| the cure live in japan 17/10/1984 |
| shake dog shake play for today primary the wailing wall the empty world the hanging garden the walk one hundred years give me it a forest the top charlotte sometimes let's go to bed the caterpillar boys don't cry 10.15 saturday night killing an arab the lovecats |
| the cure play in tokyo while supporting "the top." and a great recording as well...this performance was captured for an overseas video release, "the cure live in japan." and from just listening to the quality of this set, these tracks must have been taken from the masters/an original copy of the official video--the sound is pristine and sparkles...excellent. the band is good, even with the unconventional line-up at the time...featuring robert and laurence of course, but also porl thompson (on his first real tour w/the cure after being around very very early on w/easy cure stuff) phil thornalley on bass....and andy anderson on drums. things sound great! "shake dog shake" is a great opener and is strong, as are the two older tracks that follow..."play for today" and "primary." both benefit from the great sound/mix--great sounding drums, clean guitars and sharp bass sounds..."the wailing wall" sounds otherworldly, robert plays some cool guitar lines. |
| and the band stays new with "the empty world," pretty nice--after it, robert says "sorry about my voice, i've caught a stupid japanese cold....not that there's any other type...this is called 'the hanging garden.'" and actually, it pales in comparison to later live versions (with boris doing excellent drums in following tours, and even jason on the rarer 1996 performances) but it's ok. andy's drums sound a bit thin really, but only on "the hanging garden." next comes "the walk," (good) and then robert makes an odd kind of observation about the japanese audiences (very different than most) by saying "if i just stood here and waved for about three minutes, that would be completely brilliant....well...not so completely brilliant..." then directly into a nice version of "one hundred years," followed by an equally noisy and aggressive performance of "give me it." both are excellent. this performance/recording of "a forest" is good, not over the top great...but good--the best stuff is robert's guitar work, skittering and jumping all around...it's always interesting, and this is some good stuff--the set closes w/a good take of "the top," very different from most of the set....but good, and since it can't be found on the other excellent 1984 2-disc set/recording called "cold," this is cool. both are must-have recordings really... the singles ("charlotte sometimes," "let's go to bed" and "boys don't cry") are all sharp and tight, very good, but "the caterpillar" is cool because it's not played that often...everything is really good and the cure closing numbers "10.15 saturday night" and "killing an arab" are powerful and noisy fun--and then those lucky enough to be in tokyo actually get a full version of "the lovecats!" pretty rare, and even though the mix is a bit off (you can't hear the keyboards enough to get swinging) it's still excellent. the show/recording is excellent--a real keeper, so if you're looking for a good 1984 recording--this is a great choice =) it would be hard to pick between this set and the other brilliant 1984 set called "cold," so get them both!! "cold" is great, and this one is as well...where "cold" features one of the earliest shows w/boris williams behind the drums, "the cure live in japan" is andy anderson's last!! |