I caught the Radio City show of The Cure on their recent pass through NYC this June. The show was a marathon of old and new that lasted three (!!) hours.
As usual, new songs were highlights (for me anyway) as well as “Catch” and a bit to my surprise “Killing an Arab”. I remember reading in Rolling Stone magazine probably 15 years ago that Robert Smith stopped playing “Killing an Arab” due to it being perpetually misinterpreted – boneheads calling him a fascist or whatever. I wonder at what point he determined that the idiot quotient was low enough for him to dust off the song to play live again and not receive undeserved retard blow-back. (if anyone knows, please chime in)
You know, I could have asked him that question myself some years ago when I had one of my better celebrity ‘run-ins’. I used to walk across Central Park South everyday to get to and from work in Midtown. One day, probably after after-work drinks, I had to micturate like a fiend. Being the super-genius that I am, I figured I could nip into one of the several hotels along Central Park and use their ‘facilities’, not realizing that these hotels are among the swankiest in NYC. I believe I wisely chose The Lenox, who, naturally, would be very accommodating to a jack-nut off the street; “Hey man where can I drain the main vein around here?” Perfectly timed, just as if I was a very astute concierge, as I opened the front door, out comes Robert Smith. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be bothered and cruised in and paced the lobby only to find out fairly quickly (remember I am a super-genius) that finding a place “to walk the lizard’ in a hotel of this caliber was untenable. Once it seeped in that I had just brushed shoulders with R. Smith himself, however, it gave me enough adrenaline to exit the premise and continue on to a less tony of a locale…or maybe I just wet myself. I don’t remember.
Anywho, this show at Radio City was great but I have one pet peeve. Why on earth would someone with the stature of The Cure not have a factotum to play synth parts. The canned synth segments, although few, put a bit of a damper on an otherwise killer show.
[audio: http://thesoundofindie.com/archive/2008/20080724/TheCure-KyotoSong.mp3|titles=Kyoto Song (Live)|artists=The Cure]
Download: The Cure – Kyoto Song (Live)
