I just excavated myself from what seemed like miles of Cure fans. That was a close one.
Check out our Twitter for real-time Cure setlist updates for as long as I can maintain such a pace; so far we've had classics like “Lovesong” and “Pictures of You” mixed in with some lesser-known tracks. Most likely they're just getting started–they got going about a half hour late, too. That picture is of the set from just before they got started, while I was still packed in with said Cure devotees.
I keep seeing the same guy with a mohawk and weird beard every time I come to the press tent. He doesn't work in the press tent. I don't think he goes to show. I bet he just likes the free (warm) water.
Certainly, I can't try and pass myself off as a My Bloody Valentine super-fan: Loveless, their second (of two) studio albums and clearly the most influential, came out when I was barely eight years old. I didn't grow up around their music (Pixies, Sonic Youth, Smiths, yes, sure; MBV, no), and I never really heard them until college and doing the whole “yeah! I'm really into music now” thing. But I was still psyched to see them today, and they delivered–delivered something, for sure. All the talk about them being SUPER, SUPER LOUD was not just hype; I was laying in the grass quite a ways away and could still hear them reverberate with every sensory perceptor of my being. I know songs like “Only Shallow” and “Soon,” and perked up for them, not that it made too much of a difference. It was all noise. Powerful, powerful, awesome noise.
So powerful, in fact, that overlapping bands like the Kills (playing the Mojave tent) and Public Enemy (playing the “outside theatre”) didn't have a chance against MBV's pummeling sonic waves. Things were originally scheduled so no act had to play against MBV, other than Christopher Lawrence all the way over at the Sahara tent, but the main stage, unsurprisingly, ran late–causing the noisy conflict.
Not that Public Enemy seemed too deterred, doing “Bring the Noise” and “Don't Believe the Hype” (both from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back), and remind the fans that Flavor Flav was, at least once, more than a wacky reality TV star. That was about all I got to hear, though, since I had to brush up against some Cure fans. And that just about catches you up.
