The Cure

One of my all time favorite bands has to be The Cure.  They are the ultimate example of what is a Fresh Wave band.  The picture above is the last time I saw them perform live.  This was the 'Reflections' tour where they played their first 3 albums in their entirety, "Three Imaginary Boys", "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith".  It was an amazing show and of course they sounded incredible.  They must have the best sound crew around.  I go to a lot of concerts and every time I go to a Cure show, they blow everyone away with their sound quality.  Another great thing about Cure shows is that they are REAL concerts.  What I mean by "real" is that they just don't play for an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes.  They always for at least 2 hours.  They then come back and play REAL encores, yes plural.  Most bands come back for an encore and play 1-2 songs and that's it.  The Cure usually play 3 encores and each encore ranges between 3-7 songs each.

If you're a Cure fan you already know this, but for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of seeing them live, when you do, be sure to go to EVERY available show near you on that tour.  Most bands play the same set list each night of their tour.  Sometimes they'll change the set list halfway through the tour, but that's about it.  For example, I live in Los Angeles so I'm very lucky to have multiple venues within driving distance.  When Depeche Mode comes to LA, they usually play larger venues like Staples Center in Downtown LA and The Honda Center in Anaheim.  They usually play 2-3 nights at each venue depending on how ticket sales go.  If you go to all 4-6 shows between the 2 venues, you'll see the same damn show each night with the exact same songs.  In contrast to this, The Cure does not play the same show in a row.  They do have a core number of songs they play at each show on that tour, but then they play different other songs each night.  Before this 'Reflections' tour, the last time I saw them on tour was for the "4:13 Dream" album in 2008.  They played at the Santa Barbara Bowl (about 2 hours north of LA), which I didn't attend.  I had tickets for their show at The Hollywood Bowl.  I was sitting next to a girl that went to the SB show the previous night and she told me how they play different shows each night.  I was able to put that to the test because the next night they played a show at the Shrine Auditorium near Downtown LA (next to the USC campus).  I was so glad I got tickets to both shows because the songs I wanted to hear that they didn't play at The Hollywood Bowl, they played the next night at the Shrine.  I only bought the tickets to the Shrine show because it was a little smaller venue and never saw a show there before.  I was curious to see how good they would sound.  I'm SO glad I bought those tickets.  Now, whenever they play near me, I'll go to every show.

Below is a set list from both the Hollywood Bowl and Shrine Auditorium shows I attended.  You can see the core songs that were the same, but you can also see the total number of songs played overall and during the encores.  I bolded the unique songs for each show to see how much they change their shows each night.  You'll notice the encores are usually all different from night to night:

           

31.05.2008 Los Angeles - Hollywood Bowl (USA/CA)

Underneath the Stars, Prayers for Rain, A Night Like This, The Walk, The End of the World, Lovesong, Sleep When I'm Dead, To Wish Impossible Things, Pictures of You, Lullaby, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, The Perfect Boy, Hot Hot Hot !!!, The Only One, Push, Friday I'm in Love, In Between Days, Just Like Heaven, A Letter to Elise, Never Enough, Wrong Number, One Hundred Years, It's Over,
E1: If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, The Kiss,
E2: At Night, M, Play For Today, A Forest,
E3: The Lovecats, Let's Go to Bed, Freakshow, Close to Me, Why Can't I Be You?,
E4: Boys Don't Cry

01.06.2008 Los Angeles - Shrine Auditorium (USA/CA)

Out of This World, Pictures of You, Fascination Street, Alt.End, A Strange Day, The End of the World, The Baby Screams, Lovesong, Sleep When I'm Dead, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Lullaby, The Perfect Boy, Kyoto Song, The Only One, Push, How Beautiful You Are, In Between Days, Just Like Heaven, Primary, Us or Them, Signal to Noise, One Hundred Years, Bloodflowers,
E1: Plainsong, Disintegration,
E2: Three Imaginary Boys, Fire in Cairo, Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Grinding Halt, 10.15 Saturday Night, Killing an Arab,
E3: Faith, Happy Birthday Song (for Simon Gallup's birthday)