Cure review @ Barfly 2004

Blog ≫ 2004 ≫ Cure review

Sat Mar 6

They played their hearts out, but not playing Glastonbury...

The gig was amazingly not the most crowded any of us had seen at the Barfly, and if the rumours were right that the Libertines were doing yet another show at the club afterwards, I'd expect it to be busier for them. This is obviously not down to the popularity of the band, but just how difficult it was to get into this gig, I know one person paid nearly 3 grand for a pair of tickets.

Anyway, spectacular 2 hour set, we tried to keep a track on everything they played but there was just so much. As one of the bands less patient fans, I was very pleased they did all the upbeat numbers that I imagined they wouldn't, including THREE, count 'em, off the first album, "Boys Don't Cry", "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Fire in Cairo". Also, they played "A Forest", I like to think they knew that was my favourite.

Instead of going off to allow for an encore, Robert asked for questions from the audience, the first was "are you playing Glastonbury?" and shockingly he said NO! Not sure if he was serious, I think he said something about Glastonbury not inviting them back but it wasn't clear. He said they are doing some festivals this summer, though he didn't say UK festivals.

The ending was odd, maybe fans who've seen them live more would have been expecting it, but they got their road crew up to do a couple of numbers with them "I Dig You" and "I'm a Cult Hero", a bit of light relief that I wasn't expecting. The final song ("Friday I'm In Love", I think, though a bit hazy from the heat by this point) was marred for me by the attention seeking antics of a couple of weird fans at the front, one pretended to faint, but she was just conscious enough to not let security move her out of the crowd, she clearly was expecting to be taken backstage or something... Calm down dear, it's just the Barfly! Speaking of sad groupie behaviour, we possibly could have headed to the Enterprise for after show drinks, but thought there's no way the evening could get better.

Aha, now I've heard "Cult Hero", it's ace, it's not on the new rarities collection¹ though, as it wasn't a proper Cure release... Here's a picture, thats Robert smith on the left: