It all starts with a web ad, “spying on you with the corner of its little eye” like a creeping spider waiting to bite you. Short before this year’s Halloween, a song from The Cure finds its way onto the playlist curated for the music video release party of my David Bowie cover: Life On Mars: Are We for Real ?. Since that night, “on candy-stripe legs the spiderman comes” out of The Cure‘s Lullaby crawling into my ears, each night, to lull me to sleep for the whole week ahead. Rather than a spiderman, it’s actually more of a fuzzy ear worm that eats you up day in day out, until a whole week passes without it leaving your system…

It’s straight out of Halloween’s celebration that my ear worm finally disappears digging its way back to the digital underground of a red-logoed video platform, only to inform it’s blue-logoed partner in crime keeping my face in good books that I am the ready-prey for an eight-legged marketing attack Therefore, I come across an online ad casually informing that The Cure is playing the next day (November 6) in Geneva Arena nearby where I am staying in Switzerland. At that moment, the ad also casually offers to redirect me in a simple click to the website where I can casually review offers for some last-minute tickets, “no strings attached” it underscores. In reality, I am already numbed by the venom of the Spiderman who had stung me a week earlier. It is him pulling the strings from the moment I click on the ad, crossing the point of no return before the Spiderman’s web closes down on me.

Next thing I know is I am harnessed by the security belt of a vehicle driving the traffic-jammed speedway towards the venue of The Cure‘s concert in Geneva, surrounded by hundreds of other drivers irresistibly converging to the center of the goth rock band’s web, reeling us in like dead flies still convinced of their own freedom of movement. In reality, it’s an irrepressible magnetism at work against which one seems not able to fight against. It’s like the iconic status of the band bewitches us all, depriving us from any rational thinking as some fellow concert-goers interviewed on the way confess they are driving from the other side of Switzerland or sometimes flying in from abroad to be at the center of the event.

Myself it’s a bit off-centered that I attend the gathering slowly turning itself into what resembles more a rock cult, with a forest of fans unceasingly populating the pit of the arena while I watch the whole scene from the upper-tier, section L, rank K, seat 113… When I come to sit in my attributed spot at the table of the arachno-feast building up tension below, a lady stretching her leg onto the back of my seat apologises for taking over the space. She explains the joint in her knee is probably not as fresh as mine as she belongs to the aching generation who has grown up listening to The Cure. Breaking into an embarrassed smile she wishes me to enjoy the gig, and most importantly to enjoy my youth, enjoy my beauty, as if betraying her instincts sensing that youth and beauty shall depart from my body sooner than I think… Lights suddenly go off.

What ensues is a moment suspended in time: a visually stripped-off concert lasting over 150 minutes masterfully fronted by the leading vocalist and guitarist, Robert Smith, whose grimed face seems to carry a come of age lesson about the cure against age he longs for in the band’s new Endsong…

” I’m outside in the dark staring at the blood red moon

Remembering the hopes and dreams I had, all I had to do

Wondering what became of that boy in a world he called his own

Yeah, I’m outside in the dark wondering how I got so old 

And it’s all gone, it’s all gone

Looking at everyone I’ve loved and it all feels wrong

It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone 

No hopes, no dreams, no love

And I don’t belong 

I don’t belong here anymore 

It’s all gone it’s all gone 

I will lose myself in time, and it won’t be long

It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone 

Left alone with nothing, at the end of every song

Left alone with nothing, at the end of every song

Left alone with nothing 

Nothing

Nothing

Nothing”

While the lyrics may come across as the dystopian portrayal of a disillusioned youth, grown old only to be roaming the surface of a world drifting towards oblivion, the 63-year-old man singing those words that evening can rest assured that the vibrance of his voice does not show wrinkles. Reviving the hopes and dreams of previous generations at the same time as inspiring the hopes and dreams of the current gens, The Cure‘s cultural heritage will carry on as it leaves you with far from nothing at the end of every song.

In the end, I can say that I have never been happier to be the algorithmic prey of the red-logoed video platform on which you can now replay the complete setlist composed of the 27 live tracks performed live in Geneva Arena on November 6, which Max Zarucchi Max1334 recorded from the front row that night. I choose to post this here as a way to perpetuate a musical heritage that more recent generations may be unfamiliar with, by sharing the pleasure I had in letting the Spiderman having me for dinner that night ; but most importantly I choose to share this as the more I age, the more I realise that processing life through music wether listening to it or making it, wether singing from the top of your lungs alone against a wall or into a microphone in front of thousands of people, music is probably our most primal, instinctive, cosmetic surgery-free cure… the best cure ‘gainst age not only for Robert Smith but for us all.

COMPLETE SET LIST WITH TIMESTAMPS:

3:37 Alone

10:36 Pictures Of You

17:46 Closedown

22:45 A Night Like This

27:07 Lovesong

31:07 And Nothing Is Forever

38:04 Burn

44:37 At Night

50:45 A Strange Day

55:16 Push

1:00:08 Play For Today

1:04:18 Primary

1:08:36 Shake Dog Shake

1:13:13 From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea

1:21:34 Endsong

1:35:55 I Can Never Say Goodbye

1:41:50 Want

1:47:10 Cold

1:51:19 Charlotte Sometimes

1:55:26 A Forest

2:06:40 Lullaby

2:11:19 The Walk

2:15:04 Friday I’m In Love

2:18:56 Close To Me

2:22:52 Inbetween Days

2:25:49 Just Like Heaven

2:29:43 Boys Don’t Cry