Faith in The Cure

Last night, my awesome pal Michelle let me be her tag-along for the first of three LA performances by The Cure, part of their final “Reflections” tour. The promise: a concert of the first three studio albums, including my favorite, Faith.

Promise firmly delivered.

I don’t have to tell you about The Cure. You know them. They’re the crossover band of the last several decades, loved by goths and sensitive jocks, when bullying wasn’t a legislative agenda.  Their earliest releases aren’t as accessible as their albums in the 1990s that were complete with music videos, and now make appearances in your favorite karaoke song books. I didn’t discover these records until after Disintegration came out when I was in Junior High. It took a solid education of punk rock and it’s earliest incarnations in British new wave, to help me develop a solid taste for the earlier work. This stuff is good though. Classic really, and the sound at The Pantages was stellar.

It seems to take a reunion show these days for me to melt away into a live show, when you know every song because you’ve listened to them a thousand times. Those experiences are magical though, and they remind me of a time when music was about discovery. Discovering new bands, making music that was beyond. Being able to listen to a record over and over to commit every chord, every hook, and every lyric to memory. Realizing that these songs were about moments in your life, or a life you wished you were living.

I miss that magic in music.

If you didn’t get enough of the far-away cell phone pictures in your Facebook feed last night, you can check out more of my picture here. I am the reluctant concert photographer who’d rather be dancing, but I tried.