A small group of local musical like-minded people and fans of Robert Smith & Co went to Budapest for a concert by The Cure, as if they were going on a musical pilgrimage, which, considering that the Cure never played in Belgrade during their four-decade-long career, is quite understandable. . The concert was on October 27, in the "Laszlo Papp" arena, as part of the tour simply called "The Cure Tour 2016".
More than ten thousand fans - among them, apart from the already mentioned Belgraders, there was a large number from the territory of the former Yugoslavia - from the first moment when the musicians appeared on the stage, they started singing in unison Shake Dog Shake, Fascination Street, and famous A Night Like This – tracks with which Cure opened this concert. It was perhaps the best start of any concert the undersigned has attended.
Such a mood did not end until the end. Robert Smith and his "partners" were extremely convincing and in the mood for a gig, and the audience knew how to respond to them in the right way. Made up mostly of members of the generation that today is between 30 and 45 years old, she wanted to return in her mind, even if only for a few hours, to the music she collectively grew up with, and therefore to her beautiful youth. In the air, you could feel how important it was to everyone that they were in that place, side by side with this band, and that the emotions that the majority of the audience, in a collision with the reality of life and growing up, had to overcome over time came back to them. give up.
Bassist Simon Gallup (56), a musician whose appearance is more and more reminiscent of the "rockabilly" version of Little Stephen from Springsteen's band E-Street, combined with Joe Strummer from the Clash, was responsible for the good atmosphere. He tirelessly ran around the stage, unlike the rest of the band who stood in one place the whole time. Among them, the youngest in the group by seniority, but the oldest in age, was the guitarist Reeves Gebrels (60), who joined the band in 2012, known for being the lead guitarist in the backing group of the deceased for more than a decade. world rock legend David Bowie. During concert breaks, singer Robert Smith drank exclusively large quantities of orange juice. In "darker" tradition, everyone except Simon Gallup wore black suits. The sound system was at the level, the indispensable special effects (lasers, low smoke, dimmed lighting) as well, while the simple and reduced stage with five rectangular led-screens completed the atmosphere of intimacy between the band and the audience.
The concert lasted three hours, they played 31 tracks, with as many as three encores. The set list, of course, included hits that Cure is known for Lovesong, Pictures Of You, Just Like Heaven, In Between Days, One Hundred Years. They dedicated an entire encore with songs from the album to fans of their early, post-punk phase 17 Seconds from 1980, among which were Play for Today, M, or legendary A Forest.
In short, it was a concert worth attending. It was convincing proof of how important and influential the Cure remains, ready to deliver an extraordinary event full of energy, good vibes and nostalgic memories of a time when music might still have the power to change the world, and to show how unpretentiously you can age in rock and roll.
