The Cure live in Rome, Italy (Oct. 11th, 2008)

Underneath The Stars, The Only One, The Reasons Why, Freakshow, Sirensong, The Real Snow White, The Hungry Ghost, Switch, The Perfect Boy, This. Here and Now. With You, Sleep When I'm Dead, The Scream, It's Over. Robert: "Thank you, that was 4:13 Dream! See you in a second."

Encore: Lullaby, Fascination St., Wrong Number, The End of the World, The Walk, Lovesong, Friday I'm In Love, Inbetween Days, Just Like Heaven, Boys Don't Cry.
Robert: "See you again soon"

Show was 1 hour 42 minutes.

The Cure started at 11pm / Main set ended at 11:56 / Show ended at 12:42.

Show notes:

Pietro (5:30pm): Still waiting for the doors to open...Luckily the sun is now behind the buildings; man was it HOT an hour ago!!
Pietro (6:07pm): We're in, but there's only been the first support band, some Italian rapper who was booed off of the stage.
Pietro (7:37pm): The MTV Italy live broadcast has begun.
Pietro(8:02pm): VJ just said that The Cure are scheduled for 11pm.Three more hours...Aargh!!!
Olivier (8:14pm): For now we're enjoying horrible crap music (I didn't say Italian) but it will be worth the wait!

Olivier (9:16pm): RS is being interviewed right now. Said this is the only time they would be playing the whole album live. The second hour will be a very long "greatest hits" encore. "I never ever had writers block!" The new album was recorded as a double, of which 4:13 Dream will be the first part. The second part will be a "dark" album.
Pietro (9:22pm): Robert said the encore would be rather short due to curfew, they had hoped to play longer.

Pietro (10:43): The last support act has finished on the 2nd stage. Main stage is now ready for The Cure.
Pietro (11:08): UTS is...Wow!! Only One is as usual, Porl's guitar is unusually low.
Pietro (11:21): Sirensong is on an acoustic, reminds me of Jupiter Crash. Porl is playing a strange instrument, seems like a keyboard, but is not.
Pietro (11:30): Snow White is really good, very powerful but not noisy. Robert only sings.
Pietro (11:33): Switch starts with a blast! Porl alone rocking on his guitar!!! Very rock and fast overall.
Pietro (11:38): Perfect boy is perfect! Slower than Mix 13, it seems, and bass is louder.
Pietro (11:51): Scream builds up really slowly, but it changes completely when Robert...screams and then kicks ass!
Olivier (11:52): The Scream ("your voice sounds strange... your eyes are too bright..." wow, this is incredible!)
Pietro (11:58): It's Over has the best bassline in god knows how many years and that's enough for it to become one of my favorites. Besides that, it rocks.

Pietro: Porl (who was dressed very nicely tonight) took off his jacket after a few songs of the 2nd part and remained only with a light shirt, you'll see. :-D
Pietro: The album seems pretty solid overall. Nothing dramatically different from the 04 Cure (apart from Freakshow, which for me is a gem of originality!). 1st listen favs (not singles): UTS, Sirensong, Real Snow White, This. Here and Now. With You, and It's Over.

(Thanks to Olivier and Pietro for the live setlist and notes)

Photos

Reviews

My friend and I have just watched The Cure play at the MTV Coca Cola Live event in Rome tonight and here are our few comments.

As we arrived at the venue, there was a live interview with Robert. He said that this album is the first of two and ended up being a mixture of styles. He also said he thought it was quite an accessible album. I think he also said that the second would be heavier.

He also mentioned that this was probably going to be the first and only time they would play all of these songs together live and that they had planned to play the 13 songs from the album and then 13 songs for the encore. However, he had just been told that the police wouldn't allow it so the show would have to be shorter than he had planned.

The Cure came on at around 11pm, after the radio-friendly and designer clad John Legend and an Italian hip hop band. The setlist was not very surprising (as expected) but the new songs appeared to be well executed.

Everyone will have a different opinion on the new songs, but Underneath the Stars, The Scream and It's Over stood out for us, although it is always difficult to judge when you hear songs played being played live for the first time.

The encore was very pop, but the majority of the crowd, who seemed to have no more than a superficial knowledge of the Cure, really seemed to enjoy that part of the set.

Overall, a unique and original event in a nice setting, but please bring back Faith and Charlotte Sometimes...

- Fab G and Fred L