The Go-Go's At Theatre at Westbury, Westbury, NY 6/7/11

So I've been what you could call a "minor fan" of The Go-Go's for about twenty or so years. I liked selected songs by them as a small child (namely "Surfing And Spying" and "We Got The Beat"). And as an adult I purchased all of their cd's, vinyl singles and albums. In the past they have toured with several favorite bands of mine (namely Redd Kross and Too Much Joy). But I had never seen them play live until this past week at the Theatre at Westbury, in Westbury, Long Island, NY. The formerly-known-as-The Westbury Music Fair is a wonderful venue with wonderful acoustics. The stage also rotates, although the venue was not set-up as such for this particular concert.

The opening band was the LA-based The Dollyrots. They are refreshingly unpretentious and down to earth while simultaneously armed with your standard rock poses. They are a pop/punk trio and are fronted by the gorgeous bassist/vocalist Kelly Ogden. Highlights of their set included their single "California Beach Boy" as well as covers of Melanie's 70's chestnut "Brand New Key", an accapella rendition of "As Long As We've Got Each Other" (aka The Growing Pains theme song) and Joan Jett & The Blackheart's "Bad Reputation". The band is currently signed to Joan Jett's Blackheart Records. The band is rounded out by Luis Cabezas on guitar (whose rhythm guitar parts were somewhat reminiscent of Joan Jett) and the exceptionally tasteful drumming of Chris Black. A fine opening band, overall.



The Go-Go's 'Ladies Gone Wild Tour' is ostensibly to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Beauty And The Beat. It was recently reissued as 2CD & 2LP sets with previously unreleased concert recordings and a remastered original album on pink vinyl. It was also touted to be their farewell tour, but Belinda Carlisle has since said that they will, indeed continue to perform after this tour ends.

The band were wonderful and were in better form than I aticipated. Drummer Gina Schock is a workhorse and bassist Kathy Valentine - who looked fantastic - was obviously enjoying playing the songs, again. Pixie-like rhythm guitarist Jane Wiedlin danced laps around the stage while lead guitarist/sometime keytboardist Charlotte Caffey, the grounding force, was excellent as always. Onetime-punkrock cheerleader Belinda Carlisle was also in fine form, leisurely hitting her notes as always.



The band was obviously well-rehearsed and sounded fantastic. They performed everything you'd expect to hear (except maybe the mid 80's hit "Turn To You") and perhaps didn't expect to hear (the Sparks/Jane Wiedlin single "Cool Places" and Belinda's Go-Goesque solo single "Mad About You"). The only songs from Beauty And The Beat they didn't perform were "You Can't Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep)" and the fine album closer "Can't Stop the World". Nor did they delve into anything non-singles from the truly underrated Vacation album, nor anything from the long out of print Talk Show album.

The set list was:

Vacation
Tonight
How Much More
Get Up And Go
Mad About You (Belinda Carlisle)
Lust To Love
Mother's Little Helper (The Rolling Stones)
Automatic
Fading Fast
Cool Places (Sparks/Jane Wiedlin)
This Town
Unforgiven
The Whole World Lost It's Head
Our Lips Are Sealed
Skidmarks On My Heart
We Got The Beat

First Encore:
Surfing And Spying/Beatnik Beach
Head Over Heals

Second Encore:
Fun With Ropes.

They were selling the vinyl reissue (which I personally passed up as would've been my fourth copy) and ton of cool gear including a blue shirt with the Beauty And The Beat album cover and dates on back. I'm really glad I saw the band as they were unexpectedly very good.

Big Special Thank You to Michael McIsaac.

The Cure: 4Play in Charlotte

The Cure pictured here in their 1980 prime - they don't look like this anymore.


Fine presentation of a once-great band clearly past its peak.

I've been a fan of this band for about twenty-plus years now so I was pleasantly surprised to find out about this 60 minute segment on HDNet TV of a Cure show from June of two years ago on their 4Tour. The presentation of the band was for all intents and purposes very nice. It was not 'The Cure In Orange' - their amazing feature-length filmed concert film directed by Tim Pope (which is sobbing to be released on DVD) - but few concert films are. No fast editing and all four band members gets a decent amount of screen time which was certainly nice.

I've personally found The Cure's past few releases to be slightly lacking (in inspiration perhaps) and haven't seen them live in many years. In any case, the main problem with The Cure's performance was that songs that themselves which were once nearly mid-tempo are now very slow, and one-time fast numbers are now nearly mid-tempo (to be generous). I've seen several older bands of late (Gang Of Four, The Police, The Fleshtones) and something I've learned from them is that being older in age doesn't necessarily mean slowing down the arrangements of your songs simply because you are few years older. "The Walk" and "Primary" are two such songs that have suffered as a result of this. I don't know if drummer Jason Cooper has much to do with slowing down the arrangements but they are, in turn a different band than before with little distinction in different tempos. This was not the case when the Cure's old drummer Boris Williams was in the fold. Use of keyboards are also sorely lacking - always a constant and necessary element of the band in the past. However now all keyboard parts are done on guitar.




(See previous caption above.)


Another unfortunate is Robert Smith's voice. He's always been one with a distinctive voice, although not a very big voice at that. It's now limp, whiny and fully-exposed in a live setting. This doesn't help their cause for a great live show.

And not to kick a band when they are obviously down (so to speak) but I was actually embarrassed watching two (nearly) fifty-year old men (Robert Smith and Porl Thompson) wearing eye make-up and (in Smith's case) the silly haircut. These are things that probably should have been in been eased out of the image in the mid-nineties. All one has to do is look at picture-perfect bassist Simon Gallup and wonder what Robert and Porl are (or in this case, not) thinking. In terms of what makes music such as The Cure's successful - image is simply just not important. It's just sad, embarrassing and unfortunate when the band leader doesn't realize that himself and insists on wearing the silly make-up. It would be easy for someone unfamiliar with the band to view the make-up motif as style over substance. And to think that this band was at one time supposedly "anti-image".

However if you are a fan that believes The Cure can do no wrong - obviously you'll be hearing none of this and eat this performance up.