adventures in home taping

Last year's Wild Mood Swings was a strange watershed in the Cure's long career. "Over the past five, six years," bandleader Robert Smith now says, "the group has sort of, not become unmanageably big, but I've been led astray. I've listened to other people too much. I've gone a bit soft, I think, and I've been doing stuff that's intended to please others rather than please myself. So I've made a very conscious decision this year to disregard everything and everyone and just go back to how I used to be in the good old days of the Cure dictatorship."

What led Smith to this revelation were the bloated recording sessions that produced Wild Mood Swings, which found him laboring over take after take of vocal tracks in a way he now describes as obsessive compulsive, while the band racked up weeks of studio time just looking for drum sounds. "I realized," Smith says, "that we had sort of turned into everything that I loathed."

That's why Smith has retreated to his home studio and other small rooms to work on the Cure's next album, which he hopes to release in the first half of 1998. He's working fast, and not always with the rest of the band. The first product of this new approach is "Wrong Number," which features David Bowie sideman Reeves Gabrels on guitar but no other members of the Cure, save for some drum fills by Jason Cooper. It's the lone new song on the singles collection Galore, and perhaps a hint of the Cure's future. In this interview with RockNews.com, Smith discusses Galore, his obsessive-compulsive past and tinkering in the home studio and on his website. (Matty Karas)

Singles Galore

Robert Smith: I really like every song on Galore, and I just think they're better songs than those on Standing on a Beach. I mean, there're some really, really good songs on Standing on a Beach but there're some really awful songs . . . like "Hanging Garden" and "Primary." They're all right, but they're not singles. For a period of time I wasn't writing singles. The least obscure track on the album would be released as the single. "Forest" is a great single, and "Let's Go to Bed" is a good single, but there are others on there that aren't . . . I think the three best singles [on Galore] are "Friday I'm in Love," "Mint Car" and "Wrong Number." But "Just Like Heaven" probably overall is my favorite song.


Home Work

I'm doing a lot of [the next album] at home. I've realized that I spent an awful lot of time doing demos, and something is kind of lost in the group context. I listen to what everyone wants to do, and it's worked in some songs but on other songs, I think, "We didn't need this. I didn't need someone else to replay what I played in the first place, just because that's what they do." Like "Wrong Number" -- essentially, I'm the only person playing apart from Reeves. And Jason [Cooper] has done a few drum fills. I'm trying to get the group to think more along those lines. The song just either works or it doesn't work, and it's not to do with allocating who does what just because they did it last time. That everyone's kind of got their own fixed position within the group -- I've started to find it really boring, that kind of, you know, "I mustn't play bass 'cause Simon's the bass player."


Take 60

I had a weird breakdown in about 1989, during Disintegration, and ever since then I've been fighting this urge for everything to be exactly as it should be -- you know, rearranging things on table tops. That kind of obsessive-compulsive stuff stems from something else. It's actually running away from confronting things that have been upsetting me, which I've done this year, and I now find that things can just be on the table top however they want. It doesn't bother me anymore . . . Doing Wild Mood Swings, I would redo a vocal take something like 50 or 60 times, and everyone thought I was going insane and I sort of was, really. I'd be saying, "Can you not hear this?" I'm worried about, like, one "s" in one word in one line.


TheCure.com

We set it all up, me and Roger [O'Donnell]. Everything on there's done by us. It's easy because we do it all on Page Mill, so I don't program. I can't write HTML. When we're in the studio, we generally rig up a CU-SeeMe thing. We've got a reflector site where I think we can have 150 people looking. Some very embarrassing pictures -- they've started to turn up on other people's websites. It's a bit disturbing, actually, because this little golf ball sits in the corner of the control room and after a few hours everyone forgets it's there . . We've got demos, photos that no one else is going to see. I've done a couple of alternative videos, just cutting together footage that we've shot with the group backstage. It couldn't be more hands-on. Interview by Paul Biel

THE CURE : ALBUM LAUNCH

Riot police were called to the Hollywood launch of the Cure's new greatest hits album. Thousands of people gathered outside the Virgin Megastore on Sunset Boulevard where the band were due to sign cds but trouble broke out when some fans tried to rush the doors.

Localjournalist, Troy Augusto described the scene: "3 or 4 thousand people turned up. I think they only let in 150, 175 people before the police - it seemed like they were ready for anything. They were in riot gear and there was a large number of them. As soon as a few people got inand the excitement was building - they closed the doors and of course people were upset and screaming and shouting. But it went off ok. Robert always tries to take care of everybody and I think everybody eventually got to at least see him".

The Cure, who are currently celebrating their 20th year in the music business, have also played their 1st gig in over a year at the Hollywood American Legion Hall. Thousands of people were locked outside the 500 capacity venue but the lucky few who got in were impressed. The Cure release their singles collection in the UK next week. It's called 'Galore' and features material spanning the last decade including the new single "Wrong Number" which is out in a fortnight. However, frontman Robert Smith says he was keen to avoid calling the album 'Greatest Hits': "We did one in 1987 called 'Standing on a Beach'...this is like the companion piece and I've been told endlessly by the record companies that were I to have allowed it to be called 'Greatest Hits' and just chuck a couple of old songs on it or 'Best Of...' or something, that the retailers would go for it in a much bigger way. It doesn't appeal to me".

"make sure to listen to johnny riggs on monday afternoon as he announces the lineup for the 1997 HFSmas Holiday Nutcracker, tickets will be going on sale on Saturday, November 8th."

Ten years ago, The Cure released their first singles collection, "Standing on The Beach." The title, taken from the early Cure song "Killing an Arab," is based on Albert Camus' classic existentialist novel, "The Stranger." On the grim black-and-white cover is a haunting photo of a weathered man on a wet, desolate seascape.

The colorful cover of the Cure's new singles collection, "Galore," features a baby sitting on a red blanket on a sunny beach gazing into the sun, holding a melting ice-cream cone. Placed together, the two jackets are a timeline of the Cure's shift away from the inward looking, soul-rending search for meaning -- which always unearthed the dreaded banality of human existence. "Galore" is full of love songs. And though the Cure has always peppered their morbidity with a few upbeat singles, Galore's cullings like "Why Can't I Be You" and the new single "Wrong Number" (which features Bowie's current guitarist, Reeves Gabrels) are pure pop fun. On "Lovesong," frontman/creative force Robert Smith utters the words: "You make me feel like I'm at home... You make me feel like I am whole." It's several sunrises and prozacs away from the empty stranger on the beach. Even the lyrically gloomier or ominous songs like "Close to Me" and "Lullaby" are about childhood nightmares -- unpleasantness one wakes up from.

Still, open the "Galore" CD cover, and that ice-cream cone is flying through the air; elsewhere it is splatted on the beach. Even on "Galore," there's the sense that the ice-cream could topple off the cone at anytime; it's those "Wild Mood Swings" of the Cure's last full-length album. After all, it's only "Friday I'm in love." Perhaps it is this sense of false happiness that repels many die-hard Cure fans. But, damn, they're great pop songs -- loaded with snappy hooks and some of the most inventive guitar playing either side of alterna-rock's blurry drone. When Smith belts out his sexual yearning on "Never Enough," it's good old fashioned Rock-n-f'n-Roll. Sure, there's a sense of escapism on "Galore," but from a band with less history, this would just be an awesome party album of booty-shaking, sing-along pop mastery. -- megan steintrager

THE CURE -- Re-Broadcast of the Halloween Show, Thursday, Nov. 6, 5 p.m. (EST)

For the benefit of the Cure's worldwide fanbase -- and those of you who may have missed the live cybercast of the band's Halloween show -- Rocktropolis will re-broadcast the Cure's Halloween invasion of New York City.

Picking up immediately where Staring At The Sea left off, Galore collects all of the Cure's singles from the past decade and throws in one new track for good measure. Unfortunately, the past decade hasn't been so kind to the Cure. With the lone exception of 1989's brilliant Disintegration album, the last 10 years have seen the band careen back and forth from the mediocre ("Friday I'm In Love") to the terrible ("Mint Car") to the just plain irritating ("Why Can't I Be You?"). Certainly, this compilation offers a few moments worth remembering, like "Catch" and "Just Like Heaven" from their Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album, and the four singles from Disintegration, but six songs aren't nearly enough to sustain an 18-track compilation. As for the new track, "Wrong Number," it begs only this question: Why does every band with a faltering career insist on dabbling in electronica? -Steven Gizicki