4 Tour Memories - Red Rocks & Salt Lake City

We started out in 2008 with our original planned 2 dates to see them at Red Rocks and in Salt Lake City. So on May 21st, 2008 we flew out to Denver, checked into the hotel and then met up with our friends and headed out to Red Rocks to see the Cure! The evening was beautifully warm and breezy with a blue sky overhead that soon turned into a heavenly arch of stars. If there ever was a perfect setting to hear "Underneath the Stars" for the first time, this was it!



We had heard a rumor of two new songs that had been played for the first time in Kansas City, and so I was ready with the video camera. Well, make that ALMOST ready. When the crashing waves began, I didn't recognize that it was the beginning of the show for nearly two minutes! Since it was an outdoor concert and there were no lights to dim as a signal, we had only the waves to let us know something was happening. They start out very softly and then grow louder and louder, and as soon as I realized what was happening, I fumbled for my camera and flipped it on and caught Underneath the Stars as it was played for only the second time in concert! And although Robert had been very ill and his voice was very raw and rough, it was absolutely magical to see them in the legendary amphitheater at Red Rocks. As the night progressed, the full moon rose slowly in the distance behind and to the right of the stage, and the vision of the moon, stars, clouds and the city in the distance helped this night be very special.



We felt very bad for Robert when we could tell that he was holding back on his voice on many of the songs. It's such a torn feeling to be a fan of the Cure and want to see them perform, just as much as you want Robert to save his voice and not sing!

Near the end of the show, I caught the other new song, which at the time was titled Baby Rag Dog Book (later to be re-titled "It's Over" on the album. Then we were still treated to three encores! It never ceases to amaze me how much the Cure love their fans, and you know that by the end of the show Robert's voice had to be hurting, but they didn't quit early even though they could have easily skipped 1 or 2 encores!

We got back to the hotel extremely late but I tried uploading my videos anyway, only to be blocked from uploading, I am guessing by the hotel's firewall settings. I tried again in the morning, but gave up and went to the airport. Then a funny thing happened while we were entering the airport, and a tornado struck the ground in northwestern Colorado. The airport stopped all outgoing flights and we were stuck in the terminal. Luckily, I found an "office rental" kiosk and went in and used their awesome fast broadband to upload both the videos of the new songs to YouTube while we waited.

This was also the sight of our first Cure-spotting of the 4-Tour, as we managed to see Simon walking through the terminal as well.





Returning to Salt Lake City, we were very excited for the show there as it was the first time we had front row center seats (which we ended up getting screwed out of, thank you E-Center, but I digress) On the way to drop our children off with their grandparents, we got a tip that the Cure were at their hotel in downtown Salt Lake. Rushing back to the city, we took up position on the sidewalk near the hotel and waited for our big chance to meet them.

Interestingly enough, the band Rancid were there as well, for a wedding as it turned out, and I got to meet Lars just before meeting Robert. I've written about meeting the Cure here, but as an addendum to that I will just say that I didn't do anything I thought I would do when meeting Robert in particular. Which is to say, I didn't faint, puke, fall over, scream, die or turn blue from holding my breath. I also managed not to pinch myself, pinch Robert, run screaming or cry.
Although I did do almost all of those immediately after meeting him. I'm pretty sure that I held a reasonably coherent sort of conversation and didn't babble TOO terribly aimlessly, although that part is still a bit fuzzy. I vaguely remember asking him to sign my arm, which of course also turned into a year-plus Cure tattoo project, commencing within an hour of getting his signature on my skin. Hindsight being what it is and all, I kicked myself later for not asking Porl and Simon for theirs as well. I guess those will be coming later, eh?

So once we'd found a tattoo parlor and indelibly inked my Robert autograph, we went home, changed quickly and went down to the E-Center. I'm not even entirely sure what went on with our seats, as we had section BB and seats 13-14 which should have been located directly in front of Robert. However we ended up pushed all the way over to the other side of Simon, and that was that. The show was of course a great one, with Robert sounding much stronger than at Red Rocks, and also with some really nice rarities like Other Voices (prescient!) and A Letter to Elise.



Following the show, we went around to the back of the venue to wait for the bus to come out with other fans and this was the first time that we got to meet BC! All in all it was a tremendously exciting couple of days and a great start to my Anuus Mirabilis!