Roger will be making a couple of guest appearances with other artists this weekend.
Friday, Oct. 17th with Marie-Flore at Divan Du Monde in Paris. Tickets here.
Sunday, Oct. 19th with Hannah in the Wars at Sebright Arms in London. Tickets here.
(Thanks Roger O'Donnell Discography)
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Stories from the 1992 Wish Tour
From Andrew Mueller's From the Vault (Thanks @moggieboy):
FRIDAY I’M IN CHICAGO
The Cure in America and Canada
From "Rock & Hard Places"
ONE of the joys of travelling as a reporter is the opportunity to work with great photographers, and I’ve been unusually blessed in that respect – as I was on this trip, travelling with Melody Maker’s Stephen Sweet. And one of the frustrations of working as a writer is realising how little impact thousands of your words might have when measured against a single frame snapped by a great photographer, which was what happened when this story originally ran. I’d mumbled something to Sweet about maybe focusing on the odd relationship between The Cure’s Robert Smith and his mascara-smeared legions of lookalike fans, and Sweet nailed it the first night, outside the band’s hotel in Chicago. The scene is described, and done insufficient justice, below – Sweet shot the encounter between Smith and an especially ardent adherent from behind the singer’s shoulder, deftly capturing the worshipper’s supplicant gawp and Smith’s wincing, forehead-rubbing awkwardness. I still think it’s one of the best illustrations of the dysfunctional relationship between celebrity and celebrator I’ve ever seen, and its potence is diluted not even slightly by the fact that the anguish discernible in Smith’s expression was due, in truth, to the fact that he was just plain sloshed. The camera, in those pre-Photoshop times, may not have lied, but it didn’t always declare the whole truth.
What is lacking in the story that follows is much in the way of any meaningful attempt to understand the cult of Robert Smith from the perspective of its adherents. This was partially due to constraints of time, but mostly down to your correspondent’s pathological aversion to boring nutters. I could understand being a fan of The Cure, because I was – and am – one: indeed, a little over two years before I did this trip, I was living, back in Sydney, in a room dominated by the black-and-white “Boys Don’t Cry” poster, and I would still doubt the sanity of anyone prepared to argue that “The Head On The Door” wasn’t one of the dozen best albums of the 1980s. I just don’t understand the urge to appropriate your favourite singer’s haircut and taste in mis-shapen jumpers, and regard his every pronouncement as freighted with Delphic sagacity. Which is to say that I don’t understand uncritical reverence for anything, which is, I suppose, to say that I don’t understand quite a lot of the rest of my species terribly well. However, I believe that the analysis of his own flock that Smith delivers later in this piece is both astute and compassionate, or at least blessed with more of both those qualities than anything I might have come up with on my own.
Fame is a phenomenon that generally conspires to make both the admired and the admirer look ridiculous: I suspect that this is what I was trying to demonstrate with the random observations of The Cure’s celebrity inserted throughout the narrative. The best that all concerned can do with any variety of notoriety is refuse to take it seriously, and I’ve rarely since seen anyone cleave to that attitude quite so splendidly as The Cure.
FRIDAY I’M IN CHICAGO
The Cure in America and Canada
From "Rock & Hard Places"
ONE of the joys of travelling as a reporter is the opportunity to work with great photographers, and I’ve been unusually blessed in that respect – as I was on this trip, travelling with Melody Maker’s Stephen Sweet. And one of the frustrations of working as a writer is realising how little impact thousands of your words might have when measured against a single frame snapped by a great photographer, which was what happened when this story originally ran. I’d mumbled something to Sweet about maybe focusing on the odd relationship between The Cure’s Robert Smith and his mascara-smeared legions of lookalike fans, and Sweet nailed it the first night, outside the band’s hotel in Chicago. The scene is described, and done insufficient justice, below – Sweet shot the encounter between Smith and an especially ardent adherent from behind the singer’s shoulder, deftly capturing the worshipper’s supplicant gawp and Smith’s wincing, forehead-rubbing awkwardness. I still think it’s one of the best illustrations of the dysfunctional relationship between celebrity and celebrator I’ve ever seen, and its potence is diluted not even slightly by the fact that the anguish discernible in Smith’s expression was due, in truth, to the fact that he was just plain sloshed. The camera, in those pre-Photoshop times, may not have lied, but it didn’t always declare the whole truth.
What is lacking in the story that follows is much in the way of any meaningful attempt to understand the cult of Robert Smith from the perspective of its adherents. This was partially due to constraints of time, but mostly down to your correspondent’s pathological aversion to boring nutters. I could understand being a fan of The Cure, because I was – and am – one: indeed, a little over two years before I did this trip, I was living, back in Sydney, in a room dominated by the black-and-white “Boys Don’t Cry” poster, and I would still doubt the sanity of anyone prepared to argue that “The Head On The Door” wasn’t one of the dozen best albums of the 1980s. I just don’t understand the urge to appropriate your favourite singer’s haircut and taste in mis-shapen jumpers, and regard his every pronouncement as freighted with Delphic sagacity. Which is to say that I don’t understand uncritical reverence for anything, which is, I suppose, to say that I don’t understand quite a lot of the rest of my species terribly well. However, I believe that the analysis of his own flock that Smith delivers later in this piece is both astute and compassionate, or at least blessed with more of both those qualities than anything I might have come up with on my own.
Fame is a phenomenon that generally conspires to make both the admired and the admirer look ridiculous: I suspect that this is what I was trying to demonstrate with the random observations of The Cure’s celebrity inserted throughout the narrative. The best that all concerned can do with any variety of notoriety is refuse to take it seriously, and I’ve rarely since seen anyone cleave to that attitude quite so splendidly as The Cure.
Fiction Records fan vote
From Fiction Records on Facebook: "Join us in celebrating 10 years since the reincarnation of Fiction Records by helping to compile the Ultimate Fiction Playlist. Vote for your favourite track by The Cure from a shortlist selected by the Fiction office." (Thanks Sylvain)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)