With new guitarist Reeves Gabrels still in tow, The Cure played its second European festival in a week tonight, delivering a 36-song set at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound 2012 peppered with surprises, including the first performance of “Fight” since the Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me tour, only the third-ever performance of “The Caterpillar,” a rare airing of “Dressing Up” and the first-ever performance of “Let’s Go To Bed” B-side “Just One Kiss.”
The first hour of the show — “Plainsong” through “Bananafishbones,” including a little birthday serenade to bassist Simon Gallup at the end of “A Forest” — was webcast, and you can watch that above. The full setlist, courtesy of Chain of Flowers, is below, and, as you can see, the 23-song main set is identical to last week’s Pinkpop appearance. But the encores were quite different, including a three-song Kiss Me set and a nine-song middle encore.
Also below, we’ve posted video of a few of the more rare songs (“Just One Kiss,” “Fight,” etc.).
Setlist: The Cure, Primavera Sound 2012, Barcelona, Spain, 6/1/12
1. “Plainsong”
2. “Pictures of You”
3. “High”
4. “The End of the World”
5. “Lovesong”
6. “Push”
7. “Inbetween Days”
8. “Just Like Heaven”
9. “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”
10. “The Hungry Ghost”
11. “Play For Today”
12. “A Forest”
13. “Bananafishbones”
14. “Lullaby”
15. “The Walk”
16. “Mint Car”
17. “Friday I’m in Love”
18. “Doing The Unstuck”
19. “Trust”
20. “Want”
21. “Wrong Number”
22. “One Hundred Years”
23. “Disintegration”
24. “The Kiss”
25. “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep”
26. “Fight”
27. “Dressing Up”
28. “Lovecats”
29. “The Blood”
30. “The Caterpillar”
31. “Close To Me”
32. “Just One Kiss”
33. “Let’s Go To Bed”
34. “Sleep When I’m Dead”
35. “Why Can’t I Be You?”
36. “Boys Don’t Cry”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “Just One Kiss”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “Fight”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “Dressing Up”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “Trust”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “The Blood”
The Cure @ Primavera Sound, “The Kiss”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Video: The Cure debuts guitarist Reeves Gabrels, digs out rarities at Pinkpop Festival
- Video: The Cure, ‘Play Out’ — out-of-print ‘Wish’-era collection of live performances
- The Cure’s ‘Entreat Plus’ live album to receive double-vinyl U.S. release on Record Store Day
- The Cure headlining Reading, Leeds festivals
- The Cure to headline ‘series of major European music festivals’ this summer
- The Cure reissuing ‘Wish’ in 2012, prepping ‘Friday I’m In Love’ Record Store Day 7-inch
- Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys make Rock Hall of Fame — The Cure snubbed
- The Cure’s Robert Smith hints at 2012 tour, tells New York: ‘We’ll see you again next year’
I like that little moment after Roger flubs some chords during Inbetween Days, Robert gives him a look and Roger laughs it off.
Where the hell is the rest of the show???
They only webcast the first hour or so of the show. I’m posting audience video of some of the later, more rare songs.
Hopefully one of these festivals will webcast the band’s full set — Pinkpop only did about 50 minutes, too.
Once again The Cure prove they are the best band out there. ‘Fight’, ‘Just One Kiss’, I mean WOW.
Actually, I saw them perform Fight @ the Inland Invasion in San Bernadino about 6 or 7 years ago… that was actually the best set I’ve ever seen them do. They only played deeper tracks. Just the trippy stuff. It was amazing….
Hmmm… according to this setlist (http://www.chainofflowers.com/invasion0903.html), they didn’t play “Fight” that night. And Robert does introduce it in the video posted above as something they haven’t played since 1987…
Burned.
Pretty cool to see Just One Kiss played. A little strange to see Reeves since i always think of David Bowie with i hear his name.
@ eroc, sorry I was at Inland Invasion in 2003. They did not play ‘fight’ that not, so you are mistaken. Perhaps you confused it with another song, but I can gauruntee it was not played.
My thoughts with these setlists is that they are shaking the dust off some songs to prepare for another trilogy show; The Top/Head on the Door/KMKMKM with some bsides. What else would prompt them to pull some of these out? As the Euro festivals continue we may see even more rarities from that time period as the band re-learns them.
My prediction; new trilogy shows announced for Nov. I just really hope they avoid Thanksgiving week this year.
However, it will be hard for them to play all three albums, and the bsides from 1983 – 1987. That is a total of 57 songs, give or take a few. I mean they have almost 2 albums worth of bsides from that period:
Just One Kiss
The Upstairs Room
The Dream
Lament
Speak My Language
Mr. Pink Eyes
Throw Your Foot
Happy the Man
New Day
The Exploding Boy
A Few Hours After This
Stop Dead
Man Inside My Mouth
A Japanese Dream
Breathe
Chain of Flowers
Snow in Summer
Sugar Girl
To the Sky
WOW. They may have to split into one show with just Top/Head +bsides, and another show KMKMKM/Wish + bsides. Going to be interesting.
Stop Dead! Now there is a song I haven’t heard in years! It is dorky of course but a guilty pleasure.
Or they could go back and do Pornography/The Top/Head on the Door + bsides.
It’s been 10 years since the original trilogy show and really only Berlin got 2 nights of that. Wouldn’t surprise me to see RS go the distance and throw in Pornography again this year.
Hi all – have seen a few clips from this show and the Pinkpop one the other week. Like Reeves as a live guitarist, but gosh, with him and Roger back (another nice touch) it does help flesh out the sound but makes The CURE look like YES. A bunch of guys continuing with the hits, hits, hits from 30 years’ worth of records simply because they can.
Nothing wrong with that – and they’re very good at it – but how about some new material – or failing that, as a couple of other posters have hinted, a new Trilogy show? And speaking of which, when is Reflections coming out on DVD????
Personally, I really enjoyed the original “Trilogy” DVD from the Tempodrom, and would like to see either Top/Head/Kiss Me or Head/Kiss Me/Wish as the next hat-trick set.
@Toby: Exactly my thoughts on them over the last few years, they’re clearly at the end of the road and dont seem very interested in at least trying to push forward in any way. Remember Smith saying countless times in the past that he didnt want the Cure to become a museum? Well he’s eating his words yet again, they are the Rolling Stones of the post-punk era.
Hi Paul – er, surely NOT quite at the level of the Strolling Bones just yet. How about that supposedly darker second-half of “4:13” that never materialised? An EP? Come ON Robert! We already love most of your other work, and it’s still great to see you live, but give us a few newies, too!
I’m a cure fan to the bone but 4:13 was a truly awful album. I just couldn’t stand it. I bought it and I’ll continue to buy new releases only out of loyalty to the band but I really don’t think the world needs the second half of 4:13. Some consider wild Mood Swings to be the worst album The Cure ever released and I have to wonder if they ever heard 4:13.
Well if they do release the supposed second half of 4:13 Dream, its hardly new material is it? It was written & recorded back in 2008!
Not to mention the two tracks (Boy I Never Knew & Strum) that were written & recorded in 1999!