Friday I was in love

Maggie ponders:
Question: If you're a smart teenager full of emotion and thoughts that you like to believe transcend your suburban location, and you have a weakness for long-distance relationships that begin at the beach and call for handwritten correspondence and not much reality, what is your soundtrack of choice?

The Cure, of course.

Even my beloved Smiths couldn't match the Cure for heartbroken romanticism. The Smiths were dark humor, the soundtrack to eye-rolling my way through high school. But the Cure was my angst-filled, lovelorn soundtrack to night owl putterings in my renovated attic bedroom.

When I listen to the Smiths now, I hear them fresh. When I listen to the Cure, I am immediately 16 again, and I am immediately stopped in my tracks.

The first time I saw the Cure was early in college in Boston. The show was at the Orpheum, a renovated opera house and an absolutely fantastic place to see live music. I went with my oldest friend, also a huge Cure fan. I still have the ticket.

The second time I saw the Cure was Friday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, about as opposite from the Orpheum as you can get. Only, we had third-row tickets, they played for nearly four hours and for three encores, and it might as well have been 1994. The Cure's original lineup was all there, and they sounded amazing. We were all shocked at how good they sounded, actually. Nearly every song played was an oldie - they played almost the entire Disentegration album, and the third encore was "A Forest," from 1980's Seventeen Seconds, for what it's worth - and it was, in a word, thrilling to be there.

My date this time? The same guy who also took me to see Morrissey last year. He's good that way. And bonus: He didn't even mind that Robert Smith and I totally had a moment during the second encore!

"Pictures of You," The Cure, Dallas, 6/6/08


"Never Enough," The Cure, Dallas, 6/6/08