Tonight’s edition of “Dark Wave” — the Sunday night “darker side of alternative” show on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave — celebrated the birthday today of Robert Smith, with selections from The Cure, plus Smith solo tracks and associated music by The Glove, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tim Pope and more.
Gary Biddles, a onetime roadie for The Cure who sang in Fools Dance and Presence in the ’80s and ’90s, each of which featured members of that band, has died, according to former Cure keyboardist Lol Tolhurst. The details surrounding Biddles’ death are not yet known.
Here’s a fun find by our friends at Chain of Flowers: Video footage of The Cure’s Robert Smith hamming it up for what presumably is a commercial of some sort by Chilean promoters to sell tickets to the band’s concert this weekend in Santiago. The Cure is slated to play Asunción, Paraguay, tonight.
The readers of Slicing Up Eyeballs named The Cure’s grim third album ‘Faith’ as the best record of 1981, an accolade that led then-drummer Lol Tolhurst to reflect this week on that “very emotional and intense period of my life,” and thank fans for the fact that the album “still resonates with people all these years later.”
We’ve already speculated as to why there’s a good chance we’ll see The Cure and New Order on the bill of August’s Lollapalooza, and now comes a photo of what’s purported to be a poster featuring the Chicago festival’s yet-to-be-announced lineup, headlined by Robert Smith and Co.
Not much of a surprise given Steven Severin’s recent hint, but the lone album by The Glove — 1983′s ‘Blue Sunshine’ — will be reissued as an individually numbered 2LP set on blue vinyl for Record Store Day next month, featuring not just the full album but the 16 demos originally included on the 2006 expanded CD reissue.
It’s been a few years since former Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist Steven Severin expressed hope that he could one day work with The Cure’s Robert Smith on new music together as The Glove, and while it’s unclear whether that ever happened, it appears there’s something on the horizon from the short-lived side project.
As Robert Smith first teased last summer, The Cure will return to South America for the first time in 17 years this April, mounting its first-ever large-scale tour of the continent, performing seven concerts in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Colombia — followed by a one-off show in Mexico City to end the trek.
The Glove is best remembered for bringing together Robert Smith of The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist Steven Severin. But the group, which released a single album, ‘Blue Sunshine,’ in 1983, also featured vocalist Jeanette Landray — who looks back on the experience after 30 years in this video.
As part of their Kickstarter campaign to raise $75,000, the makers of the documentary “Beautiful Noise” have released footage of their interview with The Cure’s Robert Smith in which he discusses his love of the Cocteau Twins and how that band’s 1984 album Treasure helped prepare him for his wedding.
Tim Burton’s latest stop-motion creation, “Frankenweenie,” doesn’t debut in theaters for another 10 days, but the companion album Frankenweenie Unleashed! came out today featuring a brand-new recording from The Cure’s Robert Smith: a woozy cover of the old Frank Sinatra standard “Witchcraft,” which you can stream here.
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