The Turn Of The Shadows

The Cure, gothic climate band symbol which took bill of the eighties, goes back to Brazil after ten years to reverence thousands fans.

The english group The Cure fans roved that the union really moves: through a petition that gathered more than 20 thousand signatures (!), they forced the Hollywood Rock festival production brought the band to come in the seventh edition of the event, with shows in São Paulo (January 21) and Rio de Janeiro (26). And more: The Cure will contain the two nights as major attraction, heading a team of stars like Smashing Pumpkins, Supergrass and White Zombie.
It is not bad for a band keeped away from the recording studios four years ago and that almost finished at the time of the release of the disc, symptomaticly entitled, Disintegration. There were dissidences, the original line-up almost disappeared, but Cure got to leave the crisis without losing its way. Since October 94, the group is recording a new album, that should be released in May and about it there is a mystery. The temporary title is Wild Mood Swings and the disc will already bring twelve songs of 24 ever recorded. Some of those new music - three, at the most - will probably be played in the Brazilian presentations, according to Robert Smith, vocalist, guitarist, founder and of The Cure leader.
But Bob Smith is not stupid. He knows that the public didn't wait almost nine years to hear practically ignored songs. Therefore, it is almost obvious that the group will play many of its old hits, to cheer the curemaniacs.
Eighties - Cures came to Brazil between the end of March and the beginning of April 1987, in the middle of acme of its fame here. Robert Smith and his friends had a great surprise when here they arrived: almost 100 thousand people in the total attended the shows in Brazil. At that time it was the largest public of the group history, that was ten years old on stage already.
I remember the climate very well in the Ginásio do Ibirapuera in that occasion: thousands of people crowded in a high heat to see those five guys dressed black with arachnids combed playing a repertoire of wonderful musics that everybody enjoyed in the radios and in the discotheques of São Paulo.
For the current grunge generation, Seattle and all the noise stuff, Curecan sound as a Jurassic legend, even so there are ten years ago there was not nothing else more 'in' that Siouxsie And The Banshees, Echo And The Bunnymen, Jesus And Mary Chain, Simple Minds, The Smiths and, obviously, The Cure.
In spite of believing seriously in the gloomy art and in the depression daily, the generation of the eighties was not depressed and they filled happily the same gyms, stadiums and theaters that now shelter Nirvana and Sepultura hairy devotes.
Courtney Love probably still experienced, innocently, the marijuana when Siouxsie already dictated the fashion to thousands girls that didn't want to lookslike Madonna.
Changes - The Cure was the symbol band of that scenery, that Brazil still insists on calling of dark. Robert Smith innovated the british rock with lyrics that described the emptiness and the youths' renouncement perfectly of that time, lyrics framed by rich melodies in faded and fantastic refrains that subverted the sound track of the lost years. The romantic paleness, the torn voice, the lipstick sadly blurry, the hair that darken the Bob Smith's melancholic face: all those things dictated rules in the rockers tribe of the eighties, before that saw it divided between the long chess bermuda shorts and the virulence of the hairy metal.
And it was exactly in the turning of the decade that The Cure almost stopped existing. Laurence Tolhurst, Bob friend and also band founder, left the friend to have copyrights on the name "Cure", but the blow didn't obtain favorable result.
Of the line-up that was in Brazil in 1987, just remained Smith and tha bassist Simon Gallup. The changes don't seem to have affected the fame of the group. In Europe they are still filling the places where play.
In June of last year, for example, Cure played for 120 thousand people at Glastonbury Festival, in England. Here in Brazil, the results should not also be unexpected, once the 20 thousand fans asked the turn of The Cure to Brazil. Long life to Robert Smith!
(Denerval Ferraro - January/96)