This show marked the one and only time I camped out for tickets. We got up early to get Dead Can Dance tickets, and I made sure to be at Ticketmaster right around opening for the release of Melanie C tickets, but The Cure is the only band I ever camped out for.
The Ticketmaster of choice in Brandon, Florida was inside of the Spec's music store. Sometime around 9 or 10 PM we decided to roll up on Spec's only to find that we weren't the first Curenerds ready to spend the night in a parking lot to get tickets to see a band play in a baseball stadium. That kind of enthusiasm just goes out the window when you get older, I think. Of course with age and money come opportunities like buying expensive tickets on ebay or from ticket brokers, so sitting outside in the Florida heat for 12 hours to hopefully get a good seat for a show is probably something I only could have pulled off at that perfect age when I was old enough to stay out all night but not so old to figure that the whole exercise was hardly worth it.
We spent most of the night tossing a frisbee, chatting, wondering how the lottery system would work once the place opened, and wondering if we'd get good seats. As it turned out, we did get pretty decent seats--on the floor at least, and not too far back. We also had one of those bonding experiences that is a lot like camp, where people with a like interest sit around in an uncomfortable environment, share what feels like an unbreakable bond, and then drag themselves home dirty, tired, and swearing that they won't do such a thing again.
Cranes opened the show and as much as I like Cranes in moderation, that woman's voice just drives me bonkers at high volume. I would have really loved for Cranes to play an instrumental set, but then I guess they wouldn't be Cranes. From what I remember, they played almost all of their set with the lights on as people filed in and found their seats. I imagine it pays to be an opening band on a tour like that, but it just always seems like such a lame arrangement. At least in a small club, it's harder for the headliner to make you seem so much smaller and less professional. Nitzer Ebb had to deal with this when opening for Depeche Mode; my band had to in turn deal with it when opening for Nitzer Ebb and on and on. The opening act of a big show like that is REALLY just that: a warm up/distraction for people who are still finding their seats.
What can I say about the Cure? I would have liked to have seen them about three years earlier than I did, but for what it was worth, the band put on a good, elaborate, and highly produced rock show. This was probably one of the first shows I remember going to where I actually noticed the production value of the show apart from the way it worked with the music. The more I would get into playing music myself, the less capable I would be of being won over by elaborately staged musical performances. The lights on programmed cues, the stage plot, the curtain drop--it all began to feel obligatory and quite frankly distracting from the music from this point on.