Quite a rollercoaster week last week for North American Cure fans. First, there was the excitement around the announcement of their tour this Summer for their forthcoming Songs Of A Lost World. That gave way to confusion when the ticketing was announced to be following the TicketMaster “Verified Fans” model, and turned into anger when many (MANY) failed to get a “verified fan” code and were pushed to the wait list, whatever that meant. It was then high anxiety when the on-sale began and some got notified they were off the wait list and scrambled to get their hands on whatever ticket scraps remained. It was anger again for many when they checked out and the relatively reasonable ticket face value prices were jacked up – some by over 100% – with TicketMaster fees and then a kind of muted joy when Robert Smith, who had been tweeting his frustration over the whole situation, announced that he had convinced TicketMaster to refund a portion of the fees to the fans – some consolation to those who were able to get tickets, at least.
Rolling Stone has a full write-up of the shitshow:
What the Hell Happened With the Cure’s Tickets This Week? @ Rolling Stone
For myself, I had committed to going and paying whatever to see The Cure on this go-around because despite having been at least a casual fan for 30+ years, I’d never gone to the trouble of seeing them live and was dead set on doing so this time. Of course, I was one of those waitlisted so by the time the dust settled, I counted myself kind of lucky to have lawns at their June date at Budweiser stage. And I think that despite the fact that the fees were only usual exorbitant and not insanely exorbitant, I’ll be getting the Smith-brokered refund (tickets at the general onsale were $10 less than what I paid) is also nice.
In any case, I’ll finally be seeing The Cure in June. Almost certainly should have gone to their Bestival show in 2016, but what can you do? To celebrate, here’s one of the band’s most famous – and joyous – songs, the opening track and lead single to 1985’s The Head On The Door.
The camerawork in the video might seem a little cliche by todays standards, but remember this was two decades before the GoPro was a thing and video cameras were still massive things, so let’s applaud the technical achievement of mounting a camera to a guitar headstock and the fact that no one was killed in the making of the clip as they swung the overhead camera around the band. There is actually a short documentary about the making of the video that shows how they accomplished it all.
