The Cure

Concert
Fiction, 1984

I've lived with three copies of this record and they all sounded like shit. Crackly, popping and muted, housed in worn-out sleeves with greying creases and having been spun to death for at least ten years before I got to them. It's become quite a comforting thought that wherever I end up, there'll be a glass of red and a pre-loved copy of Concert waiting.

Recorded at shows in the first two weeks of May 1984, The Cure's first live record was made a year or so before they courted the mainstream with The Head On The Door. But instead of rough versions of 'Close To Me' or 'In Between Days', Concert's track list was taken almost entirely from the band's early releases, when they were more influenced by gloomy punk than upbeat pop. The tracks switch between dreamy, romantic love songs, funereal melodies and skeletal rock and roll with jerky rhythms and guitar like someone scribbling in the air with a length of copper wire, conducting flickers of static electricity.

When the needle falls on Concert, it feels like the lights in the room have been switched off. It isn't a maudlin record, but it sounds like night – as if there'd been a malfunction in the recording equipment at one of the gigs and the darkness of the huge Hammersmith Odeon had somehow crept its way into the grooves of the vinyl. Songs from the band's darker albums, Faith and Pornography, sound even moodier and more atmospheric on Concert, without being so awfully miserable as the studio versions.

I've never really understood why music critics were so loath to class The Cure's early music as post-punk. Perhaps it's because of their romanticism, writing songs about love and loss and taking inspiration from novelists including Albert Camus and Penelope Farmer. Not surprisingly, they became pin-ups for goths in the mid-80s and then challenged those fans a few years later by releasing some suffocatingly happy pop singles (culminating in 'Friday I'm In Love'). Still, Concert is one of my favourite records from the post-punk era. You should be able to find a second-hand copy for about $6.