| werchter festival 1981 05/07/1981 |
| the holy hour in your house the drowning man 10.15 saturday night accuracy the funeral party m primary interesting/see review other voices all cats are grey fire in cairo play for today a forest fuck robert palmer, fuck rock'n'roll |
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| fuck robert palmer, fuck rock'n'roll!! |
| the cure play the werchter festival 1981!! this is a great recording, and one of those "must-have" shows if you're really into the band. as promised (see the photo and text) this is the performance that is mentioned in the cure book "ten imaginary years," just scroll down towards the bottom if you can't wait to check out the details... the sound is extremely good--especially given the year of the recording--everything is mixed nicely, a good mix of guitars/bass/drums/vocals and synths...a really great recording of a 1981 festival performance from the cure. "the holy hour," "in your house," and "the drowning man" set things up nicely for a very grey and subdued overall set/performance...some of the better live versions in my current collection--good stuff. "in your house" has some slight lyric changes, nothing overly important, but of note. "10.15 saturday night" is the first real change in mood, more recognizable to the festival going fans probably...not overly aggressive, but still good. "accuracy" follows, and then everything goes back into the grey with "the funeral party." it's very well done...as is a good version of "m" with some nice guitar work by robert in the outro/ending parts... "primary" comes next, the most up and aggressive song of the night so far...it starts off really great, you can hear the low end bass guitar stuff really coming thru--then in the middle section, all the guitars drop out leaving only the drums! it sounds kinda off, unintenional...like someone broke a string or something just went wrong...robert sings a line over drums alone, then lol drums for awhile before simon and robert jump back into the mix. very strange!! "other voices" is great--nice feel/good performance, and "all cats are grey" sounds amazing--how they pull this one off (so subdued and misty grey) so well is something else...and in front of a festival crowd as well... "fire in cairo" picks things back up and into the end... sometime during these later songs, word has gotten round to the band that they're being told to end their set so robert palmer can take stage...according to robert himself (taken from the "ten imaginary years" book--all copyright apologies here!!)... "we'd only been on for about half an hour and everything was running late so robert palmer's road crew started motioning to us to stop. this bloke ran on and said 'if you don't stop playing, we're gonna pull the plug.' simon immediately walked to the mike and shouted 'fuck robert palmer, fuck rock'n'roll!' and we started playing a really slow version of "a forest" which lasted for about 15 minutes. it was fucking brilliant. unfortunately, when we finished, they threw all our stuff off the back of the stage..." now the recording plays out kinda differently, during the keyboard intro to "a forest" robert says "this is the final song because we're not allowed to carry on anymore....cause everybody wants to see robert palmer i think...this is called 'a forest.'" and then they play a very long (not slow) version of the song with some different starts and stops (w/extra lyrics about "parting is such sweet sorrow" and more!)....and only at the end (not the start) does simon step up to the mike. it's a really charged take, very cool--and yeah at the end it's "fuck robert palmer! fuck rock'n'roll!!" so this one is just a must-have, great recording/performances and a piece of cure history as well... one disc/must-have!! |