Underneath the Stars

Other Voices - Cure Members' Copies Update

2011-12-10T11:33:00.011-07:00

I'm very pleased to let everyone know that copies of the Other Voices books have been given to all of the currently active members of The Cure and also to original member Laurence (Lol) Tolhurst. I would love to give a copy to Porl (whose status with the band is unknown?) and to the ex-Cure members, so that's going to be a future part of this project.Thanks immensely once again to all the awesome contributors to the book, you really helped make it into an outstanding "thank you" letter to the band.

I found it to be highly appropriate and even somewhat poetic that the copies were given to the guys during the Reflections shows celebrating their first three albums, given that the original book was given to Robert shortly before the 30th Anniversary date of the release of Three Imaginary Boys.

And for those of you wondering, YES I did get to ask Robert about getting the original copy of the book, when we met him in Sydney! (He got it.)

Without further ado, here are the photos of the book being given to the various members!

In Sydney Australia, May 31, 2011 - just prior to the first Reflections show. With me are April (Lostwishes) and Chris (Curejunkie), both contributors to the book, and Paivi (Spiggy):

Lol, Roger and Simon get their books:

Left to Right: April, Chris, Lol, Rev, Roger, Paivi

Rev and Simon

I didn't manage to get a pic of Simon with his book, but he DID get it at this time!

Paivi,Rev, Robert, April, Chris

Robert already has the original, but we took a pic with him anyway, who wouldn't?

Below, Jason gets his copy of the book at the third night of Reflections in LA on Nov. 23rd, 2011:

Jason Cooper in LA

Here are the dedications written in the front of each book. I did one similar in Jason's book but did not have time to photograph it, sorry! Also there was a "This copy provided by:" blurb in the back of each one listing all of the wonderful, generous people who made donations so that I could buy the books for the band members.

Also as a side note to Jason, I'm so sorry we weren't able to give you your copy in Oz, and I apologize if you felt left out. The problem was solely economic, as the books are $100 each, I just didn't have enough money to buy four copies prior to the Reflections shows. So since it was Simon's birthday, and I didn't know if I'd see Roger and Lol again, I had a hard decision to make about the three books that I brought. I hope you weren't too upset! Much love and respect to you!

Tim Burton & the Nightmare Before Curemas

2011-03-17T00:17:00.003-06:00

True confession time: I have NO IDEA why I didn't blog the heck out of this when it happened. I'll blame it on the migraines. Or the summer heat (back in June 2010, which was like, NINE months ago). Whatever. In fact it only occurred to me to put it down tonight! I supposed it had to gestate or something.

So, you all know and love the story of the Nightmare Before Curemas shirt, right? How I made the design and then miraculously ended up being able to give them to the band, and then getting an awesome signed one in return? (Thank you forever and ever KU!) No? If you missed out you can read about it here.

Did you know that Tim Burton has ALSO seen and signed a Nightmare Before Curemas shirt? True story. But, alas, it didn't happen to me, it happened to Fuji! One fine day late last June, I got a little notice on my phone that I had been tagged in a photo.

THIS Photo, to be specific:

The photo of course is Fuji's Nightmare Before Curemas teeshirt (taken while he was wearing it), with Mr. Burton's signature right smack there in the middle. You see, Fuji, being an Australian and living in Melbourne, "the best city in the world" was able to go to the grand opening of Tim Burton's exhibit which was at that the ACMI in Melbourne. At one point, there was a red carpet of sorts, and the fans (including Fuji, of course), were lined up along the sides. When Tim Burton walked by, he happened to notice Fuji standing there, and walked over to him and said "That's a cool shirt!" to which Fuji could only reply "God Bless Robert Smith".

A few days after this post, a video of the moment surfaced (it's right at the beginning here) where you can actually HEAR Tim Burton and Fuji both, and you can see Tim walk over to the side line where he signs Fuji's chest. A big moment for me, but obviously, a much much bigger moment for Fuji since he was the one getting the very up close and personal autograph.

I still get more than a little giddy when I think about the fact that BOTH of the amazing godlike geniuses that were together at the NME awards show have seen and signed a Nightmare Before Curemas shirt.

Robert Smith accepts the NME Godlike Genius Award from Tim Burton in Feb. 2009.

(Tim is all the way to the right of the frame)

The best part about this story is that this was the SECOND time that Fuji had gotten an autograph on his chest while wearing a teeshirt that I made! The first time was in April of 2009, when he met Simon Gallup in Las Vegas and got his signature on the "Simon Gallup Kicks Ass" South Park style shirt. Both photos were also taken by Brad, so I am guessing that this is the magic combination for Fuji to meet celebrities.

( Simon Gallup and Fuji. Teeshirt by me. Photo by Brad)

Thanks again Fuji, for sharing some of the blessed life that you lead, and for being a standout guy wherever you go. Happy Birthday again!

The Cure Kick Ass Stickers!

2010-04-22T13:13:00.002-06:00

Do the Cure Kick ASS? Yes, yes they do.

Just in time for Robert's birthday
Just in time for the 201st episode of South Park (with Robert Smith!)
Just in time to rock your socks off

Now you can get a limited edition high quality gloss vinyl sticker of my own personal homage to The Cure and Robert Smith's appearance on South Park. This design is my own drawing of the Cure as they would appear as South Park characters.

Look closely and you'll see just how finely detailed this drawing is, from the design on Porl's guitar to the stickers on Robert's guitar, to Simon's forearm tattoo, this artwork was drawn by a true Cure fan. The sticker is 3" x 4" and was created with silkscreen ink on a very high quality UV laminated outdoor glossy vinyl so it will live happily for years on your laptop, car or anywhere else you'd like it to be. You can see the difference in ink thickness on the photos below, these suckers will last and last without fading. Since I want these to last on MY car, I made sure to create only the best so that they will last for you too!

Plus, this sticker comes with a small "cell phone size 1" square" bonus sticker featuring my "Robert is my Homeboy" design!

The stickers are 3.99 each and shipping in the USA is only .75. Shipping internationally is 1.50. These prices are for up to 2 stickers, if you want more than this, please email me at curehalo@gmail.com and I can give you the pricing.

Happy Curechella-versary!

2010-04-19T15:25:00.001-06:00

One year ago today, it was Curechella. The Cure were at Coachella and the Cure fans that hadn't already gone home after the Pearl Theater show were making their way to Indio, CA.

Something I didn't mention in my last blog post, which some may not know, was that one of the reasons for the high anticipation regarding these shows was that they were immediately before Robert Smith's 50th birthday on April 21st, 2009 and just weeks before the 30th Anniversary of the official release of The Cure's first album, Three Imaginary Boys on May 8, 1979. There was a semi-coordinated effort to sing "Happy Birthday" to Robert at the Pearl, but with the sudden end of the show, the celebratory mood had been severely dampened. So when the sun rose on the day of the Coachella show, we literally didn't know what would happen!

Some of the most die-hard among us had already staked their claim front and center and were sweltering through the hot April day in extreme Southern California in order to be close to The Cure during their set. We had a leisurely breakfast in Las Vegas and then drove through the very scenic and deserted Mojave National Preserve and the Joshua Tree National Park on our way down to Indio.

We arrived at Coachella and found parking, bought teeshirts, found a few of our Cure friends and got ready for the show! We did not have much trouble getting up close to the stage as people were leaving throughout the set and we ended up about 4 rows back from the front on Porl's side of the stage as we had been at the Pearl.

Hearing the waves break and roll into "Underneath the Stars" while actually out under the stars again was a huge treat, and for the most part the set was a repeat of the show at the Pearl. Did anyone else notice the inclusion of Wrong Number where the songs had been messed up at the Pearl? We thought it was a nice little insider joke from the band.

Of course, no mention of The Cure's set at Coachella would be complete without telling the story of the end. While we were all enjoying the show, the topic of the encores was pretty fraught with anticipation, since they had been interrupted mid-encore two nights before at the Pearl. Some sharp-eyed fans noted how swollen Robert Smith's right hand was, but nobody knew what had happened at the Pearl, or what was going to happen at Coachella. All bets were off. So as the main set finished and the guys launched into the same set of encores as at the Pearl, we were all holding our breath. Would we finally get to see the show finished with "Faith"?

The anticipation levels were sky-high. The band seemed to be in a very good mood, so we thought it seemed like a good omen. However, we were all aware that the curfew for Sunday night was midnight, and it was rapidly approaching. So when the first encore started, we were happy and relieved, it was happening! We swayed and sighed and closed our eyes to listen to "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" and watched in awe as Robert made his guitar scream through "The Kiss", despite a visible injury.

Then, a pause, holding our breaths again. It was now several minutes past curfew. A collective sigh of relief came when "At Night" began, and The Cure worked their way through the "Seventeen Seconds" encore. We cheered and laughed and bounced our way through "M" and "Play For Today" and clapped at all the right moments during "A Forest".

Once more came the tension, even greater now. The clock was ticking, and every minute past midnight would cost the organizers money. Would they come back? Uncertainty reigned and we stood there craning our necks toward the stage as some discussions took place between small knots of people to the right of the stage. This was the moment that we missed at the Pearl. No third encore, no Faith. Suddenly, the band launched into "Three Imaginary Boys" and the crowd exploded in cheers. Without pausing, they ripped through "Fire in Cairo" and we cheered louder and longer. Then the familiar melody of "Boys Don't Cry" came, and we danced harder. Suddenly the large video monitors and speakers on the sides of the stage went black. The crowed booed loudly, but the Cure still played on! Thousands of people sang along to the end of the song and they jumped right into "Jumping Someone Else's Train". Unfortunately, fewer people knew the words to this, so they listened to what they could hear coming from the stage monitors. The song ended, and there was hesitation on stage, but Robert was not to be stopped! He got Jason started on the drums and walked to the front of the stage, encouraging the crowd to sing along. Finally, he gave up and dropped his guitar into the lap of someone sitting at the front of the pit.

Personally, I've never heard of any show where the Cure was cut off like that as a headliner, ever. Even during the infamous "F*(& Robert Palmer" video they did not get the plug pulled like this. Does anyone out there know if this was the first time? I'd love to hear about it if they were.

The fact that they tried so hard to give us the encores was incredible, and for weeks afterward I could only describe it with one word. EPIC. When I got back to Utah early on Tuesday morning the 21st of April 2009, it was Robert Smith's 50th birthday that day, and a Belgian radio station was doing a special show about it. Having a connection to a Cure fan that had submitted a page for the 30th Anniversary book, I was interviewed for the radio show on that day just as I had awoken from a very short sleep after a very long weekend, and all I could say about it was EPIC. And it was. I'm glad I got to see it, and I know a lot of people who wish they had.

Here's my video of the end, and there are a lot more videos of this moment out there that you can see in the related videos. Watch for yourself and see just how EPIC it was!

Here's a set of about nine hundred pics of that night from various peeps on Flickr:

Finally happy birthday to Ms. Plainsong who got this show for her birthday present last year!!

Happy Pearlaversary!

2010-04-16T15:59:00.000-06:00

One year ago today, the Cure peeps convened at the Rio in Las Vegas for a party of f*(&1#% EPIC proportions.

The next morning, a few of the hung over, jetlagged, travel weary and beautiful people crammed themselves (literally) into two or three cars, narrowly avoided being pulled over, got stuck in Vegas strip traffic, and finally gathered in front of the Las Vegas sign to take a photo (whose brilliant idea was that?) before staggering back to the hotel to get ready for the Cure-stalking that would take place throughout the afternoon. Some of them were even from Australia.

And finally, the Cure went onstage. There are about six hundred photos of that so I'm just gonna do a slideshow here:

And there was much anticipation regarding a certain book about the 30th Anniversary being given to Robert, (alas!) but the show ended early, to much despair and speculation.

Finally, I took a crapload of video that night, and so did a lot of other people. Start watching here:

I love you, my Cure peeps!

Ode to the Troubadour

2009-12-10T16:13:00.006-07:00

The Cure's Myspace Secret Show at the Troubadour on Saturday, Dec. 13th, 2008 is a day that will live forever for those of us lucky enough to be there! I personally consider it to be one of my Cure miracles, of which there were many in 2008, but this show shares the top miracle slot only with my experience of meeting the Cure in person for the first time.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that a year has passed since this fateful weekend. As so many of our lives have entwined with this show, I have created this blog post as a way to collect everything that I could find or think of to post about it, so that we can keep all of this info in one place. If I'm missing anything, please let me know and I'll be happy to add it here.

I also want to say again that I am eternally grateful to the wonderful Cure fans that I met there in Los Angeles and for those of you from the CoF boards that I had the opportunity to meet before that weekend. You all are the reason that this will be my number one show ever, from the support that we offered each other to the memories we shared, I will cherish all of you as my Cure family. The only thing that could make experiencing a gig like this even better is the knowledge that you have good friends to talk about it with for the rest of your lives.

Without further ado, here is my little digital shrine to the Troubadour show.

Original Myspace Secret Shows Announcement

Audio Downloads

BC recording in 24 bit or 16 bit

Official Release of The Cure's Secret Show on Myspace

My blog posts about the show

A Curemas Miracle
12:13 Dream - An Evening with The Cure

Other blogs / posts about the show

We only go out at night / Cotton (kittencult) / Ramble Ramble!

COF Reviewers / Curiouser and Curiouser / Impression of Sounds (graphic)

minisuperjennifer / Studio Glyphic / LA Times / Reuters / LA Weekly

Glossolalia / NME / Clash Music / Absolute Punk (forum post)

Cure Concerts Guide / Boys are Forever Drowning... listing

Alt Sounds / Buzznet - Best live shows of 2008 / Bernard Albrecht

Comingsoon.net (forum post, pics) / Coachella (forum post, lots of pics)

CoF Live Show Commentary

Articles about the show

Plug In Music / All Headline News / Live Daily / AntiMusic

Articles about the Live Album Release

Web In Front - The Cure Live at the Troubadour (podcast)

Undercover / Pitchfork

Video

Underneath The Stars

Pictures of You 1 / Pictures of You 2

Lullaby Part 1 / Part 2

alt.end

Reasons Why / Reasons Why (short)

The Walk 1 / The Walk 2

Lovesong

Real Snow White

Hungry Ghost

Andy rocks out to Wrong Number

Freakshow 1 / Freakshow 2 / Freakshow 3

Let's Go To Bed

Close To Me 1 / Close To Me 2 / Close to Me 3

Why Can't I Be You 1 / Why Can't I Be You 2

A Forest

Boys Don't Cry 1 / Boys Don't Cry 2

Jumping Someone Else's Train

Grinding Halt

10:15 Saturday Night

Killing An Arab / Killing An Arab 2

Fans in the alley at the Troubadour

The Cure leave the Troubadour

Youtube accounts with Troubadour Videos

imapixie1 / Lyndsey LA / mmmmpopmuzik / issuesmg
ThatCrazyCureGirl / caterpillargrrl
HaloCure (after the concert)

Photos

My pics - Troubadour / Curemas Weekend (all)

MySpace Secret Shows / Day 19 / Getty Images / COF
KelBel / Myspace Secret Shows on Flickr / Shesaidboom
marcusdarling (crowd photos only) /phot0matt (wristbands)
glyphic / Traci

The Troubadour

It goes without saying that this legendary club would be the perfect setting for this secret show. It seems that are pretty proud of this event as well, and have updated their History page on their website to include The Cure's set.

For those who are reading this who are unaware of the history of the Troubadour, this small unassuming club in West Hollywood, California has been around since 1957 and has helped to launch some of modern music's biggest, most influential and best-known acts. Read that history page linked above for the whole scoop.

CoF Peeps who went to the Troubadour show
(I'm sorry if I forgot anyone, I don't know every CoF peep,
so please let me know if I missed your name and I'll be glad to add you in here!)

Rev. / Sean / Sugargirl / CrowbiWan / AutumnJade / Andythecurefan
Clockwise Cat / curejunkie / Sara B / Brandon / Steph / Debi / JeffLove
Laura / ThatCrazyCureGirl / Xyla / Maggie

Celebrities at the show

Kirsten Dunst / Gerard Way / Trey Parker "Disintegration is the best album ever!"

Brent Bolthouse / Jared Leto / Tom Anderson / Chris DeWolfe / Eliza Dushku

Nick Wheeler / Tyson Ritter / Brandon Flowers / Ronnie Vannucci

Hayley Williams / Chad Gilbert / Lukas Haas / Laurence Tolhurst

Leonardo DiCaprio / Ryan Gosling / Davey Havok (spotted, no photos found)

Paparazzi / Photographers

Day 19 / Frank Micelotta

The Concert Poster

Series of 450 (I have #278) - 3 color on 100# Natural paper
Created by Vahalla Studios - http://www.vahallastudios.com/

Looks like you can buy one at their site too! The poster artist has told me that the posters that they have for sale on their are the artist proofs that they received from Myspace. They are part of the same series as the ones given away at the show, but they are labeled with "AP" instead of being numbered as part of the 450. They were printed during the same run as the ones given out.

12:08 Dream Teeshirts

Available at the Troubadour event as well as at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas show the next day, 12/14. You can see more detailed photos of the shirts in my Flickr set here.

Event Staff Teeshirts

(Photo courtesy of and thanks to Kelly R. Photography)

Teeshirts with the poster lightbulb on the front and "12:13 Dream, an evening with The Cure" printed on the back were given to the staff at the event as well as to a very FEW LUCKY fans! It has been reported through the grapevine that only about 50 of these teeshirts were printed. If anyone has one of these they would like to sell, please contact me as I am an avid teeshirt collector! :D

The Swag Bag

Given away after the concert, these bags mostly contained promotional items for the Toyota Matrix, one of the show's sponsors, a magazine and CD from Filter and a new copy of The Cure's 4:13 Dream CD which had a small hole drilled in one corner to disable retail selling of the CD. You can see more detailed photos of the swag bag contents in my Flickr set here.

The Wristband

A beautiful sparkly metallic glitter red with The Cure and Myspace logos printed on it in white. Word of mouth reports estimated between 130-150 wristbands given out, the exact number is not confirmed. Once we received the wristband, we were told to scatter and not come back until 7 pm or our wristband would be cut off (said menacingly by a large man bearing scissors).

The Big Hand Speaks

2009-11-09T01:13:00.013-07:00

During the Wish tour in 1992, I was 23 years old. I lived in a big old house with many roommates in the heart of Salt Lake City, and made the princely sum of $4.50 per hour while working as a signmaker's apprentice, which was slightly less than full time work. I owned a beat-up blue Dodge Colt hatchback from 1985 named Zippy, and spent much of that summer fixing it in my driveway. Still, it was a fun summer and when the Cure landed in Salt Lake City it was a dream come true, as I had only seen them once before. I bought a ticket for the show and went with my then-boyfriend where we perched on the very top level of the newly-built Delta Center arena. At that time, since money was in short supply in my life, I opted to buy the tour book instead of the teeshirt at the merchandise booth after the show. Since I did this for most of the shows that I attended back in those days (tour book vs. teeshirt) it has only been in the past ten years or so that I've actually been able to buy all of those teeshirts that I missed out on due to being broke, via Ebay of course.

So when I saw this original tour teeshirt go on sale on Ebay recently, I added it to my collection. In the case of this particular shirt, I have seen it before, but it wasn't until I had it in my own hands that I happened to notice just HOW detailed the hand print is on the back. And as I was noticing this, I automatically began to think to myself "hmm, heart line is chained, head line..." etc. and then it hit me. - OMG! I can read Robert's palm!

So, all of the folks that just rolled their eyes should probably just stop reading right here. I do believe in palmistry (and also astrology, tarot cards and other things that are deemed to be "unscientific". ) I also adore science and physics and technology, but I don't believe that either of the two sides has all the answers for anything in life. And no, I'm not going to waste my time or yours arguing about the validity of my beliefs vs. your beliefs. So, like I said, if you don't want to read about my palm reading here, it's probably best to close that browser window and move on.

Still with me? Ok! Let's go. You may first want to open the large size of this photo so that you can follow along with the reading. I've indicated the various lines and features in red as a guide so that you can look at the correct line in the larger photo. You should also keep in mind that there are many different ways to read a palm, with some people placing emphasis on different lines or mounts than others may, so please be aware that for the purpose of this article I will only read the "basic" lines and mounts of the palm without paying much attention to the secondary or more esoteric lines, mounts, rings or markings.

Robert's Hand

Obviously, my first assumption was that this was a print of Robert's hand, however, I wanted to make certain of this before I continued. You may be asking yourself "How are you going to figure that out?" and indeed, it took a while before I hit upon the evidence I needed. I looked at tons of photos and videos, and then finally I remembered another occasion where Robert put his hand print on something - the Rockwalk event! A short flickr search later and I turned up this great high-resolution photo of the Cure's hand prints set in concrete in 2004.

Photo by 2harborview

Overlaid with teeshirt photo - Click to view larger

If you open the larger size of the overlaid photo, you can see how well the teeshirt matches the concrete print. That being said, I'm very certain now that this is indeed Robert's hand print on the teeshirt. So essentially, I have a great big detailed and enlarged copy of his hand print to work from to do the reading. Some readers have a preference as to which hand they like to read, but as both the teeshirt print and the concrete hand print are both of his right hand, that's what we have to work with here so we'll go with it.

The photo of the concrete handprint also gives me a good sense of the three dimensional nature of his hand as well, giving me some much needed clues as to the depth or height of the various mounts. (What are "mounts"? Mounts are the raised areas on the palm, such as the bulge near the base of the thumb.) I also used several photographs of Robert's hand such as this one below for reference to the height of the mounts.

Hand Type

One of the first things that palm readers look for is the shape of the hand and fingers themselves. Robert's hand type is known as a Square, Practical or Ordinary hand. The palm is square and the fingers are even widths and neither too long or too short as compared to the palm size, nor are the fingers tapering, knobby or spatulate. This type of hand shows a person who seems to be very down to earth and likes most of all to be practical about everything. They are very grounded and can be stubborn at times. This person's driving force is to understand completely what is real, what is seen and what can be experienced. If they cannot see it, touch it, smell it or hold it, then it may as well not exist. These people are the ultimate pragmatists. Many people with this hand type make a living by doing something with their hands such as carpentry, plumbing or pottery, so it is not too much of a stretch to say that Robert makes a living with his hands as well!

The Lines

Heart Line

The heart line begins on the outside of the palm near the top and runs inward almost to the mount of Jupiter located under the index finger, and is read to gain insight into the emotional makeup of an individual. A strong upward curve away from the center of the palm in this handprint indicates that Robert is very interested in "affairs of the heart" and is also very romantic, driven by passion and lust in those aforementioned matters of the heart. The chain pattern within the heart line can be seen as a series of heartbreaks or emotional disturbances throughout his life. I find it extremely interesting that in the teeshirt graphic, the symbol of the moon, traditionally associated with emotions and "mood swings" is placed squarely on the Heart line.

Head Line

The Head line is read to gain insight into the intellect and thinking patterns of an individual. The most notable thing about the Head line here is it's separation from the Life line just below it. The head line is deep and well defined, indicating an intellectual deep thinker, which of course we know from Robert's lyrics and music already! However one thing that is very interesting about the separation of the Head line from the Life line, is that it can indicate someone who can be moody, distant and even dreamy. The feeling of disconnection of the intellect (Head) from the body (Life) is something that many people with this rarer formation often mention. People with this line formation will often neglect or abuse their bodies or fail to take care of their physical needs in favor of their intellectual desires. This characteristic also produces people who are fiercely independent and can be impulsive, particularly when it comes to ideas. This is a person who can get carried away with an idea without thinking through all the ramifications, despite the innate practicality of the Square hand shape. The curve downward in the Head line also indicates a very creative and artistic person (of course, we knew that too). Finally, although it can be very indicative of someone who is a daydreamer, the space between the Head and Life lines is also seen by many palm readers as a sign of someone who is extremely lucky in their life and pursuits.

Life Line

This line represents the physical life and well being of any individual. The Life line can be read as a literal interpretation of the progression of a person's life, with health, illness, vitality, longevity and life force all on display in the palm. The line is read from where it starts at the thumb side of the palm as representing birth, then on through childhood and young adulthood and down to old age toward the wrist. The great news for Cure fans is that Robert's Life line is extremely strong, defined and deep, without any sign of serious health issues at all. However, I must note that the lines representing the later years of his life (I would say past 60-70 on this life line) are obscured by the cut-out C on the teeshirt design. However, you can see the ending of the Life line just under the bottom of the C, which means that it reaches or nearly reaches the edge of the wrist. That's a good sign. :D Without being able to see the bottom part of the Life line, it is only a guess, but barring any extreme breaks in this area of the Life line, I would venture to say that Robert will be in good health for most of his life and will have a long and vigorous old age. Whether that will translate into another ten or so albums or tours is a little murkier, unfortunately! The prominent lines which rise upward from the Life line speak to moments of great inspiration and clarity which have occurred throughout his life.

Fate Line

Ironically, one of the only lines in the palm that you don't necessarily want to have a thick and distinct line is the Fate line. This is because the stronger the line, the more controlled by Fate your life will seem to be. The more indistinct the line, the more you will be in control of your own destiny. However, there is a fine balance between those energies, because a missing Fate line indicates that your life will be full of Chaos and you will feel almost tossed by the wind and the Furies. In this case, a light touch of Fate goes a long ways, and almost everyone needs a little of that energy in their lives. The Fate line is also read as a timeline in a similar fashion as the Life line, and one of the most intriguing things on Robert's palm is the fork that the Fate line takes as it reaches up toward the Head line. Reading from the bottom, this line seems to come some time between the ages of 50-60, and seems to display a moment of destiny that will come to Robert during this time span. This is a moment where he will have to choose one circumstance over another, and the outcome is by no means clear, as both options are viable. This is the reason that the Fate line disappears into nothingness after this choice, as the final outcome is highly dependent on this choice that he will have to make. Another palmistry resource has this to say about a fork which radiates toward the Mount of Venus (toward the thumb) as this one does: "A fork pointing towards the Mount of Venus is indicative of a person with very strong musical and literary pursuits. These people will almost always achieve celebrity status." Indeed. Robert's Fate line is pretty well defined, which indicates to me that he has had a lot of lucky coincidences and synchronistic occurrences in his life which have added to his success. The intervention of Fate in his life has brought him a few more opportunities than an average person, while still allowing him the free will to accept or reject them as he saw fit.

Although there are many other lines that one can explore in a reading, for the sake of brevity I will conclude the "lines" portion here and move on to the Mounts.

Mount of Jupiter

Going on both the evidence from the print and the concrete casting, the area just under the index finger is raised considerably higher and is more pronounced than the other mounts on the hand. A strong Mount of Jupiter says that he is a natural leader, not afraid to take charge of things and be the boss, even if the decisions he makes are not always popular or understood. The self confidence indicated by a strong Mount of Jupiter makes him his own best adviser, and he is not easily swayed by others' opinions. From the strong impression on the teeshirt as well as the depth of this area on the concrete casting, it is apparent that the Mount of Jupiter is one of the most prominent features of Robert's handprint, and as such, one of the most important. The height of the topography here makes it clear that Robert is fulfilling his destiny as a vital figure in history, and some palm readers even believe that a very prominent Mount of Jupiter indicates an almost godlike being. The legions of Cure fans worldwide may attest to the accuracy of this interpretation.

Mount of Saturn

Although the Mount of Saturn (the next mount over from Jupiter, underneath the second finger) is obscured on the print with the red and black symbol, you can see from the concrete casting that this mount is also fairly well developed and prominent. The height of this mount can be read as someone who is very single-minded and driven to a sole purpose in life. People with this formation very often throw themselves into their work with sometimes fanatical purpose. The Mount of Saturn also indicates the amount of wisdom with which the individual approaches their life, which is supported by the other signs in the hand of the pragmatic, practical and down to earth energies which are present in Robert's life.

Mount of Apollo

The Mount of Apollo (or the Mount of the Sun) in Robert's hand is less-developed than the other mounts, and also contains one of the most prominent palmistry markings on his hand. Finding a grid pattern on any hand is generally seen as draining the energy of the hand, and depending on where it is placed, can indicate through which avenue that energy is being drained. So the interesting dilemma of Robert's palm is that although he is a very successful person, the grid on his Mount of Apollo, which is the mount of success in life, means that his success is actually the biggest drain of his energy. This reflects the uneasy relationship that he has with his own success, and the way in which he is most likely left exhausted and drained by the weight of his own achievements. The Mount of Apollo also represents our "sunny" side, or the amount of optimism that is present in our worldview. From this configuration, I have to conclude that optimism when it is present in Robert's life is most likely short-lived, through the action of the grid pattern, with positive cheerfulness quickly drained and replaced with more pessimistic thoughts. This is not to say that he cannot be cheerful, optimistic or sunny, but that when he does have these moods, they can be a bit more fleeting than with other people.

Mount of Venus

The Mount of Venus is located at the base of the thumb, near the bottom of the palm. A well-rounded and developed Mount of Venus such as this means that Robert is a person who is constantly aware of and appreciative of the beauty around him. This area speaks of someone who is deeply interested in the sensual side of life, in all it's aspects, from food to art to the luxury of pleasurable physical sensation and sexuality. Persons with a prominent Mount of Venus are the people who revel in the physical side of life and love to explore new tastes, new feelings and new experiences. They enjoy physical sensations such as massage, swimming, sauna, and other things which allow them to feel with their largest sense organ, their skin. They also enjoy comfortable clothing and nice-feeling fabrics next to their skin, and will usually immediately remove any clothing they put on which feels uncomfortable, confining or harsh. The way things feel is very important to someone with a well developed Mount of Venus.

Mount of Luna (Mount of the Moon)

The Mount of Luna is the area that is examined for clues to the person's emotional, imaginative and creative energies. Someone who is lacking in creativity or emotionality will have a Mount of Luna which is almost or entirely flat. Obviously, in Robert's palm we have the exact opposite. A full, rounded Mount of Luna shows us that he is someone who despite his rationality, logic and practicality is bursting with emotion, imagination and creativity. The Mount of Luna shows us that he has a rich inner life where he can escape to when the world gets too harsh. Indeed the Mount of Luna being very developed as it is here shows us that Robert is someone who is extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, and probably has little to no interest in fighting, arguing or violence and does everything he can to avoid it in his life. One drawback to having a large Mount of Luna is that he can get caught up too much in his own dream world or fantasies, and may have a hard time returning to the real world of bills, decisions and difficulty. Occasionally this can lead to many projects begun but not finished, and goals dreamed of but never attained.

Final Analysis

Looking at all of the evidence gathered, it is clear that here is a person who can almost work at cross purposes to himself in many ways. Although much of his hand shows someone who is very grounded, practical, deeply intellectual and logical, he can also succumb to the dreamy, fantastical world of his own imagination and creativity. He seems to be someone who appreciates a concise and methodical way of living in the world, but at the same time, enjoys the occasional foray into numinous unreality. Most of all, this palm print reveals someone who is complex and may often find his thoughts and dreams at odds with his desires and his actions. He may experience many times where he is pulled in two directions at once, for instance, he may wish to live somewhat austerely, which may appeal to his logical, grounded self, but at the same time, desire to have somewhat luxurious surroundings which appeal to his sensual, imaginative side.

Ultimately, the fact that these inner struggles have produced some of the most amazing music and lyrics are to the benefit of all of us fans worldwide, and hopefully will continue to do so for many years to come!

The Cure for Halloween

2009-10-20T00:13:00.010-06:00

This time of year is a favorite season for many Cure fans in the Northern Hemisphere as the weather begins to evoke some of our favorite Cure songs. The trees lose their leaves and the earth begins to chill, eerie mists fill the air and the sun hides behind a low, gray blanket of clouds. Beginning with the early brooding intensity of the first dark trilogy of Faith, Seventeen Seconds and Pornography, the Cure know how to evoke the emotions that come to us at of the onset of fall and early winter, and have captured some of the darkest nightmares of our psyches in musical format.

Since the atmosphere around Halloween is a perfect match for this music, I have brought together 31 of my favorite songs which speak to me of all of those haunted memories. This collection is naturally heavy on that early dark trilogy, however not all Cure albums are represented. There's not much Halloween feeling on Wish, for instance!

I have tried to stay true to the emotions that are with us the most at this time of year, choosing songs that speak of terrors, of blood, fear, despair, lust, nightmares and monsters. Death and decay are also popular themes in these choices, as are the shadowy figures of ghosts, spirits and yes, even the spider-man.

Most of all, these songs speak to me of the lonely journey of the soul through the dark night of the year. When the cold begins to surround us, it is a natural response to turn our minds inward, and begin to look closely at the things which frighten us the most, so that they will lose their power over us.

I hope you will enjoy this playlist and please let me know what you think! What songs would you choose besides these ones? What are your top 31 Halloween Cure songs? Feel free to leave your list in the comments.

A Cure Fan Wedding, Part 1

2009-10-09T16:13:00.007-06:00

This is the story of a friendship, and how it's grown throughout the years, and how that friendship would have been impossible without the Cure. It's also the story of one awesome Cure fan's wedding for those that know and love him and weren't able to be there.

In the beginning...

The three Cure-sketeers

So, for many years I was a hardcore Cure fan, but didn't really know any others (with the exception of my wonderful husband) who were really as into the band as I was. Somehow, even though I'd been online for years, it didn't occur to me to actually go looking for other people who shared that particular passion, even though I read Chain of Flowers on a pretty regular basis.

However, some time very early in 2002, I discovered there was a Yahoo group dedicated to the Cure (called Procure) and joined it, discovering that there were regular weekly chats, (This being the origin of Friday Night Cure Chat in my world) and started participating. Sometimes there were a lot of people in the room, but many nights, it seemed to come down to just three people, myself, Fuji and Miss Throwing Shapes.

We chatted together nearly every week and began shaping this friendship bond between the three of us, which we all share very strongly to this day. In 2003, we were able to meet Shapes and her hubby at the Inland Invasion show in California, and in 2004, Fuji traveled to the US with his new girlfriend to attend several of the Curiosa tour shows, and this was our first introduction to Fuji in person, and thankfully not the last. For many years, these two people were my only "Cure peeps", but fortunately that changed last year, and how!

More Cure peeps...

Skipping ahead a few years, I've already blogged about how the Chain of Flowers blog comments became a way for fans to meet each other, and many friendships have been started because of that specific forum. It has been so great to have a huge crowd of Cure peeps to travel with and experience shows with, and it's been amazing to meet so many wonderful people over the past year or so. However we meet each other, it seems to me that Cure fans can form a special bond through the mutual appreciation of the music and meaning of The Cure, and this past year's experience is no exception. This bond was one of the ways that many of us were able to travel to the NME awards shows and the Las Vegas show, (photo right, CoF peeps at the Las Vegas sign in April 09) through mutual assistance and sharing of resources such as accommodation and transportation. It's wonderful to be a part of such a caring network of people, and it was obvious throughout the many shows that we shared that generosity and love are the norm for most fans (which is part of why it shocks me so tremendously when I see people acting selfishly and aggressively at Cure concerts, it just doesn't jibe with my experiences)

Fuji and the Bride

One of the most generous and dedicated fans that I've ever met is this Australian fellow called Fuji. Those who have met him even once are always in awe of his love for other fans and the way that he can instantly make anyone feel at home. He is the person who has said to me repeatedly "Cure fans are the best people in the world", and then been the one who embodied that quote the most. He is one of the best people in the world, and as one who is privileged to call him a friend, I was completely honored to be able to participate in one of the most important days of his life, his wedding, to his beautiful and serene Bride, Melanie. I can honestly say that she is the calmest, most unruffled bride in the whole world, and Fuji is a lucky man for attracting someone as beautiful in spirit as he is. It was also such a blast to get to spend a week with some of the other best people in the world, fans like Elise, Shapes and Wendy and Chanell.

The Wedding Week

If you really know Fuji, then you know that AFL or "footy" is his other great love besides his Bride and his music, so miss Shapes decided to land a bit early to take in some of the festivities around the Grand Finals (the AFL super bowl) and I followed shortly after, landing on Saturday, the day of the big game. His lovely bride greeted me at the airport and then we went to a GF watching party where the Geelong Cats won against St. Kilda which apparently made Fuji happy (don't ask me, I'm not a sports fan!) but Shapes was rooting for St. Kilda so she wasn't as happy. Then we retired to the Fuji and the Bride's homestead for just a little bit of Trilogy played on his massive home theater (sorry Kel, it was only three songs!) and the ceremonial Yank Vegemite initiation, which I flunked but the lovely miss Shapes did not, and then off to bed we went.

We woke up on a rainy wet and cold Sunday and went off to downtown Melbourne for a peek at the first Costco in the Southern Hemisphere and then a tram tour of the city. Because the Costco had only been open for a month, there was a huge line to get a membership. We also walked around downtown Melbourne a little but it was too cold, windy and wet to do much touristy stuff, so we left downtown and went to a grocery story to stock up for favorite foodstuffs and piles of Aussie candy and of course Tim Tams. So basically, on Sunday we shopped. Then finally on Sunday night, Elise joined us at the homestead so it was a big Cure fan slumber party for the rest of the week that only got bigger and bigger as time wore on.

On Monday, we went off to the excellent Healesville Animal Sanctuary and drove through some of the most beautiful rolling green hills that you can imagine to get there. Healesville is an amazing place and we were very lucky to get to see some amazing animals here. In particular we were blessed with a visit to the koalas enclosure where we got to see a baby koala and his mother interact and feed together. This video is from Fuji's camera.

Following the sanctuary, we went to a local winery for some wine and cheese and then finally a drive through Fuji's home town of Eltham and dinner at Mexicali Casa before heading home.

Tuesday dawned a bit warmer and brighter than Monday had, and so we went off to St. Kilda Beach after a few wedding-related errands. St. Kilda Beach is the home of the historic Luna Park which originally opened in 1912 and although we didn't go inside the park, I had a great time photographic it's scenic wooden rollercoaster with the palm trees all around it. I also got my first taste of the Australian dessert favorite, pavlova , with many thanks to Sarah from India for this recommendation. It was yummy! Kel was supposed to arrive this day, Tuesday, but that is her story to tell someday about her adventures in getting to Australia and her trip through Fiji.

On Wednesday we added a few people to the wedding cohort when Wendy and her daughter Chanell arrived from Sydney and we moved from the homestead into the Plum apartments in Southbank, in downtown Melbourne. Two three-bedroom apartments on the top floor of an apartment block were now stuffed with Cure fans in anticipation of the big day. We got settled in and then met everyone for a big dinner on the riverbank and got our first introduction to the insanely cool fire fountains on the riverwalk. Yes I said FIRE FOUNTAINS. They are very cool and there are five of them which go off in synchronized patterns. Here's a youtube video I found that shows several of them.

We woke up very early on Thursday morning and went out on a tour of the Great Ocean Road which is an extremely windy road that hugs the coastline of Australia west of Melbourne for 243 km, and which encompasses some of the most scenic views that this area has to offer. One of the biggest attractions on the Great Ocean Road, besides the quaint villages and breathtaking coastline views is the limestone rock formations known as the 12 Apostles. Unfortunately there are a few less than 12 now due to erosion, with one falling only the week before we arrived. We had to cut our day a little short and get back to Melbourne quickly, as there was a special treat due at the wedding and a rehearsal was in order! During the rehearsal, Kel finally arrived in Melbourne after her epic journey across the Pacific and so we were able to welcome the last Cure peep to the cohort.

Friday was filled with the final preparations for the wedding and a short visit to the famed Queen Victoria's Market in downtown Melbourne. After collecting everyone together underneath the clocks at Flinders Street Station in downtown Melbourne and seeing the Robert Smith mural that Chanell had discovered in a vintage clothing store, we went off to the market. We wandered the stalls in search of souvenirs to take home and then struck off after the market visit in different directions each according to our own tastes and needs. Shapes and I went over to visit the famous Lightning Ridge Opals store which was very hard for me to leave due to my obsession with black opals. Finally, it was time to go back to the apartment for drinks and then over to Southbank again for a final pre-wedding dinner for Fuji.

Photo courtesy of Kelly (KellyR Photography)

You can see all of my pictures from this adventure here in the slideshow or just click on through to Flickr.

Part 2 coming soon!

Heron on Carson

2009-09-11T01:30:00.001-06:00

Heron on Carson
Originally uploaded by Dr Claw's keeper

One of my flickr friends noticed me in the audience on Carson Daly, it was repeated this week.

Anuus Mirabilis - My year of miracles

2009-06-19T18:19:00.003-06:00

The 12 months spanning May 2008 - May 2009 were undeniably the most pleasurably memorable stretch of 12 months in my entire life up to now. And although I will undoubtedly see the Cure many more times, the past year has been such an amazing collection of incredible experiences that it will be hard to top. It was, as the title of the post implies, an Anuus Mirabilis, a year of wonders, a year of miracles, a year where anything was possible.

I was just thinking about how this weekend will be a year since I saw the Cure on the Summer Solstice at Madison Square Garden, and how even at that moment I had NO idea what was to come in the months ahead. I realized that I haven't really written about it all, although there are bits and pieces here and there and so the idea for this blog post was born. After that show, I thought that was the end of my seeing the Cure for the year! But let's back up just a little and start over, and I apologize in advance that this will be a little long!

I've been a Cure fan since about 1984. It took me nearly 5 years to get to see them for the first time at Dodger Stadium on the Prayer Tour in 1989. For the 18 years between 1989 and 2007, I saw them a total of 9 times and considered that I was a lucky person to see them twice in both 2004 and 2007! Prior to 2008, I knew only a couple of the more "hardcore" fans very well and had traveled with them in 2003 and 2004 but had not really met that many other "diehards".

Then along came 2008.

I will start by saying that I've been a fan of the Chain of Flowers website since the late 90's, discovering it some time in 97 or 98, and checked it on an irregular basis. In the fall of 2001, after the first birthday of our daughter and after watching a terrible year's worth of bad news (I used to be a news junkie and actually had television in my house! Strange to think of, I know!) I basically thought to myself that the only news I cared to keep up with was news about the Cure.

So I switched my homepage on my browser from CNN to CoF, and there it stayed. A daily ritual of checking in with my favorite band and their comings and goings made for a peaceful and happy start to my day, as it still does. I was finally brave enough to send in a "Curespotting" in 2003 and started volunteering server space mirrors for the various audio and video files, but any involvement with the site was minimal. I watched though, always ready to hear about news of the Cure. I was REALLY happy when Craig decided to switch the format of the news to Blogger, but I don't think anyone really knew what that would mean for those of us that were fans of the site.

It began so slowly and grew so organically that would almost be hard to pinpoint when the comments on the blog began to take on a much greater meaning. The European shows were very time-offset compared to the US, so the catalyst was really when the Cure entered the US in May for the start of the US part of the tour. Each show setlist thread started to grow with commentary, and by the time that the 4-Tour reached Chicago, people from all around the world had started to tune in to the blog for the chance to chat with each other during the "live show" and comment on the set list as it arrived, and as the 4-Tour progressed, individual personalities began to emerge from the woodwork and interact with each other. Many of the people that would become important to my life later on in the year were those that I first met in the comments on the Chain of Flowers blog during the "show chats".

For our part, we started out with our original planned 2 dates to see them at Red Rocks and in Salt Lake City. We met the Cure just before their Salt Lake City show and I got my permanent autograph. We went to see them for the third time in 2008 in Sunrise, FL, and for the first time met some of the people that we had interacted with on the CoF blog.

Following the FL show, interacting with other people on CoF convinced and conspired to bring me to Madison Square Garden, where I recorded much of the soundcheck from an undisclosed location, then met a metric ton of Cure and CoF peeps and then got to the third row for an incredible show... and then thought that my Cure days for 2008 were done! The 4 Tour was officially over, and many of us that had met and interacted at shows and during the show chats were feeling a little, well, lost. So, the birth of the Meebo chat room was a direct result of the ending of the 4 Tour and the live show chats.

The rest of the summer and fall passed, mostly uneventfully, with the release of the rest of the singles and then the album release. I had passed the time by writing several Cure-related articles, and by designing another new teeshirt.

Then, on one otherwise uneventful evening in in November, it was less than two days before my 40th birthday when I got the news, the Cure were going to be taping shows in LA in December! I got the show tickets for the Carson Daly taping on Friday the 12th, and then when it was confirmed, we bought plane tix. However, we wouldn't be able to take enough time away to do the earlier show (Leno on Thursday the 11th) or the later taping (Jimmy Kimmel, on Monday the 15th) so I took a little bit of heat from my significant other over the idea that we were heading down to California for just one three-song concert. However, I asserted that since I was using the occasion as my 40th birthday present, it was my choice to go. Of course, this later turned out to be the best decision, like, ever, given that we just HAPPENED to be in LA for the now-legendary Secret Show at the Troubadour. And of course I got to give the Cure a batch of my Nightmare shirts and got a signed one back, (thank you so much forever, Keith!) but you can read about ALL of these adventures here, here and finally the actual 12:13 Dream show HERE.

The dust had barely begun to settle from the LA shows when the NME Awards were announced in London, and at first, I didn't even consider going. The economy was tanking, the holidays were just past, and everything was up in the air. The Coachella date wouldn't be announced until the end of January, and so it looked like the NME shows were the only game in town. Then more and more people were going, and the cost to go got smaller and smaller. Shared accommodation, shared transportation, meals at home, a week's pass for the Tube, reduced airfare due to the tanking economy and inexpensive show tickets sealed the deal, and before I knew it, I was spending a week in London. I got to see Tim Burton give Robert and the Cure the Godlike Geniuses award, and then stood at the front of the O2 Arena with 20,000 other people and a whole crowd of Cure peeps from all over the globe. Getting to see Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Bath, Avebury, Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall, Big Ben and scores of other sights with some of my favorite people on the planet just put the icing on the cake. These two shows marked the first time that I had ever traveled overseas for the Cure, and it was only due to the intense level of cooperation and coordination between a worldwide network of other fans that it even happened.

Speaking of Coachella, the Pearl show in Las Vegas just prior to the Coachella show had been announced while we were all in London for the O2 show, and you should have seen the panic when the US peeps realized that the announced ticket sale time was in the middle of the night in the UK! But of course we all took care of one another as we always do and eventually everyone had a ticket to what was hotly anticipated as the nearest thing to the Troubadour show that those who had missed it could imagine.

Somewhere in between the Troubadour show and deciding to actually go to London, I came up with the idea for the BOOK. Although the original plan was to give it to them at the NME awards, I think that the decision to wait and give it to them in April was the right one, as it really did allow a much greater level of participation and the end result was much more meaningful than it would have been, and I met so many amazing and wonderful fans through the project that it really took on a life of it's own.

So plans were made again and the fans converged on Las Vegas on one very warm weekend in April, and this time the reunion of the peeps was even more massive and heartwarming than the one before in London. Many CoF fans that had kept in touch via the Meebo chat were able to come together and for many, meet for the first time. We even managed to coordinate a group photo next to the Las Vegas sign! Although it was a disappointing ending that we now know was a bizarre fluke, the Pearl show rocked! And most of you know that story, as well as the incredible story of Coachella and some may have even read about the Belgian radio interview on Robert's 50th Birthday. The Other Voices book was successfully given to the Cure, and the hardcopy versions were created. Finally, on May 8th, 2009, the 30th anniversary of the release date of Three Imaginary Boys arrived.

And now sitting here in June of 2009, and looking back at those last 12 months, my heart is blown wide open with the amazingness of it all and how much everything has changed. I met the people that I've admired and loved for over a quarter of a century, in person, and have a permanent reminder of that day.

In the past 12 months I met more "diehard" Cure fans than I ever expected to meet. I've made some amazing friendships that I hope will be lifelong. Some of those are only now just beginning and others are deepening and becoming even more important, and there are even more people to meet and get to know better in the future.

I saw 10 shows in 12 months, and many of those have been with some of the most amazing people that I am now honored to call my friends. I've shared so many beautiful experiences with my wonderful husband, and had his solid support for those things that we could not share together.

And although these are not necessarily Cure-related, these events definitely added to the miraculous feel to the year. In August of 2008, I changed jobs to be in a much more supportive and appreciative environment. President Obama was elected in November of 2008, and later that month, I turned 40 years old. Over the week of Thanksgiving, we took our children on a family vacation and spent a week in the Florida Keys, where we were married in February of 2000 - it was the first time we had taken our children there. In April of 2009, I bought a VW Beetle, which has been my dream car for many years, and we took it on our big road trip to Vegas and Coachella.

Moving forward from now, I definitely consider the 12 months from May 2008 to May 2009 to be my Anuus Mirabilis, my most miraculous year to date. Thank you to the Cure for bringing us all together, and to everyone I've met and interacted with in the past year, thank you ALL for being the best Cure peeps on the planet!

Here are the blog posts that I've finished, there are several more to come, but it's going to be a little while until they are done, so I wanted to get this out sooner rather than later.

The Year of Miracles - 12 months - 10 shows

1. 4Tour - Red Rocks, Morrison, CO - Blog | Photos | Video

2. 4Tour - Salt Lake City, UT - Blog | Photos | Video

3. 4Tour - Sunrise, FL - Blog | Photos | Video

4. 4Tour - Madison Square Garden, NYC, NY Blog | Photos | Video

5. LA Shows - Carson Daly Show Taping, Burbank, CA - Blog | Photos | Video

6. LA Shows - Secret Show @ the Troubadour, W. Hollywood, CA - Blog 1, Blog 2 | Photos | Video

7. NME Awards - O2 Academy, Brixton, UK - Blog | Photos

8. NME Big Gig - O2 Arena, Greenwich, UK - Blog | Photos | Video

9. The Pearl Theater - Las Vegas, NV - Blog | Photos | Video

10. Coachella Festival- Indio, CA - Blog | Photos | Video

4 Tour Memories - Madison Square Garden

2009-06-12T00:33:00.000-06:00

The events surrounding my attendance at the NYC MSG show were an interesting series of coincidences that I can only place under the "meant to be" category. So many things converged to make it possible that it would literally take a book to write about all of it. So in the interest of not boring my audience too much, here are the highlights.

1. Meeting SugarGirl - although she did not know me at the time and we had never met in person, this was the first thing that made it possible to go. She graciously offered me her spare sofabed in her room and then we made plans to share a room on Friday evening after the concert. I can honestly say that my now-friendship with the beautiful, sweet and gracious SugarGirl was one of the best things about the trip. Our adventures together that weekend were still the start of my year of miracles, and much of the subsequent events were shared with her as well. Thanks Sugar for being so wonderful, I couldn't have done it without you! :D

2. Meeting all the other CoF peeps! - The meeting at the Fridays ahead of the MSG show was my first experience at meeting other Cure fans en masse, and to meet so many people that I had chatted with or interacted with on the CoF blog threads was so much fun!

3. Videoing the Soundcheck - That was literally the first time I'd ever done anything like that and sharing it with SG was a blast.

4. Last but most definitely NOT least, the MSG show itself! My experience started with the fan meetup at Fridays, and then I went to meet the person (another CoF fan) who had offered to sell me their spare ticket. Going inside, I braved the ten-person-deep crowd around the merch booth to pick up a Cure keyring and such. Heading down to the floor, I spotted several empty seats very close to the front that were open, and when they weren't filled before the lights went down, we took our chances and ended up in the fourth row for most of the show, moving up as people left (LEFT??!!! I KNOW!) to be in the third row and nearly centered between Porl and Robert.

This is one of my all-time favorite videos from the MSG show, when Robert spots the CoF sign during Push

You can see my MSG videos here and my photos here

4 Tour Memories - Sunrise FL

2009-06-07T00:11:00.000-06:00

Before I write about the show, I need to give you a little background on how this show is tied in with my Kick Ass teeshirts. I first did the design of Robert from South Park in late 2001, after searching in vain for a "Robert South Park" teeshirt to buy. Then I discovered a place which would print my designs on teeshirts, and thought to myself "Why not make your own?" So the first generation of Cure / South Park shirts were born. Originally, it was just Robert, and then my (then) new friend Fuji asked me in early 2002 to make him a Simon one. I made several generation of the shirts, eventually adding the guitar and putting him in all black. At some point, the company that was printing them decided it was no longer prudent to do so, and the idea withered on the vine for a few years.

Sometime in early 2008, I revisited the design, adding Porl and Jason and putting them all together into what we know of as the Kick Ass design that you have seen on my site. The way that this ties into the Sunrise show is that I wanted to give the Cure some of the Kick Ass teeshirts, so I finally made a bunch and brought them with me to the FL show, and gave them to the Cure, which you can see here.

You can also see Ms. Cat there in the background, as Sunrise was the first of many shows that we would see together!

The Sunrise, FL show was notable for the hordes of tanned Floridians looking as if they'd just strolled in from the beach to the concert venue, but again, I digress!

We had really great seats in the 6th row, but were prevented from taping the show by some overzealous security folks, so we did not come back with a great amount of video. Again, we got some really nice rarities and since Robert was feeling much much better as compared to the Red Rocks and SLC shows, the energy level in the venue was very high and Robert and the band seemed very playful and affectionate. My most memorable songs were The Baby Screams and Signal to Noise.

We got four encores at Sunrise, but of course by far, what grabbed our attention was the very last few minutes of the show as "A Forest" wound down and Robert added some extra lyrics. I was half-convinced we would end up with "Forever", but instead the band decided to wind things up with a kiss!

4 Tour Memories - Red Rocks & Salt Lake City

2009-06-06T23:15:00.000-06:00

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!

Happy 30th Anniversary to the Cure!

2009-05-08T01:13:00.000-06:00

May 8th, 1979 - May 8th, 2009

Thirty years ago today, the album "Three Imaginary Boys" made it's official debut in the UK. These 13 tracks worth of burning philosophical angst, nervously jangly pop, and spare, shivering ballads marked the birth of the commercial and artistic entity that is The Cure. Certainly, there will be much written about this milestone in the coming months, so I won't attempt to distill all of the wonder that it encompasses here in this posting.

I just want to say that to me, the thing that makes The Cure so consistently amazing is that even after performing hundreds of concerts in the past thirty-odd years, witnessing how they can still close down a major festival with the same joyous punk ferocity first embodied in this album makes me proud to be a fan. Thank you again to Robert and the band for providing millions of people around the world a sense of coming home, a light through the darkness, and the best music we've ever heard. May you have many beautifully happy returns of this anniversary!

Other Voices - Print Version

2009-04-30T01:13:00.000-06:00

Greetings Cure peeps! You will be happy to know that the printed version of the Other Voices book is now available to order from Blurb books!

The book is available in a large format, similar to the actual book dimensions, and also in a smaller and less expensive version in order to make it available and affordable to everyone.

I want to assure you again that I am not making any sort of profit from this book at all. The prices shown on the book pages are the base prices that Blurb charges for the actual production of the book, and have not been "marked up" in any way. The final book is missing 10 of the original pages due to the wishes of the individual authors. I have added a couple of pages at the end that contain some of the detail of the book and there is also a page with photos of the band playing onstage at the Pearl theater on the night they were given the original.

Again, I do not do any of the printing, shipping or order fulfillment for these books, they are from the Blurb print-on-demand service and Blurb will handle all of the transactions and customer service for the print books, so if you have any problems at all, please contact Blurb directly. We also plan to buy a few copies of the large format version to send to the band so that all of the members have a version of the book for themselves.

So, without further ado, please click one of the books below to be taken to the different size versions. Remember to click through to the Preview so you can get a sense of how it will look in person!

Large Format 11" x 13"

Medium Format 8" x 10"

4 "new" teeshirt designs & update

2009-04-28T18:27:00.000-06:00

Greetings peeps! By popular demand, I'm now offering standalone designs of the Cure South Park drawings. You can now order a shirt with only Robert, Simon, Porl or Jason, as your taste may be. These shirts have been discounted, and I'm also offering a great deal, buy all four shirts as a package for only $12.50 each! Click the shirts to order!

Now for an update on the other designs:

Lovecats design - I am almost sold out of the Lovecats design, and I don't think I'll be making more any time soon. They are too difficult to make in the gold foil and cost much more than the normal screen print, so if you want one of the originals, this is the time to get it! Here's what I currently have in stock in both design types / shirt styles -

Simple design - V-neck - 2 SM, 2 L, 2 XL
Ornate design - V-neck - 3 SM, 3 L, 3 XL
Ornate design - Crew - 1 L, 1 2XL

Nightmare design - I have a few of the V-necks left, mostly in M,L,XL and in the crew neck I have a few of everything but XL.

The Cure - Standalone South Park Tees

2009-04-28T18:07:00.000-06:00

Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $15

Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $15

Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $15

Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $15

ALL 4 Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $50 (all 4 must be same size)

Other Voices - Signed, sealed & delivered!

2009-04-27T20:56:00.001-06:00

Those of you that have been watching the updates on Chain of Flowers know that the book was delivered to the band in Vegas. Here is the "official" story of the how and why and when, as well as the extenuating circumstances surrounding it.

When Friday, April 17th, 2009 dawned in Las Vegas, Nevada, those of us who were there for the concert were full of optimism that it would be a very special night, indeed. The Cure were in town for an intimate show at the Pearl Theater, and many CoF peeps had gathered from all corners of the globe. We spent the afternoon at the casino in front of the box office, socializing and pretending to gamble. I received two last-minute pages at the casino and took over the concierge desk at the Palms so that I could put them in the album and make sure that the book was in top form before giving it to the Cure.

Returning to the "line" near the box office, several people had asked to see the book, and so we pulled up some chairs and went through the book several times so that people could see their pages and the cover and other decorations. Many people commented on how much better the artwork pages looked in person, and I agree, it was hard to capture the real beauty of the pages of the book in photos, and I hope that can assure all of the contributors that the band will be very impressed at all of your dedication, all of the love you have for the Cure and their music was very evident in the pages that you sent in.

Many fans who were waiting at the box office got to meet Simon at one of the nearby bars, and if I had only known how the night was to end, I would have given the book to Simon, as I was one of the first fans to approach him that afternoon. Hindsight, as they say...

When the concert began, I had at least three separate avenues lined up to be able to connect with the band prior to or following the show, but as we all know, the concert did not end as expected. When the lights went up after "A Forest", I had a strong feeling that I should try to give it to them that night, in case something went wrong and they canceled their Coachella appearance. We weren't sure quite why the concert had ended early, and when the setlist with the encores on it was given out to those in the crowd, it confirmed to us that there was something going on. There was a lot of speculation that night about just what had happened, but in the heat of the moment, all that mattered to me was that it was my one chance that I was certain of to make sure that people that I trusted were able to take the book from me and deliver it to the band. So I handed it to Darren (Simon's guitar tech) as he was onstage breaking down the equipment, and he promised me at that time that he would give it to them. I confirmed through my contacts that the Cure were not receiving visitors backstage following the show at the Pearl.

When we were at Coachella on Sunday, I approached Darren after the show to confirm that they received it, and he assured me that he would give it to them at the soonest possible time. One of my contacts had also emailed a person connected to the band who confirmed on Monday morning that it had been given to Robert and the band. My original plan was to try to get a photo of the band with the book, but as we know now, Robert had injured himself at the Pearl, and it was not possible to do so.

So, will Robert or the band acknowledge the project somehow? Of course we would love him to do so, but most likely, he will not. Their own 30th anniversary celebrations must be getting underway, and of course with an injured hand he cannot type very well, so I think that we can be happy knowing that they have gotten it safely and that our messages have been signed, sealed and delivered. However, if I DO hear anything, I will be sure to let you all know!

Thank you again to all of the contributors and supporters for being a part of this amazing project. I am still doing the hard copy of the book and I will be announcing that here when they are ready to order, they will be available very soon.

P. S. - If you haven't yet heard the interviews with myself and Vicky, one of the contributors to the book on Studio Brussel, you can read about that here and also listen to the archived interviews. We were interviewed about the book and I was also asked about the Cure's set at Coachella.

Photo 1 courtesy of Caterpillargirl2
Photo 2 courtesy of Barb / Thistle
Photo 3 courtesy of Faithdesired

Studio Brussel Interviews

2009-04-22T10:21:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Vicky from Belgium, I got a fantastic opportunity on the day of Robert Smith's 50th Birthday to be interviewed on Studio Brussel (part of the Belgium national radio station) regarding my experiences at Coachella and about the 30th Anniversary book. I will be posting more about that here soon, but for now you can read Vicky's translation of her interview (first posted at Curefans.com) and you can listen to both of our interviews on the archive pages from the radio station. Thank you again to Vicky for this great opportunity, I can't believe I got to say Happy Birthday to Robert on Belgium radio! What an exciting and fun way to celebrate!

More about my interview (added 4/28):

I woke up early on Tuesday, April 21st (which is to say, early for me, as I am an extreme night owl) after arriving home at nearly 3 am from the long trek driving home from Indio, CA. We had also had to make two stops on the way home to pick up our dog and our children, so it was a very long night from the night before, and we had not had very much sleep! When I awoke, I reached for my phone as I always do, and updated my email. There were two messages about the interview, and so I responded to them quickly from my laptop and then jumped into the shower to get ready to go to work. Almost before I could get dried off completely, I had a phone call from one of the people at Studio Brussel, who spoke to me for a moment about doing the interview, mainly just long enough to get my permission, and told me that I would recieve a call back. I was finishing up getting ready for work when I got the call back just a few minutes later. Bram was the interviewer, and he spoke to me for a few moments and then started to interview me. I admit that I did stumble on my words much more than usual, sorry Bram! But that's what happens when I have to do interview within 20 minutes of waking up, haha...

He started the interview by asking about Coachella and our experiences with attending the concert, and about seeing the plug be pulled on the Cure at the end of the night.

I also thought that the part with the "fuck" was funny too, even if I misquoted Robert. I didn't think they would play the full bit on air though! I remembered the "HA!" and the "fuck" clearly but it was only later that I got to hear it again and heard his actual comment.

After the Coachella part, Bram asked me to describe the book a little bit, and then thanked me for the interview and asked me what song I would like to request them to play at the end of the interview. Initially, I wanted to choose a song from 4:13 Dream in order to help promote their new album. He wanted me to pick a "deep cut", something that was more unusual and not very well known. So at first I said "The Hungry Ghost" or "Underneath the Stars" or "This. Here and Now. With You." would do fine. Then someone looked for the album and they came back and said that it was not in the studio, so I started trying to think of something else. I kind of doubted that they would have Bloodflowers too, and so I went a bit farther back in the catalog and chose "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea". I warned him that it was a bit of a longer song, but he said it was fine, no worries. Aren't you glad I didn't say Never Enough? I also overused the word EPIC a bit too much, but it was less than 48 hours after the show itself so I was still a bit excited to have seen such a legendary concert. I was glad that I remembered to say Happy Birthday to Robert before they hung up with me, and that they also aired that part of the interview.

Once I was done with the interview, I went to work and started listening to the Studio Brussel internet stream. I wasn't sure when it would go on but Vicky helped me out a lot by letting me know when it would be coming up. I had also let Craig from Chain of Flowers know about the interview and a lot of our CoF peeps were able to listen in too. Even though I don't speak Dutch, I was very amused to hear my name and "superfan" in the same sentence.

Many thanks again to Vicky for letting me have this great chance, and also thanks to the kind people at Studio Brussel.

My Interview (click on cure-fan in bold type) Andy's MP3 download (thanks Andy!)

Vicky's Interview (click on ZIJ VERTELT in bold type)

The Translation (because almost nobody can understand Dutch) by Vicky

Sam: Vicky, sended a page for the anniversary book, I don't understand it very well so I goanne call her.
Sam: Vicky, Vicky ...Are you there?
Me: Good afternoon Sam.
Sam: Can you tell me more about that anniversary book?
Me: Yes, sure, it's not alone Robert's Birthday today, it's almost 30 years ago that there debutalbum came out. It was May 1979. Because of that fact, they descided in the US to make a fanbook and they asked all the fans arround the world to make a page for this book.

Sam: Oh so beautiful!
Me: Yes, they received arround 50 pages for that book, from everywhere in the world. From Australia, Russia, USA, and many more country's also Belgium.
Sam: And you are in that book?
Me: Yes, I have also a page, I've sended it also!
Sam: So YOU have a page in that great fanbook, THE Anniversary book for The Cure, THE Anniversary Book for Robert Smith!
Me: Yes, indeed, that's correct ! I've maded a page with Calligraphics. I put my thanks on it.
Sam: FANTASTIC!
Me: The book was given last Friday 17/04 in Las Vegas. The Cure was given there a show.
Sam: Send HE (RS) you an email to thank you?
Me: No we haven't received anything yet; who knows maby on the off. site from The Cure a word of thank ...Huh
The nice thing of the book is that it's goanne be published in a printed version. In two sizes, one like the original and one in an smaller format to make it possible for every person!
Sam: Really??
Sam: That's amazing good news !!!!!
I've hearded you are a HUGE fan from The Cure
Me: Ok if they say that, it's goanne be right. Ha. Others say it all the time so I guess it's correct.
Sam: You are celebrating this birthday of course but I've hearded you are also celebrating another Birthday?
Me: That's correct; It's also my husband's Birthday today. His 40th Birthday.
Sam: No, it's not truth, you choose him just for that!
Me: No it's pure coincidence!!
Sam: Yes, Yes, ... pure coincidence ??
Me: So by this, also my Birthday wishes to my husband of course!
Sam: Of course. Also a hip hip hoi for your husband! 40 years can also count ... difficult age ?? But 50 years is much heavier to wear! Still 10 Years to go!
Sam: Please your husband and turn a lot of Cure-Music
Me: Sure; I will do that! Can I say just one thing more ??
Sam: Go on you can tell it.
Me: To all the curefans out there. If you wanna now more about The Cure! Go and visit www.curefans.com. The meeting point for curefans worldwide. a great forum where you can find several things.
Sam: Congratulation about your page in the fanbook for Robert Smith. Have fun today! Bye
Me: Bye

So, I hope everyone can understand me now grin

Later at the evening the called Heron from the US about the Coachella show. She's also the creator of the book.

It was an special experience and I hope you all enjoying this.

Greetings,

Trust...

Other Voices - A Cure Fan Tribute

2009-04-08T02:13:00.000-06:00

One week to go! As of today, Wednesday, April 8th, there is officially 1 week left before the pages have to be in. Remember that they have to reach me before the end of the day on April 15th, as we are leaving for Vegas early on the 16th and will not be here for the mail to arrive. Please note that from now forward, all of the pages will be put into the book based strictly on when they arrive in my mailbox. This change is due to the limited time remaining to finish the project and solidify the page numbering. The pages and promises of pages have both been arriving fast and furious, and I am thinking that it looks highly likely that we may have to do a second album for the overflow pages, but we shall see what the next 7 days bring!

There have been some interesting developments in the book project, and I'm really excited to share them with everyone! First, the book officially now has a name. As you may have guessed, I've titled it - Other Voices - A Cure Fan Tribute, which is a much more evocative name than
"30th Anniversary Book". The name was suggested by Sara / Shapes in a brainstorming session, and evokes all of the "voices" represented by all of the different pages and letters in the book.

Second, over the course of the project I have gotten some of the most amazing artwork and heartfelt, beautiful letters from everyone. I thought that there should be some way of preserving these gifts to the Cure, beyond a simple online slideshow. So I decided to create a real, hardcopy version of the book so that any of the contributors or other fans could have one for themselves. The book will be available in a large format, similar to the actual book, and also in a smaller and less expensive version in order to make it available and affordable to everyone.

You can preview the hardcopy book versions here:

Large format 11" x 13" http://www.blurb.com/books/631815 (Don't order these, preview only)
Med. format 8" x 10" http://www.blurb.com/books/631834

I want to assure you right now that I am not making any sort of profit from this book at all. The prices shown on the book pages are the base prices that Blurb charges for the actual production of the book, and have not been "marked up" in any way. The contributors to the book have been asked to sign a publication release, and so the final book may or may not contain all of the pages seen in the online album, based on the individual contributors' wishes.

Once the book has been completed with all of the pages and has been given to the Cure, I will send out an announcement stating that the book is ready to order. Again, I do not do any of the printing, shipping or order fulfillment for these books, they are from the Blurb print-on-demand service and the company there will handle all of the transactions.

Thanks again to all of the awesome Cure fans that have sent in their pages. You have all made this project a joy to work on, and Iam sure that the band will appreciate all of your letters.

My page for the 30th Anniversary Book

2009-04-02T00:02:00.000-06:00

Here's the story behind this design:

I wanted to do a painting of the night sky as it was over Crawley on the date that the first album was released (Three Imaginary Boys) on May 8th, 1979. This date is the one listed on the Cure's website as the release date for their album, so in essence it is the official "start" of the band, as the first album released from a major label. I was trying to come up with something that would represent The Cure in all of their incarnations, as there were so many people involved with the band over the years that contributed to their sound and success.

So I went back to the beginning, not just the beginning as the date but the beginning as in the geographic location. I imagined the Cure coming out of some pub or house in Crawley after the celebration of their first album release and looking up at the night sky, what would they have seen? Could they even have imagined at that moment in time what their future would hold, and that their career would span over three decades and take them all around the world, gathering millions of fans in the process? I wonder if they even had a glimpse of what was to come, all those years ago.

The subject of the painting also ties in with Robert's deep interest in astronomy and science, as well as my own interest in astronomy and in the implications of a specific time, date and location.

The first time I did this painting, it was just a depiction of the night sky over a much more generic looking rolling hills countryside. I decided it wasn't distinctive enough to be immediately recognizable, and so I went and did some research.

First I had to find a good photo of Crawley's High Street and a building that was recognizably from that street. Once I decided which building I wanted in the painting, (which turned out to be the Gainsborough House) I then had to figure out which direction you were looking at in the photo. Google Earth was a huge help in this process.

Finally, I had to see what constellations would have been showing if you stood in that location and looked up at the sky at that precise date and time. I chose 11 pm because it would have been reasonably dark at that time, being that the sunset would have been near 8 pm.

The border contains the names of the constellations (although Cameleopardalis is spelled wrong), and the moons along the sides show two phases of the moon, crescent and gibbous in both waxing and waning phases. The constellation lines and the stars on the border are both rendered in gold foil, everything else is either watercolor or ink. Very geeky, yes, but how could it be otherwise? :D

I started by measuring out and sketching in the main elements of the picture.

Then I painted the buildings and the main wash over the sky and started on the detail elements. Finally, I did the gold leafing on the constellations and the border stars. The painting was finished with a clear coat over the gold constellations and then placed in the book after a little while under some heavy books to flatten it out.

Countdown to Coachella!

2009-03-25T00:54:00.000-06:00

Greetings Cure fans and Cure friends! I just wanted to give you a gentle reminder that today, March 25th is exactly three weeks before the pages are due on Weds. April 15th for the 30th Anniversary Book!

So, you officially have 21 days from today to finish your pages and quit procrastinating sending them in to me! Get off the sofa, find an envelope and a bit of stiff cardboard and send that puppy onward! Yes, it is best if you actually mail them to me ahead of time so that the final pages don't end up in a last minute hack job down in Vegas or Indio. *You* want your pages to look good for Robert and the guys, and *I* want your pages to look good for Robert and the guys, so please get them in well before the deadline so that they will be put in with all the loving care that they deserve. Not that they won't be put in with loving care anyway, but it is much harder to do things at the last moment, and should your page present a unique mounting problem, it would be best to be able to resolve it at leisure.

I also wanted to give everyone an update on the status of the book as of right now. I have received 31 beautiful, amazing pages filled with heartfelt emotion and love! Thanks again to all of the contributors to the book for sending a little piece of you to go in the book.

Given that the actual album only holds 50 pages total, it is well over halfway full, with several more pages promised as of this writing, I've been asked several times "What happens if you get more than 50 pages?" and that's a good question! The answer is that if we get closer to the date and it looks like the album will be full up, I will buy a secondary album to mount the pages in, and decorate it in a similar way to the first one. All the pages sent in will be treated with the loving care and respect that they deserve. Obviously I won't be able to spend as much time on it as I did the first one, but all the pages will go in a book. And honestly, I think that would be a great "problem" to have!

The book now has a case! My sweet husband is very skilled at the art of the sewing machine (he used to make those big funky hats in the 1990's) and his contribution to the book project was to help out with making the case. The case is made with a very nice high quality black velvet fabric and has two black velvet ribbons that are the ties. I hope to be able to decorate the case with some gold metallic embroidered ornamentation soon.

I created a set on my flickr for the "detail" photos of the book and it's creation. In this set you can see how pages are actually mounted in the book and also more details about the cover and case. I made a second set in order to avoid cluttering the "virtual book" with detail photos.

As always, see the original announcement about the project here if you still need my mailing address, page specifications or dimensions or any other information.

Finally, here's the slideshow from the "details" flickr set:

My Cure Shows

2009-03-19T02:23:00.001-06:00

Just as a way for me to keep track of them, here's the list of all the shows I've been to. Not nearly as many here as a lot of fans have seen, for sure! Links to reviews, photos or video may take you off-site, so you might want to open them in a new window or tab. A couple of the early ones lead to the original Chain of Roberts site.

1. My First Cure Show - Dodger Stadium - LA, CA - 1989

2. Wish Tour - Salt Lake City, UT - 1992

3. Swing Tour- Salt Lake City, UT - 1996

4. Dream Tour - West Palm Beach, FL - 2000

5. Inland Invasion - Devore, CA - 2003

6. Curiosa Tour - Denver, CO - 2004

7. Curiosa Tour - Salt Lake City, UT - 2004 - Video

8. Ultra Music Festival - Miami, FL - 2007 - Video

9. Download Festival - Mt. View, CA - 2007 - Video

10. 4Tour - Red Rocks, Morrison, CO - 2008 - Video

11. 4Tour - Salt Lake City, UT - 2008 - Video

12. 4Tour - Sunrise, FL - 2008 - Video

13. 4Tour - Madison Square Garden, NYC, NY - 2008 - Video

14. LA Shows - Carson Daly Taping, Burbank, CA - 2008

15. LA Shows -Troubadour Myspace Secret Show, W. Hollywood, CA - 2008

16. NME Awards - O2 Academy, Brixton, UK - 2009

17. NME Big Gig - O2 Arena, Greenwich, UK - 2009

18. The Pearl - The Palms, Las Vegas, NV - April 17, 2009

19. Coachella Festival- Indio, CA - April 19, 2009

20. Reflections, Vivid Festival - Sydney, Australia - May 31st 2011

21. Reflections, Vivid Festival - Sydney, Australia - June 1, 2011

22. Bestival - Isle of Wight, UK - Sept, 10, 2011

23-25. Reflections - Los Angeles, CA - Nov. 21-23

30th Anniversary Book - ANNOUNCEMENT!

2009-02-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

I sincerely hope that this announcement won't upset anyone, and I very much apologize in advance to anyone who spent extra $ or stress to get their page here before the original deadline. After a bit of thought about it (and after receiving *numerous* emails about the upcoming deadline for pages over the past few days) it has occurred to me that it would make vastly more sense to give the Cure their book at the Coachella event at the end of April. This would accomplish several good things at one time, so please bear with me as I enumerate the most important of them.

1. The Coachella date of April 19th, 2009 is actually much, much closer to the actual 30th Anniversary date of May 8, 1979 (which is the date when Three Imaginary Boys was released) and I believe is what the band are using as their actual official anniversary date. In fact, the Coachella show is just under 3 weeks before this date. Not to mention that it is also extremely close to Robert's 50th birthday.

2. Moving the "delivery" date to the middle of April will not only relieve the pressure of those who wanted to participate but just did not have the time, it will allow for those who haven't yet heard of the book to participate as well.

3. Anyone who felt that their page was "rushed" out has a chance to re-do it if need be, and anyone who was freaking out trying to figure out how to get me their page by the end of next week can relax! :D

At the time that the book project was conceived, the London dates were the only ones that were announced, so that's why the plan to give them the book at the O2 shows started there. However, now that we have a show date which is much closer to the actual anniversary, I think that it makes the most sense to give it to them there. I hope that you will understand my reasoning and most importantly, help me to spread the word about the rescheduling. I appreciate all of your interest and passion about this project, and I think you'll agree that we will end up with a much richer and more comprehensive book by putting it off, even by a mere 60 days.

So that being said, the official new due date for pages is (are you ready for this?) April 15th! Yes, just like the tax due date. 60 days from now is April 15th, so do your taxes, and THEN do your page! And mail it to me so it will get there before the 15th! Anyone who was planning on delivering their page to me in London may still do so! Everyone else, take a deep breath and relax. :D

See the original project post about the 30th Anniversary Book HERE for all of the details about how to participate.

New blog design, new domain name

2009-02-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

I've updated my blog with a new design, and more importantly,
a brand spanking new domain name! I found that my original blogspot
name was a little hard for people to remember, so took the plunge
and got a spiffy new domain. And yes, the .com and .net versions
were both taken, and .biz and .ws just didn't seem right, so
welcome to the new www.underneaththestars.us!

Teeshirts Update

2009-02-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

**************UPDATE 2/13********************

The shirts are in! Pre-orders will go out in the mail tonight! Check out the original teeshirt designs page for updated pics of all of the designs!

********************************************

I wanted to give everyone an update on the teeshirt designs. There have been several setbacks and delays with the printing process. One delay was that I made a slight tweak to my design, based on the initial prototype. The printer has also introduced several delays as well. The good news is that when I did get the prototype, it looked AMAZING and I really cannot wait to get these and start shipping them out! If all goes well, I should be picking them up by Friday at the latest and I promise to get them in the mail just as soon as physically possible once they are in my hands! Thanks so much for your patience, it will be rewarded! Here's a couple of quick snaps of the prototype, showing the design and a detail of the distressed gold foil look, just so you can see how well they are coming along:

Happy 30th Anniversary Book

2009-01-09T22:09:00.003-07:00

Other Voices - A Cure Fan Tribute

This project began in January of 2009 as a way to thank the Cure for 30 years' worth of music, magic and memories. Fans were asked to contribute artwork, thoughts or congratulations to the band, and to make a page to be put in the book. People from all around the globe responded to the call, and began to create beautiful, heartfelt and amazing works of art. The original book was given to the Cure at the Las Vegas, NV show on April 17th, 2009 at the Pearl Theater in the Palms Casino. (Update 12/11 - All currently active Cure members and Lol now have copies of the book!)

This digital copy of the book is meant as a way for the participants in the project to have a digital memory of their hard work and dedication, and for other fans to be able to celebrate this milestone as well. Many thanks go to all of the contributors for your endless support and kind generosity during the creation of Other Voices.

Congratulations to the Cure for their amazing accomplishment of 30 years of transcendent music!

I received 53 pages for the book! You can see almost all of them in the slideshow below . Some of the page authors have opted not to share their pages in the online copy. To those that have given me their thoughts, wishes, awesome artwork and genuine heartfelt communication, THANK YOU for participating in this project and making it a worthwhile endeavor! It's been so amazing to see what everyone has come up with for the book and it is such an honor to be able to give them to The Cure.

Here is a list of posts relating to the Other Voices - 30th Anniversary Book.
Original announcement and instructions (originally here, now archived in a separate post)
Change of date announcement
Countdown to Coachella
My page in the book
Other Voices - A Cure Fan Tribute (the project gets a name!)
Interviews on Studio Brussel (a celebration of Robert's 50th Birthday)
Other Voices - Signed, Sealed & Delivered!
Other Voices, now in print!
Other Voices - Cure Members' Copies - Delivered!

Book Announcement Archive

2009-01-09T22:09:00.001-07:00

Here is the archived post about the original book announcement

We want to thank the Cure for 30 years of amazing music and all that they do for their fans! Since many of us are attending the ~~O2 arena show in February~~ Coachella show in April, we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to collect the thoughts and well wishes of Cure fans worldwide and put them into a book to be given to the Cure in ~~London~~ California.

I have received 17 19 24 pages to date for the book! You can see some of them in the slideshow below . To those that have given me their thoughts, wishes, awesome artwork and genuine heartfelt communication, THANK YOU for participating in this project and making it a worthwhile endeavor! It's been so amazing to see what everyone has come up with for the book and it is such an honor to be able to give them to The Cure.

(If for some reason you DO NOT want your page published on the virtual book, please let me know and I will be happy to remove it. )

If you'd like to participate in this project, please read the following directions:

Your page should be:

1. No bigger than a standard 8.5 x 11 inch (or A4) sheet of paper
2. Single sided only please! Your page will be attached to another sheet of paper in order to be bound into the book, so anything on the 2nd side will not be seen.
3. Can be on any kind of paper or media such as canvas / watercolor paper / copy paper etc.
4. Please hand-write or decorate your page, make it an expression of you!
5. Personalize it in some way, as much as you are comfortable. Who are you? Where are you from?
6. Page and decorations should be no thicker than 1/8"
7. Should have some expression of thanks or congratulations somewhere on the page
8. Please don't laminate your page or make it so that it would be difficult to attach to the book.
9. Can be either landscape or portrait orientation
10 Please include your email address or contact info on a separate sheet of paper, and also note whether you are ok with me scanning and publishing your page here.
11. Let me know your page is on the way so I know to watch for it! You can do that through emailing me through bluheron and the second part is at gmail.com
12. Pages will be put in the book in order of postmark or notification date, whichever is sooner.

Please no:
Nudity, slash or offers of marriage LOL
"I love you Robert" or "I love you Simon"
Yes, we know. We all do. But please try to make your
page something special that the band will enjoy reading.

Pages must be received by mail no later than April 15th, 2009 in the USA. We will be travelling after this date to go to Vegas & Coachella, so there isn't any leeway in the date, that's a final time.

Contact me at bluheron (little at thingy) gmail.com

I highly recommend some kind of trackable or insured post method so that if your page goes astray we don't have to wonder if it is lost for good. Check with your local post or mail office for your options.

******************Book announcement 2/12 (archived here for historical purposes)****************
If you haven't yet sent in your page, DON'T PANIC! I have had numerous frantic contacts this week regarding the pages and the deadline. Yes, I published 2/13 as the deadline, but that was mainly so that I had almost a week leeway before leaving for London in case there were weather delays or other difficulties for people who wanted to contribute. So if you haven't sent your page yet, do it now! If you are in London, the UK or are coming to the O2 Arena "Big Gig" or the NME Shockwaves Awards the previous day, you can give me your page in person! If you are planning on doing this though, I do humbly request that you send me a high-resolution (300-600 dpi) scan of your page before you give it to me as I won't be able to do so there. Also if you are planning on giving me your page in person, please write me an email and let me know so that I can have enough pages for everyone in the book.

To answer a question I have heard a lot since starting this project - no, I do not have some magic hotline to Robert and the band (I wish! LOL) to give them this book. Yes, I have been successful in giving the band other items in the past. I can't guarantee that I will come back from London with a photo of the book being perused by the band members, although I do promise to try. ;-) I will definitely update the blog with news of the book as soon as possible.

Five New Designs

2008-12-30T03:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I'm a sucker for Cure teeshirt designs. Who knew? :D

The LoveCats - Ornate version Available NOW!

The LoveCats - Simple version Available NOW!

Cure Peeps - LOLdon World Tour '09 Sold out, sorry!

Robert Smith is my Homeboy - Yes, now available in V-Neck!
*On-demand*

Robert is my Homeboy - Yes, now available in V-Neck!
*On-demand*

Lovecats - Ornate Design

2008-12-30T02:25:00.003-07:00

~~*Available NOW!*~~ Sorry, this teeshirt is out of stock.
This teeshirt is printed in shiny distressed gold foil on black shirts. The design is inspired by the yin / yang symbol, and each cat holds a heart in the contrasting color. The heart on the top says lovecats and the one on the bottom says "The Cure" in the logo design from "The Top" era. The text, starting at the top, says "then curl up by the fire and sleep for a while, its the grooviest thing, its the perfect dream" and the border is decorated with distressed hearts and stars among the swirls. All this, and it doesn't cost $65!

This is the Ornate version of this design. Check out the detail of the distressed gold foil on the border and the cats:

Lovecats - Simple Design

2008-12-30T02:24:00.003-07:00

~~*Available NOW!*~~ Sorry, this teeshirt is out of stock.
This teeshirt is printed in shiny gold distressed foil on black shirts. The design is inspired by the yin / yang symbol, and each cat holds a heart in the contrasting color. The heart on the top says lovecats and the one on the bottom says "The Cure" in the logo design from "The Top" era. The text, starting at the top, says "then curl up by the fire and sleep for a while, its the grooviest thing, its the perfect dream" and the border is a plain circle enclosing the text.

This is the Simple version of this design. See the detailed pic of the design below:

Cure Peeps - LOLdon World Tour '09

2008-12-30T02:23:00.003-07:00

Please note! The Cure Peeps LOLdon Tour '09 teeshirt is available and I have about 10 of these so please contact me for your size before ordering! Thanks!

As normal, choose your shipping speed, all shipments are sent USPS Priority or Express mail, and yes I do gladly ship international orders.

Regular Crew Neck Unisex - $18

Ladies V-Neck Tee - $20

Long sleeved Crew Neck Unisex Tee - $22

Robert Smith is my Homeboy!

2008-12-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

A special request shirt, this will be printed with an inkjet heat transfer, like the kick ass shirts. I've reduced the price of this shirt to reflect the reduced durability of the iron-on, although they actually last pretty well with proper care, just not quite as long as a screenprint.

As normal, choose your shipping speed, all shipments are sent USPS Priority or Express mail, and yes I do gladly ship international orders.

This is the "Homeboy" version of this teeshirt. This one will be available for a very limited time!

Regular Crew Neck Unisex, WHITE Shirts - $15

Ladies V-Neck Tee - $20

Robert is my Homeboy!

2008-12-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

A special request shirt, this will be printed with an inkjet heat transfer, like the kick ass shirts. I've reduced the price of this shirt to reflect the reduced durability of the iron-on, although they actually last pretty well with proper care, just not quite as long as a screenprint.

As normal, choose your shipping speed, all shipments are sent USPS Priority or Express mail, and yes I do gladly ship international orders.

This is the "Hipster" version of this teeshirt. This one will be available for a very limited time!

Regular Crew Neck Unisex, WHITE Shirts - $15

Ladies V-Neck Tee - $20

12:13 Dream - An Evening with The Cure

2008-12-22T01:13:00.001-07:00

Part 1-2 | Part 3

So there we were, finally allowed in to the Troubadour at the Myspace Secret Show, and with a mad dash we took our places on the rail and just behind, to settle in for the long wait before the show. I confess that I was very dazed with how surreal it was, that I was actually in a tiny, legendary club in Hollywood, California, and that I was about to be just a few feet away from The Cure as they played a show. For a lifelong, diehard fan, this was a complete dream come true, and for me it was something that only ever happened to other people, and never to me! So I apologize to my friends who were there if I seemed extremely ditzy or hyper, as I was!

The bar grew ever more crowded, the excitement level went up and up and up, and by the time that the Cure took the stage, I was in a complete tizzy. We were directly in front of Robert, and many of my CoF peeps were on the rail either to the left or right of us, and in my area there was Yvonne the fan VIP and her daughter Zyla, Kel, sugar*girl, Midnight and Steph. We all held space for each other so we didn't get too crushed by the crowd, and Midnight and Kel took turns with us so that we all got a spot on the rail for a little bit of the show. Thank you so much ladies and Kel I am so sorry about your arm!! =)

Having attended the 4Tour shows where they played Underneath the Stars, the show prelude of the waves crashing was a huge part of my experience of the song, much like other intros such as "Adagio for Strings" or "Intro", so it was a little jarring to have the Cure come out and launch into Underneath the Stars without hearing the crashing waves first. However, I was very charmed when Robert came out and told us "It's taking me back before we even start", presumably referring to the intimacy of the venue reminding him of the early days of The Cure. When they launched into the first strains of the music, though, we were swept up in the magical atmosphere of this song, and swayed along with the crowd as the waves of sound washed over us. The band sounded very relaxed and yet so together. It seems to me that sometimes it takes them a song or two to really get into their groove, but this night there was an immediate connection with each other and the audience that felt so warm and welcoming, and having this song be the opener was the perfect way to capture the ambience of the night.

Once the warm strains of Underneath the Stars had faded away, the chimes of Pictures of You brought a rousing response from the crowd, and I was taken right back to Dodger Stadium in 1989, the very first time that I heard it played live. I was struck by the disparity between hearing the song in this club vs. a stadium with 50,000 others, and also realized how nearly twenty years had passed between these two shows, and how timeless the song really is.

An animated version of Lullaby was a real crowd-pleaser as usual. Robert seems to very much enjoy enticing whoops and screams from the crowd with his performances during Lullaby, and of course we all loved seeing him dance and have fun as well.

A short pause and then "Another new one" introduced a lovely version of the new single "The Perfect Boy". Robert sounded great, very smooth and the band was very tight and together on this song. Following this song, Robert spoke to his sound people about the levels briefly before they launched into alt.end, the most notable thing about this song was when Robert told us at the end of it something about not thinking that he would be "singing it 4 years later, and yet, here I am".

The Reasons Why was really great to hear live, and sounded pretty similar to the album version. It did not get a great response from most of the crowd, but for those of us who are already familiar with the new album, it was a nice treat. It was very amusing afterward when Robert did a fairly long commentary on being able to remember the new songs. He says (as well as I can transcribe) "It's a f'is (to) remember that one. Particularly if you've been drinking. It's difficult anyway to remember. It's hard, like the new songs cause we've only done em a couple of times, it's like, normally you get into a groove, and so coming out of nowhere and doing these ones is a bit weird though . It's good though. I mean I'm singing the right words in my head, they're just not coming out my mouth. It was much better when none of you knew them." Then he launched into The Walk by saying "You'll know this one", which of course, we did, and sang joyfully along until he segued without any comment into "The End of the World".

After TEOTW, the familiar strains of Lovesong came along, and for once, I was completely enthralled with this song. Not so much so with the song itself, as it is not my extreme favorite in Cure love songs, but I was completely taken with the change in Robert's body language when he sang it. Understanding a little of the history behind this song, it was extremely interesting to me that his posture and face changed so much while he was singing Lovesong. For most of the other songs, he was very interactive with the crowd while singing, glancing around, dancing or tapping his toe on stage, smiling and generally enjoying the audience. However, when Lovesong started, it was as if we all suddenly vanished for him. He closed his eyes almost for the entire song, and seemed very lost in his own private world. It almost seemed like he was in a sort of a trance, from which he awakened as the song was ending, and after looking around for a moment, couldn't quite work out why we were all there.

From the blissful trance of Lovesong to the gutter of The Real Snow White was quite the transition, but I can tell you that from the album, this song does not have the justice done to it that a live version can do. It's a much more powerful song in person, and has a great rollicking feel that moves the story along without dwelling too much on the narration. The buildup of tension in the song is very skillfully done, and as on the album, they went straight into the alternate universe of "The Hungry Ghost" which had a really strange tempo and subdued presentation as compared to the album. Interestingly, they did a very similar version of the song when they played it at the Jimmy Kimmel taping, so perhaps it's a slightly reworked version from the album. One thing that I noticed is that Robert sounded much more intense and angry on this song live as compared to the studio version.

When The Hungry Ghost was over there was a bit of a lengthy pause, but when the first bars of "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" came out, I just about died and went to heaven. I'm sure you understand. This is one of my all time favorite live songs, and one of my top 5 all time fave Cure songs, so it was really wonderful to hear it played at this intimate show. The crowd was very into the song, throwing their hands in the air at all the right places and generally having a blast.

A very sensual version of The Only One (and I LOVE, I LOVE, I LOVE, I LOVE the live ending to this song!) was followed by a rousing Wrong Number which must be one of Robert and Porl's favorite songs to play live. The following series of songs was a very bouncy set which encompassed old and new songs alike, proving that the pop sensibility of The Cure's music is firmly entrenched. Starting off with the new/old song, Sleep When I'm Dead, slamming into Push, jumpstarting the slackers with Friday I'm in Love, picking up the pace with Inbetween Days, roping in anyone left over with Just like Heaven and finally topping out with the legendary pop classic Primary, anyone in the Troubador who was not dancing after that series must have been either near death or terminally boring.

After this very dance-y interlude, the mood in the house shifted dramatically with the introduction of The Scream, one of the most intense songs from 4:13 Dream. This became the first song of a 1-2-3 punch that included 100 years and It's Over, with the Cure striding offstage afterward, leaving the main set hanging on a strident, angry , headbanging note that diluted the sugary pop aftertaste of the prior series like a rough whisky shooter after a pina colada.

The first encore brought The Cure back onstage with Robert saying "The last Myspace thing we did was a soundcheck in Sydney, and it was like, 5 songs, that's it. That's what were just out there reminiscing. (something) Right, we'll do some pop. It's Saturday night, Simon wants pop music" and then launching into their 4-Tour "Pop Encore" starting with Freakshow, and then continuing up the dance beat with Let's Go To Bed followed by Close to Me and finishing it up with Why Can't I be You. The guitar effects that Porl has created for YCIBU are really wonderful and I always look forward to hearing them.

A second encore brought out the best in Simon as he attacked his bass during the end of A Forest, with Robert making a quip about running the last two encores together so they didn't have to go up and down the stairs! Finally, I nearly rubbed poor Kel's arm raw as I bounced along to the third and final "Old Skool" encore. The classic sounds of Boys Don't Cry started us off and then we jumped on the train! I was SO ready for the 1-2-3-4 transition into Grinding Halt! It was so punk, angry, and raw! The spare desolation of 10:15 never fails to bring the crowd along as it drips , drips drips, and then finally, Killing An Arab (Another) brought the night to an end. It's still unbelievable to me that a song written so long ago can still completely and totally rock out without a bit of over-the-hill datedness. And yet, it does. Robert finished the night saying "Thank you very much, that's it. Thank you, this f-ing rocked!"

With the show over, there was little left to do but stumble in a haze and a daze out to the streets of LA. Some of our CoF peeps were upstairs in the VIP lounge, some were around back watching the van driver polish his windows incessantly, and some were wandering hither and yon, looking for warm clothes and a drink. After a bit of time out front, we joined the crowd waiting for the band out in back of the club. The Cure were in no mood for socializing after two hours spent being mobbed in the VIP room at the club, so they went straight from the club to the van without stopping. One fan shoved a poster in the van and the boys signed it and gave it back, but that was the only contact with the fans out back. Speaking of the schwag, there were some gift bags given out just after the show along with the great lithograph posters, but I was in such a daze immediately afterward that I completely missed the posters. However, my Cure angel that was with me all weekend was sitting on my shoulder once again as I stood on the street after the Cure had departed, talking with with Midnight and Steph a good two hours after the concert ended. Just as the words left my mouth "I didn't get a poster, I completely missed getting one." a man happened by just at that precise second, overheard me, turned around and said "You didn't get a poster? Here." and handed me one. A-MAZ-ING. Just like the rest of the weekend. Thank you, whoever you are, for my treasured memento of the evening. Thank you to The Cure for an unforgettable night. Thank you to Myspace for the Secret Show. Thank you to all my Cure friends who were there with me and helped make it something we'll talk about for the rest of our lives.

A Curemas Miracle (Part 3)

2008-12-21T13:13:00.004-07:00

Part 1-2 | Part 4

Very early in the morning on Saturday, Dec. 13th, we had finally checked into our hotel and were unwinding from the excitement of the previous day. I had descended to the lobby of the hotel to retrieve something from my car, and I was checking the Chain of Flowers front page on my phone in the elevator. At the same time, in our hotel room, Sean was checking his Myspace account. Various other people were getting the news as well, and my phone rang practically nonstop for about 15 minutes until it was apparent that all who were in our group had been informed. It was something that I never thought would ever happen to me. The Cure had announced that they were going to be playing a Myspace Secret show at the Troubadour club in Hollywood! As excited as we were, we were also in desperate need of a few hours of good sleep, so instead of heading out to sleep on the streets of LA, as some others did, we got about 5 hours of shuteye before awakening at 7 am to head out to the line at the club.

Upon arriving at the line "near" the Troubadour, I was so excited that I literally flew out of the car without turning it off and went to get my "unofficial" line number of 23. This brilliant idea, courtesy of Midnight, allowed people to be able to move in and out of line without fear that they would have to fight for their place in line and also made sure that when the time came, there was absolutely no question as to who was there first.

After I settled down a bit and re-parked my car (remembering to turn it off this time) we got out our red chairs from the day before and whiled away the time by chatting to the other fans in line. There were a lot of folks that were in the Carson Daly line from the day before, and some who were also at the Leno taping from Thursday. I finally remembered to send some pics to Craig as well! Soon after we arrived, there was a bit of unexpected excitement when a small accident occured in the nearby intersection. An older lady in a car had run the red light and struck a man on a moped. Fortunately, he did not seem to be too injured as he promptly got up from the pavement and began chewing out the lady in the car! The fans in line were the first to call 911 and run over to check out the accident, since we even had a nurse in the crowd.

Once the hubbub over the accident had subsided a bit, Sean and I went to the cafe around the corner from the Troubadour to get some breakfast. About halfway through our meal, I pulled out my phone and checked in at the CoF blog, where I found the report about needing a printout of your Myspace account in order to get into the show. We were pretty concerned about this and hurried through the rest of our meal, all the while strategizing about where I could go to print out a page from my laptop. As it turned out, on our way out of the cafe, we ran into Keith Uddin and Ricky who were getting coffee there also! The crew had just arrived to do setup for the show and of course the cafe was the nearest place to go. We stopped and chatted with Keith for a moment and asked him about what we had just read, but he reassured us that it was not true and that no printout was needed. He also told us that someone would come out around noon and distribute wristbands, and that these would be the ticket to get into the club. We were very relieved and went back to the line to distribute the information to the others who were waiting, and discovered that some had already left to try to print out their pages.

People trickled into the area bit by bit all morning, and just before noon there were well over 180 people in line, with most of those arriving after 11-11:30 am because they read on the announcement that no line-ups would be allowed before noon. Well, we were unofficially lining up LONG before that, so my bit of advice to anyone who wants to get into a show like this is to get there as early as you possibly can, and your patience will be rewarded. Waiting in line for a few hours for an opportunity like this is something you will never regret!

The anticipation grew as the morning wore on, and there were a lot of people milling around and waiting and asking questions. Finally, about 10 minutes after noon, some people came out of the club with a few handfuls of wristbands, and the security guard shouted for everyone to line up according to their number! This was a great vindication of Midnight's idea and it was awesome because there was no pushing, no fights, and you really could not claim you had been there before someone else if your number was higher. Unfortunately for those arriving later, there were only about 130 wristbands given out initially so there were quite a few disappointed people. I have heard that a few more wristbands surfaced some time later in the day, but I haven't been able to confirm that. We were instructed to hold out our right wrists for the bands and when we got them we were told NOT to touch them or take them off, not to cut off the loose end or ANYTHING! They were very stern about this and when they saw my camera hanging off my shoulder I got a big lecture about getting kicked out if they even saw a ghost of a camera in my possession. So of course in balancing out the idea of smuggling my camera in to record the historic occasion vs. getting kicked out completely and not getting to witness said occasion at all, you can tell which option I chose in the end.

We were then instructed in no uncertain terms to scatter and not show ourselves again prior to 7 pm, lest we risk the loss of our wristband or be pushed to the back of the line to get in. So most people chose to scatter. Having brought my "club" clothes with us when we left the hotel in the morning, there was no reason to go back, so we ended up driving a few places with Crowbi-wan and even went out to the Santa Monica Pier which was pretty and crowded but also extremely cold and windy so we did not stay long. Arriving back in the vicinity of the club, I camped out at a coffeehouse a few blocks away and took the opportunity to charge my phone a tiny bit and also upload some photos to my flickr account. Later in the evening, we had dinner at a small Indian restaurant near the Troubadour and ended up meeting Autumn there which was wonderful, being an admirer of picturesofyou.us for several years. She was warm, funny and kindly even helped me in the ladies room to zip up my corset :D, so thank you again to Autumn!

It was getting close to the magic hour of 7 pm, so heading back over to the area of the club, I found a strange sight. It seems that the club people preferred that the 100-plus fans who actually had wristbands should wander in and out through traffic and nervously wait in the median as opposed to waiting in an orderly fashion on the actual sidewalk by the club. Since we were strictly NOT allowed to line up, it ended up that all the fans collected themselves on the median of the street in order to be as close as possible to the line, since we were not allowed to step foot on the sidewalk which the club touched. In my opinion, they should have simply honored the numbering system already in place and let people wait just as we had that morning. As it was, exactly at 6:59 pm, there was a mad dash across the street, literally through the cars waiting at the light, for the "survival of the fittest" fight for the front of the line. Once in line, we still had another hour to wait before we would be allowed in the club at 8 pm, and security came down the line several times, checking that all in line had wristbands and tossing out the few people who were in line without them.

Before we even knew it, an hour had passed and the line began to move! Read all about Part 4 - 12:13 Dream, An Evening with The Cure on the next post.

A Very Merry Curemas! (Parts 1-2)

2008-12-18T02:13:00.001-07:00

Part 3 |Part 4

Part 1 - Trepidation!

When I first heard about tickets for Last Call with Carson Daly, way back in November, my first thought was that it had the potential to be another Soundstage fiasco. For those of you who missed that one, the Cure were supposed to play an intimate taped show for Chicago's Soundstage program in June 2008. Much to my chagrin, the show not only did NOT happen, but it was denounced by Robert on the Cure's website as proof that the only source for legitimate Cure news was on their site.

So, there I sat, in the middle of November, just a few months after that experience, with yet another event that not only had NOT been confirmed by Robert on the official site, but had the potential to be even less of an experience than Soundstage. And yet, I jumped, again, on the opportunity, figuring that if it really did fall through then at least we would have a nice weekend in LA with some friends, but this time, I was richly rewarded for my Cure fan optimism. I was asked several times if I was really going for "just three songs" at the Carson Daly taping, and each time I would reply "No, I'm also going down there to hang out with some wonderful Cure friends." This is the thing that came true the most for the whole weekend!

Being an optimist, again, I booked our airline tickets to come in very early on Friday morning and then to leave later on Sunday, leaving the Saturday night open for, well, whatever was going to happen! Suddenly, it WAS confirmed, and we began hearing rumours about the KROQ show, other tapings and appearances and very shortly, the weekend began to solidify into a veritable festival of Curemas!

Part 2 - Carson Daly Taping

The weeks flew by, and then suddenly it was time to go to LA! We dispatched our children to their grandparents' house, our dog to my sister's pet resort, and then I stayed up all night anxiously awaiting our very early morning flight to California while Sean got just a few hours sleep. I woke him at 5 am to go to the airport, and after a quick nap on the plane we arrived at the Long Beach airport just after dawn on Friday the 12th.

Once we arrived in Burbank, a fast but excellent breakfast at Theresa's Restaurant prepared us for the long day's wait in line. Cure friends old and new greeted us as we settled in, and we passed the time in line by chatting, taking photos and video and generally milling about. The Cure fans in line that I had met in person before the Carson Daly taping included my special Cure pirate sister, Sugar*Girl, the inimitable Cat, the lovely Chris and the quietly brilliant Crowbi Wan, and these were soon joined by people I had long chatted with, like SaraB, AndytheCurefan, Amber and Cure Heart and those I had long heard about but never met, such as KittenCult, Midnight, Yvonne, Kat, and the sweet and talented guys from the Curse.

In preparation for this day, I had made some special long-sleeved tee shirts in my Nightmare before Curemas design in order to give them to the band and those around them. I frankly had no idea how I was going to convey them to the band, but as with many things, I figured that the Universe would provide a way if it was meant to be. About halfway through our day of waiting, I had brought out some of my shirts in order to give them to those who were asking about them, when almost on cue, a gentleman appeared in the parking lot and I was informed that this man was Keith Uddin, the producer for the Cure. I approached him and asked if I could give him one of my shirts, and when I told him that I had made them for the guys, he offered to bring them in to them. He asked me at the time if I wanted him to get one of them signed and bring it back out, but I did not want to bother him if he was busy, so I said he didn't need to.

As the day wore on in the line, more and more people joined, and it began to grow ever colder and darker. Two men came out with a small camera and interviewed several fans in line, particularly those who had camped out the night before. I'm still not certain why they were videoing, but maybe someday we will find out. The line grew longer and the night grew ever chillier, until at long last, an assistant from the show came along to check our tickets against a list of names.

We passed through a metal detector screening and then were allowed to line up along a series of benches next to the studio wall. We could hear the soundcheck as we waited with ever greater anticipation for what was ahead of us. Finally, we were allowed into the studio and were directed to our seats by the various assistants. We were informed that we were to be the studio audience for two night's tapings. There was a comedian who was the entertainment for the studio audience and who tried his best to keep us laughing when he knew we were all there for the Cure!

We sat through an interview of an actress which was the first night's show, and then the stage was prepared for the eggnog chug challenge. Sean got called out of the audience right at this time and he was worried that he would have to do the eggnog chug. However it turned out that his role was just to make a fool of himself for everyone's entertainment :D and yes, he really did win a Subway card with $5 on it when he "won" the dance-off.

After the Eggnog challenge, Carson interviewed Will-I-Am and I thought this was really interesting, as I very much like him, being introduced to his work through the songs he produced for the Obama campaign.

FINALLY, the rest of the taping was over, and the lucky people on the floor were allowed to go and stand in front of the stage. The stage hands started clearing the floor for the audience, and some people were allowed in who had been waiting outside. Then just a few rows of the studio audience were allowed down onto the floor. We ended up very close to the stage on Porl's side! Then the Cure came on and of course the magic was in the air. The band sounded brilliant, very edgy and tight! Robert's voice was very smooth and he seemed to be in a great mood, making lots of eye contact with the crowd and watching the bleachers just beyond the floor audience. One bad moment came about halfway through the taping when an extremely rude person pushed his way right into the front of a bunch of us who had been there since the beginning! That was some seriously bad karma there, so I hope whoever you are dude, you got what was coming to you!

Since we were in front of Porl, we got a great appreciation for his guitar work, especially during Sleep When I'm Dead. He was really shredding it up, and I have no idea how he doesn't fall over during performances with his high heels on! Since we were so close to the front I got to see how Robert taps his foot on his toe while he plays and other details that you can't tell from a concert setting. He has some ginormously large boots and I noticed during the weekend's events that he was wearing cargo-style trousers with a very dark camo print on them, and of course his big black shirts with the stars around the left chest pocket. It's such a surreal experience to be so close to the band that you could literally reach out and touch them, you begin to notice so much that you miss, even on television. I could see a lot of Porl's tattoo details, and noticed that his hands are very decorated, it reminded me of the henna patterns that people get on their hands in India. A photographer at the KROQ concert on Sunday noticed this same thing too, it seems.

It seemed like Robert was just getting into the groove when all of a sudden it was over! We screamed and stomped, and Robert leaned forward and shook a few hands, and I was worried that a couple of the more zealous fans were going to pull him down into the crowd because they grabbed his hand so hard. He managed to shake free, and they walked off stage, and then the audience was herded back out to the parking lot. As we filed out, I saw a few people off to the side of the backstage area talking to Keith Uddin, and when he spotted me he motioned for me to follow him. When I did, he showed me that he had actually gotten one of the shirts that I had made signed by the band! I was very much blown away by this, and by the time that I reached the parking lot, I was in complete tears, so Keith if you ever read this, thank you for not listening to this silly fan girl :D Thanks a million!

The rest of the night was taken up in the mundane tasks of obtaining food and checking into the hotel, and we will go on to Parts 3-4 for Saturday's events!

A Dream Come True

2008-12-04T03:13:00.000-07:00

Just about everyone has their own unique musical taste. Some people have a wildly-eclectic music collection encompassing everything from 1940's polka to avant-garde industrial, and some have more defined boundaries to their listening habits. Some people MUST wake to heavy-metal, work to light jazz or make love to a backing soundtrack of the BeeGees. You know who you are (and so does your ex-girlfriend). There do exist people who seem to get by just fine without much music at all in their lives, and then there are those who are permanently attached to their music player through the little white cords in their ears. As with everything in life, there is a wide spectrum of dedication in the populace of the planet to specific music and bands, and for some reason Cure fans worldwide seem to veer a little bit more toward the more passionate side than most.

All Cure fans have other favorite bands and music, but then there are those days when you just want to listen to the Cure. ONLY the Cure. Maybe you're having a bad day, and just need to go to your happy place for a little nostalgic comfort, but your iPod is broken and the only radio station in town plays adult contemporary rock. What is a Cure fan to do? Well one enterprising fellow named Rob set up an online Cure radio station called Dreamland and it is a Cure fan's dream come true.

There are some critical differences that give Dreamland a great advantage over automated services streaming Cure music such as last.fm or others, and those lie in the dedication and personal touch that only a fellow Cure fan can provide. Streaming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all Cure, all the time, this station offers anyone with an internet connection a direct pipeline into the enormously broad world of Cure music and information, from rarities, demos and live recordings to remixes and radio interviews. Pulled from a vastly extensive collection, the Dreamland stream is Cure bliss. Rob is happy to accommodate requests when he is near his computer to fill them, and seems to truly enjoy interacting with other fans through the Shoutbox on his site. I thought it would be interesting to find out a little more about the history and behind the scenes activity that surrounds Dreamland, and so I asked Rob if I could interview him for my blog, and he graciously agreed to let me pick his brain a little bit.

So without further ado, may I present to you the official Dreamland Interview:

Please tell us a little about yourself
Hmm, a bio, well ... I am not the best at articulating my thoughts into words.... My name is Rob Gaver and I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1973, so that makes me 35. I now live just north of Tampa, Florida with my beautiful wife Tracey and our dog Kailey. I am a musician (keyboards) and engineer and have spent the last 15 years or so producing and recording various local acts, no one major , a lot of hiphop music! Now that I am older and settled down, I mainly just create music for myself, its my way of "getting away" from it all. I am currently a manager for an Office Supply store, mundane for sure, but it pays the bills. A few other notes about me. I am a magician (started close up magic at 14) , a science junkie (physics / The Universe), a computer technician, and a smart ass to the fullest, and I would love to do stand up comedy one day~ and yes you can post Kailey's website.

How long have you been a Cure fan?
Since around 1986 or so, Just before Kiss Me.

What or who introduced you to their music?
... I met this "little black haired girl" and was mesmerized. Naturally she listened to The Cure and introduced me to them. Head on the Door was my first taste, what a great record! Then I discovered Seventeen Seconds and that settled that.

What do you enjoy the most about the Cure?
Wow where to begin? Of course at first it was the obvious stuff like the music, the lyrics, the look. as time went by I always kept The Cure with me. Life has its ups and downs and the whole time, I had The Cure with me. So now when I listen to The Cure I feel like I am home, I feel comfort. It becomes a part of you, you know? It Sounds corny I guess but I'm sure you get what I mean. (I know exactly what you mean! -ed.)

What's your favorite Cure-related memory or experience?
This actually happened recently. My wife Tracey didn't really know much about The Cure when we met. She instantly loved them, so taking her to a show for the first time, Ultra Music Festival 2007. The look on her face when Robert walked on the stage. I'll never forget it.

What inspired you to start Dreamland and when did you start it?
I started a members only music hub called The Bassment in 2003. I ripped all my vinyl and cds , collected mp3s and built a collection of Cure music that I am still adding to. Then I started toying around with the idea of a Cure only radio station, I tried peercast for a bit, but it didn’t really take off because it required that a client program be installed on the listeners computer. Too much hassle. So started using Winamp Shoutcast in 2005 and built Dreamland... So far 3 years and still going.

How many listeners do you have on an average day?
Currently 90 listeners with an average of 15-20 listener peak a day. This covers several time zones.

How big is your collection?
I currently have 125,000 mp3s in my main library, about 1,500 cure tracks, (a lot of bootlegs). I usually have around 600 songs that I rotate in and out on Dreamland.

Have you met a lot of people through your station?
Actually no...

What are the biggest challenges you face in running Dreamland?
Bandwidth is my biggest challenge, because this is all in my home. So I have to stream at 56 kb/s ....would love to be at 128 kb/s at least. Looking for options currently.

Can you tell us a little about the equipment or software you use?
Equipment is a computer dedicated as the server with several external drives. As far as software I use Shoutcast by Winamp in conjunction with Evil Lyrics. I also have a home recording studio so I run the stream through a Ramsa mixing board and a compressor/ limiter. I use Protools for any announcements like the Intro to Dreamland.

Do you take requests or set up special playlists often or do you mostly just push the "shuffle" button and let it go?
I love taking requests. I really enjoy seeing what other Cure fans enjoy. I will always play a request unless of course I am not around to fulfill it, lol.
Actually I mix it live a lot of the time, but I do have several playlists that I have created, you know the Happy Cure, the heavy Cure, the dim the lights and listen with your favorite poison Cure. I also do at times shuffle and let it ride.

You mentioned bandwidth issues. Would you ever consider something like a subscription or donation program to help you with the costs of running the station? If not, what other kinds of options would you look at?
I have given this some thought and have decided against subscriptions. There is a legal issue here and I want to be careful not to cross the line. I would not want to offend The Cure by what I am doing. Part of me likes to think that Robert wouldn't care , but I want to be careful. Donations would be helpful and I may go that route at some point. For now I am looking at a 20 mb/s upload service and that would do the trick but the problem is getting a static ip address which will cost me about $100 additional a month. So yeah, for now its status quo, lol.

Would you share a small playlist with us of your current favorites?
This is a hard one. This is what I've been playing lately... of course that will change with state of mind. (ed. note, I tried to find these on playlist.com so that you could hear them, however most of them are not available, so you'll just have to listen to Dreamland to hear them)

Please Come Home
Ching Chang Chong
Sirensong
All around us the mermaids sing
Your so Happy
A Night Like This (Smashing Pumpkins cover)
Give me it (Concert LP)
Don't Believe a Word
Lost Flower 4
This Morning
Truth Goodness and Beauty
Strum
Closedown
Dressing Up (Paris)
Sluvy
All of This

Is there anything else that I have not asked that you think people need to know about you and your station?
Feel free to stop by the site http://www.bassmentradio.com/cure/dream.htm and give it a go, download the toolbar to get the most out of it and remember no adware or spyware and its free. also it is important to me to express the hope that any listener of Dreamland supports The Cure by purchasing their music and seeing their shows.

Many thanks to Rob for his dedication to the Cure and the many fans who enjoy his station on a daily basis!

Nightmare Shirts In Stock

2008-11-08T01:12:00.003-07:00

Despite a minor delay, the 2nd printing is now complete! I have to mention that the new screenprinter did a kick-ass job, and the new shirts are even better than the first ones. The ink is thicker and more sparkly, and the edges are crisp and clean. So despite the setbacks, I think that they will be worth the wait!

There are a few shirts ~~available and in stock right now, so get yours while they last.~~ Sorry, these shirts are officially out of stock.

Nightmare Shirts Reloaded - Update!

2008-11-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of inquiries come in over the last week about the shirts, and so I thought I would give you an update on them. My original plan was to be mailing them before the 25th so that they would be arriving before Halloween. I am sorry to say that my screenprinter had other plans, and although he had the shirts for nearly 2 weeks he did not print them.

So on Halloween day I had to go rescue the box of shirts from him and take them to another screenprinter so that they could get done! I was extremely disappointed in him and I am very upset that I could not send the shirts out in time to you all, as I am sure that you are upset as well that you have not gotten the shirts as promised.

The good news is that they are currently at the new printers, and that I will be sending them out just as soon as they are done, which hopefully should be this week.
I am very sorry again that the first printer turned out to be so flaky, and that they were not done before Halloween.

13 Infinite Possibilities

2008-10-23T02:23:00.000-06:00

The forthcoming studio release from the Cure, 4:13 Dream (which is scheduled to be released in the US on October 28th) has be the most greatly-anticipated Cure album in the past 15 years.

The growth of the Cure's fan-base on the Web has greatly facilitated the exchange of knowledge, opinion, file sharing and general discussion among fans, literally worldwide. When the Cure play a concert in this day and age, the images and music are broadcast out around the globe in hours, sometimes even bare minutes from the end of, or even during, the performance.

So when the Cure began to play some of the new songs of this album on tour as early as October of 2007 (Notably, the Download festival, where "The Only One" was first debuted as "Please Project" ) and continuing on throughout the 4Tour in 2008, interest in these new songs was fueled primarily through amateur concert video and audio tapings, and limited amounts of rapidly-Youtubed television footage. It is a testament, then, to the sheer raw power and brilliance of these songs, that even a fraction of their real magic was captured and transmitted online.

Far from diminishing interest in these songs, these limited glimpses into a new world of Cure music have helped to stoke interest in the new material to a fever pitch. Indeed, the four singles released during the summer of 2008 shot readily into top of the sales charts worldwide with, in the US at least, a trivially minuscule amount of radio play. That a band can sell so many copies of a recording based almost entirely on interest generated through non-mainstream media channels is unprecedented, and should bode well for the future of the Cure. That they can do it in an age where music is freely available online through simple searches and a minimum of technical ability, speaks to the deep devotion the Cure's fans have to the band. Clearly, their fans care enough to continue to support the Cure through purchasing their music as well as helping to sell out their live shows whenever they tour.

Speaking of fans, I would like to extend a huge thanks to Craig over at Chain of Flowers for his endless patience and love for the band and his fellow fans as expressed through his website and new blog. Chain of Flowers was my primary source of Cure information for many years, and I have been thrilled to interact with Craig and the other fans throughout this past year as the new blog format has allowed us to do. It's been an amazing time, and I very much credit Craig with helping to introduce some wonderful new Cure friends into my life. The music of this album will always bring back fond memories from this past year of attending concerts "virtually". For the shows I did go to, knowing that there were other fans waiting breathlessly for every text, as I had done at other shows, helped to create a feeling of community that is still so amazing to me. I'm happy to be a part of the "family" over at CoF!

With that being said, I'd like to preface my review of the album with the disclaimer that this may not be a "typical" review as I don't have much to say about the more technical side of the music, so that which follows will be informed more by my own interests in the symbolism and meaning of the songs themselves. As usual, my opinions are my own and are in no way meant to be definitive. Rating the songs individually as bad or good is not part of my intent, for ultimately I love the album as a whole and believe each song has it's own story to tell. This is my interpretation of those stories.

(Graphic: A Wordle of the top 13 words on 4:13 Dream)

For an album that abounds with mythical and legendary creatures such as sirens, angels and "The Perfect Boy", the song "Underneath the Stars" begins the album on a note firmly rooted in the physical world while at the same time introducing a beautiful scene of intimacy and love. I will never forget the first moment I heard this song, with the sound of the crashing waves holding me stock-still in amazement. (So much so, that I forgot to turn on my camera!)

Prefacing the lyrics invoking the very creation of the Universe, (13.73 billion years ago, to be precise) the sound of the waves breaking echoes both the watery beginnings of life on earth and the water which cradles human life inside the womb. The scene is set of lovers entwined, floating together beneath a beautiful, starry sky. They lose themselves in each other, and in the infinite possibilities of the universe, held in a moment where the present, past and future intersect. That this song encompasses the most intimate of moments wrapped up with philosophical wonderings about the entire, infinite universe is quite impressive, and even in low-fidelity recordings became an instant and much-anticipated classic. It's musings on love and eternity are bound to place it very high on the charts of those Cure fans who revel in the dreamily romantic songs of the Cure's extensive discography.

Once the soft, dark night of "Underneath the Stars" has faded into daylight and everyone has woken up and had a good lunch, the Cure go in for a bit of afternoon delight in "The Only One", with Robert elucidating the many ways in which he is explicitly delighted by his lover. Unabashed and completely unashamed, this openly sensual riff on an adult repertoire has a bouncy beat and ecstatic rhythm completely befitting the subject material.

Like a visit from a particularly interesting and yet psychologically-unstable friend, "The Reasons Why" brings us out of our hazy afterglow with some jarring lyrics about suicide and friendship. Fittingly released near Halloween, this song seems to speak of someone who is in contact with the spirit world, and who is thinking about joining them very soon. The third-person style of this song is a bit unsettling after the extreme intimacy of the first two songs, however it seems to fit the material more closely, and certainly serves to put some distance between the singer of the song and the ideas expressed within (suicide, right to die). Interestingly, the conversation expressed near the end of the songs calls to mind the same symbolism found in "Underneath the Stars" regarding the infinite nature of the Universe as well as seeming to express some of Robert's belief regarding the afterlife, or lack thereof.

Perhaps driven by a need to get rid of some of the emotional baggage left over from "The Reasons Why", "Freakshow" lurches onto the dancefloor and shakes like a freak until the weight has dropped away and all that's left is a hallucinatory bubble of sights and sounds. Settling itself down next to the hookah in the back room, "Freakshow" leaves the harsh reality of the everyday world behind and pops open a hooky, catchy chorus determined to make you forget your woes. Aliens, swing dancing and a somewhat cranky girlfriend make for a psychedelic trip to the club downtown and you will be singing along even if you don't quite know what "infradig" means

The distressingly short "Sirensong" unfolds itself languorously from the mists of ancient memory, enchants us with glimmerings of golden paradise, leaves us aching rapturously for more, and then, disappears like a wisp of shimmering smoke.

"The Real Snow White" is all grown up and looking nervously around the room at seven dwarfs who want her to visit another kind of cave. Here, the raw, pale underbelly of life is exposed and crawling with seedy sycophants, disorienting drugs, lost time and lost innocence, and Snow White has been left wanting ever more.

Leaving the world of grime and slime behind, and perhaps inspired in a perverse way by the journey through it, Robert waxes philosophical with an exploration of the concept of "The Hungry Ghost". In Tibetan Buddhism, as in many other faiths around the world, the hungry ghosts are "a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfill their illusory physical desires". The placement of this song just after "The Real Snow White" seems like a deliberate way to contrast two extremely different states of mind and being. Debauchery and addiction have been cast aside in favor of robes of saffron and somber contemplation, and the effect is extremely thought-provoking indeed!

The introspection continues during "Switch" as Robert begins to question everything about his life, friendships, possessions, thoughts and habits, and ultimately decides that he's changed, but he is not certain why this is so. In this hard-rocking lament, difficult questions abound, the answers are few and far between, and all we can do is suffer alongside Robert on his quest for truth.

Spinning yet another tight vignette of a song into being, "The Perfect Boy" marries a sunny, poppy love song with a jaded, cynical tale of lust and betrayal. The girl believes, and the boy believes too, as long as he gets his way in the end. Fortunately, the song ends long before the optimism does.

"This. Here and Now. With You." is a perfectly Zen moment of clarity expressed in quirky, chiming rhythms and expressive beats. The words and phrases tumble over each other as if the moment will pass too quickly and they will be left behind. The urgency and immediacy of the lyrics weave a story of lovers brought together fatefully, perhaps bringing to mind the illicit relationship expressed in the song "Strange Attraction" from 1996's "Wild Mood Swings".

Resurrected from the "Head on the Door"-era demos, the updated (presumably) song "Sleep When I'm Dead" presents either a waking dream or walking nightmare, complete with conversations with angels and cute baby animals. Hallucinatory echoes reverberate throughout this ethereal landscape and the catchy chorus compels us to sing along, pulling us through the mirror and into an alternate reality littered with divine beings and reflected visions of the world we left behind.

The story of the "Scream" begins slowly, in the springtime, and plays out throughout the seasons as the subject of the song grows progressively more distant and distraught until the final drawn-out scream spins her into a whirlwind of frantic action and emotion. A picture is drawn of someone moving in a slow motion, as if they were in a time-lapse film, as the year spins faster and faster around her, until she is snapped into reality by the intensity of the "Scream" and upon awakening, finally looks around with a lingering sense of horror at the wreckage.

The tone of finality of the closing song "It's Over" takes on literal and figurative meaning, spinning the loss and distress expressed in the lyrics of the "Scream" into an angry return to the grim, drug-fueled world of "Snow White" where time is once more lost and deeply lamented.

The lucid introspection and philosophical meanderings of earlier songs has turned to remorse and self-hatred. The sense of limitless possibility captured in "Underneath the Stars" has turned bitterly, sourly wrong, cynicism rules the day, and the angry howls of disgust are all that are left behind. Launching a sonic assault on our hearts and minds, "It's Over" leaves us hoping desperately that it is not over at all, and that the long-rumored dark album will continue the story much, much further.

Nightmare before Cure-mas - Reloaded!

2008-10-07T21:59:00.001-06:00

Okay I give! You all love the design and I've heard from lots of people that didn't get to take part in the first pre-order. So here's your chance to get one now!

Ladies V-Neck photo by halo969

Sorry, these are out of stock at the moment!

The Gallery

2008-10-07T19:35:00.000-06:00

Here's where you'll see pics of the fans in their Cure shirts or photos of the shirts themselves.

My shirts at the Myspace Secret Show in LA! 12:13 Dream!

Nightmare Shirt Signed!

I gave the band a bunch of shirts made especially for them at the Carson Daly taping in LA on 12/12/08. I got one of them back, signed by the band! Thanks Keith!!!

Rev Cats
Originally uploaded by moe29

Morris and the Rev Cats :D

Me and Davis Petterson from The Ghosts Project at their concert in SLC.

-- from halo969

-- from Sara Batson

-- from Sara Batson

Cure fan Chris says hello!

Wearing rev's Cure Kick Ass Shirt!
Originally uploaded by cure_kitty

Wearing rev's Nightmare before Cure-mas Shirt!
Originally uploaded by cure_kitty

With my awesome tattoo artist Shane

I see you
Originally uploaded by Las April

Primary Colors of the Cure - Part 2

2008-10-07T14:13:00.000-06:00

I hope that you enjoyed reading Part 1 of my short exploration of the colors in the Cure's song lyrics.

Following that train of thought, it seemed to me to be only natural to explore the color palettes presented by the studio albums. As we saw in the first part of this series, color is used to add meaning and emotional impact to the songs themselves. I think it is interesting how an album cover can also be distilled into distinct color palettes which can give us clues as to the overall emotional content of the songs in a particular album. For this blog post I used the color palette tool on the Colour Lovers website which is a lot of fun if you are artistically / creatively inclined and enjoy playing with color.

Here are all of the 13 studio albums as color palettes, along with an image of the album cover itself and a brief commentary on each one.

1. Three Imaginary Boys

Although Robert famously hated the cover artwork for their first album, the visual depiction of the band members as a lamp, a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner (a hoover) is a now-iconic piece of 80's album art. Produced by the record company, the cover of Three Imaginary Boys was such an irritant to him that Robert insisted on complete creative control over the final product on all future albums.

2. Seventeen Seconds

As noted above, the cover of Seventeen Seconds was the first album cover personally overseen by Robert Smith, and the contrast between the first and second album covers could not be more striking. As the first entry in what would become the three darkest albums of The Cure's early years, Seventeen Second's cover provides a view into the new sound of The Cure after the disjointed pop of Three Imaginary Boys, The stark, minimalist expanse of white is broken by a blur of eerie tree branches and grey, undefined shapes. The splash of red on the lower left corner hints at a surge of emotion coloring the otherwise bleak landscape, and the frenetic lines suggest movement, which is fitting as the Cure's first charting single in the UK, "A Forest" came from this album.

3. Faith

Based on a photograph of the 12th-century ruins of Bolton Abbey in the fog, the moody atmosphere of the cover of Faith presents an even bleaker landscape than that on the cover of Seventeen Seconds. The second of the three dark albums, it offers little respite from the mood previously set into place. Here there is dim light, shades of gray and very little texture, broken only by the small logo and unadorned text near the top left. The brooding hulk of Bolton Abbey towers ominously above the viewer who appears to be lying on the colorless grass at the bottom of the cover. The emotional resonance of this cover is intense, oppressive and more than a little claustrophobic, perfectly expressing the music within.

4. Pornography

The final album of the three dark albums and the first in the later "Trilogy" series, Pornography takes the bleak landscape of Seventeen Seconds, and the despair and hopelessness of Faith and channels them both into a dark swirl of anger, hatred, death, lust and cynical passion. The sighs of gray on the cover of Faith have been replaced by bloodcurdling howls of red and purple, and the pale, distorted faces appear to arise from the black depths of a particularly gruesome nightmare. The narrow, unadorned text at the very top nearly fades into obscurity with its thin, stretched lines. This is the first album cover to feature the faces of the band members, and the only one to feature members other than Robert Smith on the cover. Notably, the three albums which do feature Robert Smith on the cover (Pornography, Disintegration and Bloodflowers) are all considered by fans and critics alike to be the best work of the Cure's extensive catalog, and were the focus of 2002's "Trilogy" DVD in which all three albums were played in concert back-to-back.

5. The Top

After exploring the oppressive darkness of the last three albums, coming across the artwork for The Top feels a little like stumbling into a circus sideshow tent just after visiting the Holocaust Memorial. Many fans of the era were reported to be furious at Robert for abandoning music influenced by the somber introspection that he had been immersed in. Understandably, there should be some confusion about how and why the man who wrote the line "It doesn't matter if we all die" suddenly began to cuddle kittens and sing about caterpillars! The sudden change in mood and atmosphere is vividly reflected in the cover art for The Top, with it's poppy, psychedelically optimistic tones of yellow, red, blue, green and gold. The emerald-green font of the album title takes up most of the front cover, another departure from the previous covers, with The Cure written in gold and larger than on any other cover previously published. The loopily introspective music on The Top is reflected in the bright jewel-toned colors of the album cover as we explore what is the closest thing to a Robert Smith "solo" album that has been published to date.

6. The Head on the Door

A more subdued palette greets us on the cover art for The Head on the Door . Fluttering, indistinct shapes in pastel yellows and pinks arise from a sea of black, overlaid by blue text full of curlicues and organic shapes. Although this color palette is toned down as compared to The Top, the surreal psychedelia of the songs on the album is still well represented by both the colors and shapes on the cover. The claustrophobic pop anthems of The Head on the Door take the hint of absurdity found in the music of The Top and add a hit or two of ecstasy, the swirling guitars of Porl Thompson and an undeniable pop sensibility to produce some of the Cure's first major US hits.

7. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

With vivid red lips illustrating the album title, the colors of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me show us a more mature intensity that is less concerned with anger than with lust and love. The fiery reds and oranges of the cover invoke the heat of coupling, the desires of the flesh and the joys of union. Many of the tracks on KMKMKM explore themes of relationships and the conflict therein, and this is expressed in both the album artwork and color palette. The happy-go-lucky lyrics of the pop gems on The Head on the Door are gone, and in their place is a furnace of sexual energy and an abundance of sophisticated intellect. Meticulously crafted love songs and catchy pop masterpieces dominate the offerings of this, their 7th studio album. This album was the one that put the Cure on the radar of mainstream music with "Hot, Hot, Hot", "Why Can't I Be You" and "Just Like Heaven" pouring out of radios and onto club floors worldwide. Here the Cure are on fire, and it shows in the colors!

8. Disintegration

Once the fiery flames of KMKMKM had subsided, Robert decided to douse the lingering embers with the deep green waters of his own nightmares, and the result was Disintegration. Famously condemmned by the record company as commercial suicide following such an upbeat, passionate musical journey as KMKMKM, Disintegration proved that the fans were ready and willing to follow Robert into the depths of his own psyche. Here the album cover of the second installment in the "Trilogy" provides yet another visual glimpse into the watery, emotional heart of the Cure. The dark green depths of the cover are broken by shadowy, silhouetted flowers and a hauntingly pale gaze upward. The psychedelia here is less concerned with colorful eye-candy than with the veiled, introspective gaze which explores the shadows of the heart. The only counterpoint to the deep and pale greens here on the cover of Disintegration is a touch of brown which could even represent the viewer grasping for a place to stand while sinking into the dark.

9. Wish

Back on dry land once more, a surge of happiness suffuses the cover of Wish like a breath of fresh air from the circle of blue sky on the cover. One of the most commercially successful Cure records after Disintegration, the lyrics and music of Wish present a vision of the day breaking after the gloomy depths of midnight have passed. The colors on the cover present a happier Cure, with optimistic blue skies and white fluffy clouds surrounded by bright reds and oranges. The strangely compelling, iconic artwork by Parched Art draws us into an exploration of the meaning and imagery of the album cover and promises an optimistic view of love and life. Uniquely, the cover of Wish seems to have inspired more Cure tattoos than any other album artwork. From the commercial hits "High" and "Friday I'm In Love" to the lush promise of "To Wish Impossible Things" and the epic masterpiece "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea", the Cure is in love, and so are we.

10. Wild Mood Swings

Fittingly, the cover of Wild Mood Swings features a windup clown toy, because this album represents the Cure at their most playful. The bright primary colors of the cover reveal songs which are very much mood swings, alternately coy and condescending, playfully erotic and heartbreakingly sincere. This album features some of the happiest Cure lyrics ever written, and some of the most underrated songs of their oeuvre. From the "gorgeous strawberry kiss" of red to the honey-colored yellow and tender-hearted blue, the clues to the moods of Wild Mood Swings are written in bright tones throughout the album and the cover.

11. Bloodflowers

As the self-described third part of the Cure's career-spanning "Trilogy" of albums, the cover of Bloodflowers is a near-explicit echo of the bleak understatement of the cover of Seventeen Seconds. Here we see the stark whites and blood reds, the dense blues and greys of that cover, but portrayed with much more intensity and depth. The mariachi band of Wild Mood Swings has decamped and the paper streamers from last night's party are but pale tatters fraying in the wind. Here the colors of the foreboding winter moon has brought us through the night to dawn and we understand that with age brings wisdom as well as bitter realization. On the cover of Bloodflowers, we return to the pale forest of Seventeen Seconds and Faith, but have brought both a compass and a friend along, so that this time, the journey is not nearly as lonely or as disorienting.

12. The Cure

Perhaps remembering the incoherent nightmares of his own childhood, for the cover of the Cure's self-titled 2004 album, Robert asked his numerous nieces and nephews to draw pictures for him and then compiled them into the artwork for The Cure. The resulting effect takes all of the unspoken night terrors of pre-adolescence and distills them into a creepily subdued palette. The muddied colors evoke the fear of that spooky old mansion down the street, the yellow color of the wash of light from the porch light and the purple shadows lurking in the yard after midnight. The colors and disconnected childish cartoons of the cover let us know what to expect, and what not to expect from the Cure's 12th studio offering.

13. 4:13 Dream

Returning once again to the Parched Art aesthetic which was missing from Cure covers for 16 years, the cover of the forthcoming album 4:13 Dream is sprinkled with effervescently optimistic colors which highlight the shadowy shapes and hand-sewn detail of the watercolors on the front of 4:13 Dream. Bright flashes and splatters of yellow, pink and blue surround the hypnotically glowing red eyes of the central mask-like figure which echoes the pale faces of the cover of Pornography. The stars invoke the much-anticipated opener "Underneath the Stars" and the surreal, dreamlike shapes bring to mind the hallucinatory lyrics of the new singles "Freakshow" and "Sleep When I'm Dead".

As with many other Cure albums such as Wish and Wild Mood Swings, the themes of the main album are repeated and expanded upon on the covers of the singles, creating a coherent and immediately recognizable visual theme, which is reinforced through use of color and style. Here, the overall effect is one of entering a bright daydream where the echoes of the past Cure albums reverberate, informing and infusing the new works with the spirit of the old.

A Final Note:

It was while writing this article that I first noticed that the three "Trilogy" albums are the only ones to feature Robert's face on the cover (albeit more abstractly with Pornography) and thought that it was interesting that they are the ones which Robert Smith considers to be the most representative Cure albums. Certainly others have noticed and remarked on this phenomenon before, however it was not something which I had thought about before doing this analysis of the album covers. It definitely made me wonder more about the process that they go through to produce the covers, and whether Robert's confidence in the material is what inspires him to put his face out there on the album, or whether that has even been a conscious decision on his part. If you have any insight into this process, please leave a comment or message, I'd love to hear from you!

Nightmare Tee Shirts - Update 3

2008-10-02T00:53:00.000-06:00

Thanks to everyone again for all your great feedback and comments on the shirts. I love that so many people ordered these as gifts for birthdays and the special Cure fans in their lives!

I love to see people enjoying my designs, so if you can, please send me a picture of yourself (or your significant other, friend etc.) wearing it!

Here's the most recent news about the shirts:

The ladies V-Neck shirts (photos of those coming soon!) and the large crew neck tees have been printed, packed and will be in the mail on 10/2!

If you were waiting on a shirt and have NOT yet received an email with your tracking number, please contact me ASAP! As of tonight (10/1), all of the pre-orders have been filled and sent out.

Update - 10/7 All the shirts I had as extras have been taken! But if you didn't get one, and you would like to order one, don't despair! See this blog post for details and scheduling!

Nightmare Tees Update 2

2008-09-30T10:46:00.000-06:00

As mentioned in my earlier blog post the ladies v-neck tee shirts were delayed due to supply issues. I'm happy to report that they are being printed as we speak and should be shipping out starting tomorrow! So if you've been waiting on your shirt, you should be getting an email from PayPal with your tracking number very soon.

That being said, I took a couple more photos of the crew-neck shirts which show the sparkle of the metallic ink much better. The shadows are just from the leaves of the trees above. Enjoy!

Primary Colors of the Cure - Part 1

2008-09-24T01:28:00.000-06:00

Color plays a huge part in helping to set the tone for many of The Cure's songs. From somber to upbeat, the world through the eyes of Robert Smith is awash in color, and colors in the world of the Cure are very closely tied to the emotional content of the songs themselves.

If you can, try to imagine the color references removed in lyrics such as those in "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" or "Watching Me Fall" and you can get a sense of how important color can be in adding meaning to these songs.

In the music of The Cure, the colors gray, black, red and white are often used in connection with emotions such as despair, anger, fear or hostility, while green and blue are more commonly associated with songs involving love and relationships, good or bad.

Here are ten of my favorite color-associated Cure songs. What are some of yours?

1. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
2. One Hundred Years
3. Watching Me Fall
4. All Cats are Grey
5. A Short Term Effect
6. Caterpillar
7. Burn
8. Gone
9. Primary
10. Wrong Number

Finally, if you'd like to explore further into the colors of the Cure's songs, here is a tool called a Word Tree, into which you can enter various words and see what other words are linked to it. Type a color word such as blue, green or red into the text box and you can immediately see which lyrics contain it. This also works for other words such as love, hate, anger, kiss, dream, ocean, etc. The number in the upper left corner indicates how many times the word appears in the document.
Have fun!

The data feeding this little application is the same Cure Lyrics document I used in the 13 Impossible Words post.

Nightmare Teeshirt Update #1

2008-09-23T02:14:00.000-06:00

First the good news - the regular crew-neck shirts are done! And they look just fabulous! YAY!

Well, they are mostly done. Actually more than 90% of the regular tee-shirt orders are not only done, they are all packaged up and ready to ship! They will go out on the 23rd. If your order is among them, you'll get an email from Paypal notifying you of the shipping. If you don't get this email, please see below!

And the not so good news -Ladies' V-Necks in black were impossible to find, I actually had to order them in from out of state after trying every available avenue to get them here. Fortunately, they should be here on Tuesday, Sept. 23rd and should be available to ship out by the end of the week. I'm sorry for the delay and hope this doesn't cause anyone any trauma or drama.

Large size shirts - for some unknown reason black tee shirts in Large were really hard to get! (almost as hard as black ladies' v-necks!) So we had to sort of patch together the larges from different stores / brands. I apologize that some of you who ordered a Large teeshirt won't be getting the promised Hanes tagless tee shirts. Since we couldn't find enough Large size shirts, there are a couple of orders to print when we print the ladies v-necks this week (above) and
again, I apologize for any delay. If you just can't stand the thought of wearing a Fruit of the Loom instead of a Hanes teeshirt, please let me know and you can exchange it for a Hanes one when I get the new order printed this week.

If you ordered a regular style crew neck shirt along with a v-neck, your complete order will ship when the v-neck shirts are done printing.

Enough chit chat, just take me to the pictures!!

Starting the packing process

Covered with teeshirts!

Even more shirts!

Print detail

(this one does not show the metallic glitter effect very well)

More packing

Stacking UP!

Metallic Silver

You can see the metallic silver glitter much better here!

Well, that's all I have for now, thanks again for all your support!

13 Impossible Words

2008-09-15T23:35:00.000-06:00

I'm a geek and a poet, a writer and an artist, a programmer and a statistician. Throughout my time as a fan, one of the major draws of the Cure's music for me has always been the literate, intelligent and beautiful lyrics of the songs.

A favorite tactic of Robert is to write songs based on books and poetry, and compress them into a coherent, lyrical form. The brilliant condensation of "Les Yeux des pauvres" into the song "How Beautiful You Are" is a perfect example of this. However, the vast majority of the lyrics simply come from Robert's own life experiences, thoughts and feelings. As I have explored previously in this blog, there are common themes which permeate the songs, such as descriptions of the ocean, the stars, sun, moon, nature, cities and of course, relationships and the vast range of human emotion. Taken together, they describe a life lived fully and offer an intriguing glimpse into the heart and mind of a modern-day poet.

As a geek, I have always been fascinated by the visual depiction of data, and when the Wordle applet was released upon the world this summer, I played with it several times but never had the chance to do what I always wanted to do with it, namely, run a dataset of all the Cure's lyrics through it! Well, now my Cure lyric geek / artist / statistician desires have been fulfilled, and I present to you two sets of Wordles. I'll give you some background on how the data was handled after you take a look at the following:

Top 13 Words in Cure Lyrics
(click to explore)

Knowing about the themes that recur in Cure songs, when I first ran Wordle with the Cure lyrics dataset, I was a little surprised to see the top 13 composed of these words! And a big shock was that the most common word in all of the lyrics was the word Never, followed closely (and not nearly as shockingly) by LOVE.

Here are the top 13 words in numerical order, with the word frequency count next to them.

1. Never (288)
2. Love (237)
3. Want (198)
4. Time (187)
5. Always (166)
6. Know (163)
7. Away (151)
8. One (143)
9. Ever (139)
10. Nothing (137)
11. Go (135)
12. Get (128)
13. World (124)

I love how poetically these words go together, and the way that the Wordle depiction puts them together creates an artistic vision that can be read in many ways. These words manage to distill many of the important themes in the Cure's music into short, 2-3 word sentences that convey a great range of meaning and emotion, in concise, haiku-like form.

Here is a larger dataset in Wordle, of the top 300 words in Cure lyrics
(click to explore)

About the data:

The Cure lyrics analyzed here were taken from a document available online. This document is fairly comprehensive, containing lyrics for demos and other rare tracks. I am not certain of the source or editor, or I would be happy to link back to them. In order to clean up the dataset for analysis, I removed most of the extraneous information such as brackets and album titles. I didn't spend an extreme amount of time cleaning it up however, as Wordle removes a lot of unimportant data such as often-repeated common words (and, the, if) and pronouns (you, me, my). I also manually removed the words "like" and "just" as common words. You can access the raw text that I created here, if you'd like to play around with it in Wordle or another analysis engine for yourself. I've also made the dataset available on Many Eyes if you'd like to try a tag cloud or word tree there.

Finally, just for fun, here's a Wordle of my blog :

Update: Cure Lyrics Word Doc by aussietiger - Thank you!

Nightmare before Cure-mas

2008-08-19T17:13:00.001-06:00

2nd Printing now up for pre-orders!

Check out my Flickr set for updates as I will be documenting the progress there.

Update #1 - Sept. 23rd
Update #2 - Sept. 30
Update #3 - Oct. 1 - Extra shirts up for grabs!
Update #4 - Teeshirts Reloaded!

NEW! See the Gallery here!

Thanks for all your support and kind comments!

I love to see people wearing the shirts I make, so if you would, please send me a pic of you wearing your shirt!

The Cure for Love

2008-08-13T01:13:00.000-06:00

In honor of the 20th wedding anniversary of Robert Smith and Mary Poole Smith, this post is all about the love songs of the Cure.

Robert and Mary were married on August 13th, 1988 at Worth Abbey near Crawley. It was a very private affair, and journalists were banned from covering the ceremony. In the book "Never Enough, the story of the Cure" by Jeff Apter, Robert is quoted as saying that the wedding was an excuse to have "a nice day so that Mary could walk down the aisle in a white dress and we could have all the aunties and uncles there". Now, 20 years later, that nice day has turned into a legendary moment in time.

Robert famously penned his most successful hit "Lovesong" as a wedding present for Mary, and it was subsequently released on the album Disintegration, to widespread acclaim. "Lovesong" went on to become the Cure's highest-charting US single to date, although many of their other love songs have reached great popularity as well, such as 1987's chart-topper "Just Like Heaven" and the cheery mood swing captured in "Friday I'm In Love" from 1992.

Although the Cure's music has often been labeled as depressing, morose or aloof, there are a multitude of songs which can be easily classed as outright love songs. We do not have access to Robert in order to confirm the inspiration for all of these songs, but it is easy to imagine that many of them are inspired by his love for his lifelong soul mate and partner, Mary. From the light and optimistic lyrics of "Mint Car" to the complex emotions contained in "Same Deep Water as You", the thirteen visions of love presented here are a celebration of their inspiring, life-long love affair.

Starting out with the as-yet-unreleased track "Underneath the Stars", this song, with lyrics about floating with your lover and looking up at the stars as the waves of the ocean break nearby is considered by many fans to be one of the finest of the tracks from the forthcoming album, and by some, to be one of the best Cure songs ever written. In a poll taken during the 4Tour of the summer of 2008 on the website "A Chain of Flowers" blog, this song garnered so many votes (ending at over 48% of the votes) that a new poll was released, saying: "BESIDES Underneath the Stars, which new song is your favorite?". A reading of many of the lyrics to these love songs shows that for Robert, romantic love is very intertwined with his love of the ocean and stars, as well as water in general, and these themes are grandly displayed in the soaring, emotive poetry and music of "Underneath the Stars".

download this track here >

As a B-side to one of the most popular Cure love songs, the 1987 single "Just Like Heaven", which has been called by Robert "the most perfect pop song" he ever wrote, the song "Snow in Summer" has garnered little attention in the intervening years. However, the playful sensuality of the song has long been a personal favorite of mine. It's companion B-side, the well-known track "Sugar Girl", is a sparkling little gem of a love song as well, but to me, the "Snow in Summer" track is a lusty vignette of a summer afternoon spent in the mountains with a lover, as expressed in the lyric "Sleek and deep, And salty sweet, You come, And close in me, Just like the snow in summer".

download this track here >

The same era that brought us "Just Like Heaven" also produced popular single "Why Can't I Be You", which shows us a person so in love with their partner that they wish to merge with them, a theme often explored elsewhere in love songs the world over. A giddy, over-the-top song notable for its video filled with amusing double-entendres and the Cure dancing in choreographed, costumed unison, it embodies the optimistic side of love where you feel that your partner can do no wrong. In live shows, the song was often used to incorporate lyrics from sources as diverse as the Disney film the Aristocats and the Frank Sinatra song "Young at Heart", thus serving as a very early version of the current mash-up fad.

download this track here >

Moving to present a more mature version of love, the Bloodflowers track "There is no if" shows us a couple who has been together since they were young, and the evolution of their love as it has gone through a transition from the first heady flush of young love to the steady, quiet and bittersweet reminiscences of adults. The simple lyric "If you die" you said, "So do I" you said is repeated in both instances of the story, but takes on different meanings, on one hand inducing tears of joy, and on the other, tears of the pain of the understanding of mortality.

download this track here >

Our next track, "Mint Car" is a happy romp through a day full of joy and abundant sunshine, a day where anything is possible. Starting out with the lyric "The sun is up, I'm so happy I could scream", this song is a cheery picture of exuberant, youthful optimism and love. This often-overlooked track from 1996's Wild Mood Swings initially charted as high as #14 on the US Modern Rock Tracks listing, showing that the fans appreciate a happy pop love song as much as they do a more solemn one.

download this track here >

The collaboration of Junkie XL and Robert Smith on the song "Perfect Blue Sky" is included as an example of how the songwriting talent of Robert is not limited to Cure songs, and as a demonstration again of the "vignette" style of song writing that he utilizes to perfection when writing a love song. In this song, we are invited to imagine ourselves standing "hand in hand under a perfect blue sky" with our loved one. The most successful love songs are those that allow the listener to feel the emotions of the singer, and put themselves "in the picture" of the songs, and the lyrics here are a wonderful example of this skill.

download this track here >

As the arguably best-known and most popular love song from the Cure, "Lovesong" as has been noted before, was written by Robert as a wedding present for Mary in the summer of 1988. A simple, accessible and straightforward song professing his love for her, "Lovesong" has become a romantic staple among Cure fans and non-fans alike. I have heard of several couples who became engaged while this song was being played during a Cure concert, and I am certain that countless dates, weddings and engagement parties have been enhanced by the song as well.

download this track here >

A Wish-era love song, "From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea" is a complex, layered ballad exploring the themes of love, loss and yearning, and effectively displays the extreme emotional depths so common in Cure lyrics. Like "Underneath the Stars", it builds on the story of lovers alone at the edge of the ocean that is woven through so many Cure love songs, but here the feeling is poignant and intense, without the confident maturity of the latter. The driving guitar chords intensify the meaning behind the lyrics and increases the sense of "distance within closeness" that characterizes the song. An intimate look at the multifaceted relationship between lovers, this song is a perennial live concert favorite of the fans and the band alike.

download this track here >

From the same time frame, and yet vastly different in feel and intensity, "Friday I'm In Love" hit #1 on the US Modern Rock Chart and was a Top 40 mainstream single as well. Although at a passing glance, it would seem to be a simple, fluffy love song, the lyrics actually display an interesting sense of ambivalence that tends to get lost on more casual listeners. Lyrics such as "Thursday I don't care about you, It's Friday I'm in love" seem to be an almost callous dismissal of the lover's feelings for his object of affection, however in the later part of the song, the callousness is cast aside in favor of the affectionate lyrics remarking on the gorgeousness of seeing "you eat in the middle of the night". Again, more complex emotions are displayed, and "Friday I'm In Love" could almost be seen as the classic example of a "love-hate" relationship.

download this track here >

In the box set booklet for Join the Dots, Robert describes the song "This Twilight Garden" as "one of the best love songs we've ever done", and as an attempt to distill the feeling of being in a beautiful garden at twilight in the summertime with the one you love. He masterfully captures the visual poetry of such a night in lines like these:

"I lift my lips from kissing you
And kiss the sky wide deepest blue
And slow the moon swims up
Into your golden words for me"

making it a staple on the playlists of amorously-inclined fans everywhere.

download this track here >

Another mood shift, and a return to the dramatic, majestic album Disintegration, "Same Deep Water as You" is a heart-wrenching exploration of love and despair, and became an instant classic "dark" love song when it was released. In this song, the lover is desperately trying to connect with his soul mate, and despairing that he cannot swim to the same depths as she. The nearly-abstract quality of the lyrics present moments that slip away as soon as they are grasped, and beautifully illustrate how difficult it can be to distill powerful emotional moments into words.

download this track here >

Returning to 1992, and the B-side to "Friday I'm In Love", "Halo" is a perfect Cure love song, suffused with delight and wonder and celebrating the brief and yet ecstatic moments when everything is perfect, where love is buoyant and there is only happiness. "Halo" replaces the ambiguity and callousness of the A-side track with bubbly, effervescent affection. It's a champagne glass full of sweet sips of devotion and tenderness, captured in song format.

download this track here >

Rounding out our album's worth of Cure love, the final track and first single from the Cure's forthcoming album, "The Only One" is a somewhat explicit ode to the physical side of love as he enumerates the many ways in which his lover pleases him. Never terribly shy about recounting his love relationship, as we saw in the lyrics to "Snow in Summer", here Robert lays all of his cards on the table, so to speak, and lets us know in no uncertain terms what he really likes!
A song that is certain to have male and female fans alike singing along, albeit for slightly different reasons, "The Only One" is a melodic and straightforward accounting, literally from the top down, of what goes on behind closed doors.

don't download this! Buy the single! >

I hope you enjoyed this little trek through some of the love songs of the Cure, and that you'll join me in wishing Robert and Mary a VERY happy 20th anniversary! May they love each other eternally, and may Robert keep writing songs inspired by their amazing relationship.

The secret language of Cure tattoos

2008-07-28T14:13:00.001-06:00

Colorful imagination
Originally uploaded by bluheron

I'll start off by saying that this post is about my tattoo and the reasoning behind it, as well as being about the symbolism of Cure tattoos in general. As always, this is my opinion, and is not meant to be an in-depth thesis on the topic. Your mileage may vary and other disclaimers apply.

The topics are interconnected in that the reasons that people get Cure tattoos based on the album/single/other artwork are extraordinarily varied, however many people feel that the artwork of any given album is an integral part of the experience of Cure records, and may even be the reason that even now, in the digital age, fans of the Cure tend to buy the actual physical records, often in addition to downloaded MP3s.

For instance, note the recent entry of the latest Cure single, released on July 13th, Sleep When I'm Dead, which debuted on the Billboard Hot Singles sales list at #1, even above Madonna's newest song, which debuted at #4. This, despite an almost complete lack of radio play in America! How are we (or the band) supposed to reconcile this extreme disparity?

My personal theory behind this phenomenon is that it has to do not only with the lengthy success of the Cure as a band, but also has much to do with the idea that Cure fans know that when buying a physical record (CD or vinyl), they will be participating in the full experience of the music. When the Cure release an item, they normally do not skimp on the details of the packaging, with artwork, pictures and song lyrics often included. For instance, on the recent series of remasters, the double-cd set could easily have been released in a simple double-cd jewel case with front and back artwork. It would have been simpler and certainly much less expensive than to produce a full-color fold-out CD box with cover and 20-page illustrated booklet with photos. However, they did not skimp, and we are treated to a mini-history of the Cure along with each remastered album.

Pre-digital?

During the Cure's early years, given the lack of instant-on communication and lightning speed information that the internet currently offers, the artwork which came with a particular album offered a visual and visceral glimpse into the music, and the process of creating it. Given that much of the early artwork was actually done by someone completely immersed in the creation of the music itself, it is little wonder that the art seems to "channel" the emotions and mood of a particular album or single into a distinct and coherent whole. This is reinforced by the creation of fonts or lettering, specific icons and visual styles that went along with each studio album.

For many people who were first introduced to the Cure in the pre-digital era, listening to an album for the first time was a cherished ritual that included sitting in front of an actual record player (or cassette player, depending) carefully slitting the outer wrap open, and perusing the album art intently while listening, and perhaps even reading the words along (after the initial listening session) until they had been learned by heart. One might even try to make sense of the way that things in the album art were put together, or reused for different purposes on the singles. For instance, the instantly-recognizable and yet eternally ambiguous bird-fish which graced the cover of Wish only as line-art, and yet became the main symbol on the cover of High, when it was released as a 12" single. In the pre-digital era, this artwork was a form of communication between the band and its fans, many of whom read it eagerly, as if it were a set of important hieroglyphics needing to be decoded and translated.

The Tattoo

For Cure fans, the reasons for choosing a specific tattoo are as unique as each individual being inked, however, very often the choice is linked to a specific album or it's artwork in some way. For instance, on the Chain of Flowers Tattoo Gallery, there seems to be a high percentage of tattoos which reflect the Wish-era artwork, particularly the nearly-abstract rendering of the word CURE, along with the aforementioned bird-fish, which are often seen together in some way. There are also a few renderings of the eye from the Friday I'm In Love single, however they are without the surrounding heart full of clouds. Many people consider Wish to be one of the Cure's most immediately accessible albums, and the preponderance of tattoos from this album artwork may bear that theory out.

Another factor likely contributing to the high incidence of Wish-era symbolism in tattoos is the high availability of recognizable iconography from that album. Some album artwork is more difficult to distill into tattoo form, most notably, the photo of the smeared lips from front cover of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me - however some fans use the font style from that cover to embellish their bodies with words, instead of trying to reproduce the picture. Other album covers which are relatively rare in tattoo form include the soft, out of focus photographs from the covers of Faith and Seventeen Seconds (although there are tattoos inspired by both of these albums). The severely lined face of John Button from the cover of Standing on a Beach and the frenetically-blurred hands on The Head on the Door are likely also more difficult to render in ink on skin, however some single artwork of the same era - such as Quadpus and the silhouette from Boys Don't Cry are both popular. Also, despite its chart popularity and masterpiece status, I have yet to see a tattoo of the cover of Disintegration.

There are also fans who sport inked portraits of Robert Smith, whether more straightforward or more abstract, and some who have one completely unique to them alone, and there are even a lucky few who have had Robert Smith and the other band members use their skin as a canvas. There are even some individuals who can't decide on just one Cure tattoo!

Cure tattoos can even be viewed as being a secret language between fans, with some of the lesser-known designs and fonts being known only to people who have ardently collected and enjoyed the Cure's music over the years. Having a tattoo that proclaims your love for the band unequivocally is fine, and many people do include the band's name somewhere in their design. However, I have noticed that there are many tattoos which are composed of song lyrics, or a symbol or design, and in most cases, these would be unrecognizable to more casual fans or the mainstream public as a Cure tattoo without further explanation from the wearer. A visible tattoo of a symbol or text that is recognizable mainly to other Cure fans can be a way of finding others who share a similar level of passion about the subject and love for the Cure and their music.

The choice of tattoo can even give other fans important clues regarding your interest in the Cure.
A friend of mine calls tattoos "our own personal bumper stickers", and in this respect I believe that is a very accurate assessment, particularly given the unique mood of each album. A knowledgeable fan would be able to understand more about the person simply given the content of the tattoo. A Cure tattoo provides a common ground of interest, and almost provides an instant feeling of camaraderie. For instance, if I saw someone with a Cure tattoo in a coffee shop or airport, I wouldn't hesitate to strike up a conversation. Robert once mentioned that Cure fans dressing in a certain way or wearing similar makeup was a way for Cure fans to recognize one another, and my belief is that the Cure tattoo is the modern equivalent to this, as many of the Cure's fans have aged somewhat and are no longer as apt to wear the interesting clothing or heavy makeup every day.

Symbolism

While some tattoo wearers may have chosen a specific album style or design because it resonates with some important time or theme in their lives, there may be some who have gone deeper into the underlying symbolism of some of the artwork, and chosen it based on the symbolism as well. One symbol which seems to resonate with fans as a tattoo is the cover artwork for the single version of Lovesong. The song is widely known to have been written as a wedding present from Robert to Mary, but many fans also know that the cover artwork for the single is an abstract painting done by Robert of himself and Mary, showing their faces merging. With the combination of the meaning of music, song lyrics and the painting, a tattoo of this design could symbolize a powerful belief in enduring romantic love, such as that between Robert and Mary, who are arguably, one of the most long-married couples in modern rock history. With their 20th wedding anniversary coming up in August 2008, and having been previously together for 15 years before the wedding took place, this means that they have been a couple for nearly 35 years in total. So that particular symbol can be a very meaningful tattoo as an affirmation of the wearer's belief in long-term love or their relationship with their significant other.

In my particular case, I chose two symbols which have deeper meaning to me than simply the surface meaning of being part of the album artwork. Firstly, I will talk about the heart with an eye in it from the cover of the Friday I'm In Love 12" single. Musically speaking, although I love the A-side song, the B-side of Halo is the perfect Cure love song, and I have always enjoyed it as such. The cover artwork of the heart-shaped sky with an eye in the center is very impactful and iconic, with meaning resonating throughout the design. The most important thing to me, though, is that this design neatly represents the concept of seeing the world through my heart. The ideal of treating others with love and compassion is central to the way I try to live, and the image of the heart composed of blue sky and white clouds can be seen to represent the world and the universe beyond it, encompassing "all sentient beings" as the Buddha would say.

The eye with the moon in the center also represents being able to delve into the depths of consciousness, as the moon has long been associated with the mysteries of human emotional life, as it waxes and wanes throughout each month. The moon in the center of the eye is the waning moon, which has been balanced by the inclusion of a waxing moon symbol above the main design. The full circle of The Top logo can also be used to symbolize the full moon, so that all three aspects are included in the final design.

The circular "logo" from The Top album is included for several reasons, including that just mentioned. It was the first Cure album that I ever purchased, so it served as my introduction to their music, after the single "Lovecats" (which was the first song that I ever heard). The logo resembles Egyptian hieroglyphics and circular seals of the pre-dynastic period, which is also a personal interest. The inclusion of the bird is important to me as my own spiritual path has been very associated with different types of birds as totem animal guides. The snake is an icon of sex, death, regeneration, the powers of prophecy and a symbol of the Goddess. The stars in the final version speak of my interest in astrology and astronomy as well as relating to several Cure songs which are personal favorites, particularly the yet-to-be-released song, Underneath The Stars. So from the beginning of my love affair with the Cure, up to and including my most recent experiences with the band, this tattoo encompasses 26 years of their music and artwork being woven throughout my life.

Regardless of the reason for getting it, a tattoo is a deeply personal and intimate decision, and it is obvious that the symbolism of the album artwork resonates deeply with individuals worldwide. I am of the opinion that the more meaning a tattoo has to the wearer, the more satisfied that individual will be with it on a long-term basis. Regardless of the person's motivation, it is clear to me that Cure fans are deeply passionate about the band and their music, and some of us are even willing to literally wear our hearts on our sleeves.

Update: I've had some questions about my statement that Robert painted the lovesong single cover. The single artwork credits Maya for the artwork, butI had previously read somewhere that Robert had experimented with painting and had produced the a self-portrait with Mary for the album. Although I have researched it a little, I have not been able to find a source for this idea, so I hereby retract that statement. Thanks!