Cursive battles lame crowds to save
By: Foster Kamer
Issue date: 8/25/04 Section: A & E
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Smith's summer music festival provided a welcomed break from a summer of mourning over Phish's absence, the typical Dave Mathews Band stop (on its way) or trying to salvage the remains of your crushed spirit after the Warped Tour.
The Curiosa festival brought together an impressive range of diverse but successful alternative bands with two stages (a larger one that occupied the amphitheater stage and a smaller one with the secondary acts off to the side) that rotated performers.
Opening bands like Mogwai and The Rapture had to deal with spotty crowds, as the West Valley rush-hour did its best to keep concertgoers from catching the talented (if lesser-known) acts on Curiosa.
USANA Lesson #1: Arrive early-opening bands often rock hardest.
To add injury to the insult suffered by the worthwhile lesser-knowns, those fans who did make their sets were underwhelming dance-a-phobes. Even underground synth-darlings, The Rapture, didn't enjoy a lively crowd. Apathy was the tragic common bond among fans. Especially those forced to watch from way up on the grassy hills.
This brings up USANA Lesson #2: If you want to be part of the action, pay more money. Even during the set of headliners The Cure, when the formerly lethargic crowd got some fire in their heels, most of the lawn crowd was mellow at their most excited.
It's hard to get into the action when everyone around you is sitting down, chatting away. Being closer to the stage means being with like-minded people looking to have more interactive show experience. Consider this the next time you wonder how much the extra $10 for seats or $15 for pit is really worth.
The second stage, on the southern side of the USANA grounds, managed to be Curiosa's salvation for those who couldn't get close enough to the action on the main stage.
The half-hour to 45-minute sets by the leser-known names on the tour did their damnedest to inspire the fickle crowds. The Cooper Temple Clause played a loud, strikingly precise couple of songs that took their time winding down (four songs in half an hour?), and their deep soundscapes managed to excite the attention of anybody who might've confessed to hating Radiohead's Kid A the first time around.
Interpol, the mod-glam-whatever band from New York City pulsed the Utah crowd on the side stage by opening with an unchanged, but strong, performance of their radio single "Obstacle 2," from their debut album, Turn Off The Bright Lights. Again, an under-excited crowd failed to generate the kind of band/fan interaction necessary for a truly great set.
In fact, it wasn't until Cursive stepped onto the second stage that Curiosa started to curiously add up.
Hailing from Omaha, Neb.'s indie kingdom of Saddle Creek records (owned by the prodigal son of vindictive art students everywhere, Bright Eyes' Conner Oberost), Cursive is another word for Tim Kasher. Kasher, the lead singer, songwriter and madman behind the band's 2003 critical success, The Ugly Organ, wrote the concept album as a piece of theater in the record's linear notes. The album's single, "The Recluse," has been steadily creeping up playlists on alternative stations nationwide and Cursive's cello-rock is gaining quite a deserved following.
Despite being the golden child of indie elitists everywhere, Kasher, like most other artists on Curiosa, still plays the modest card: "Holy s***! I think there're more people here than the entire state of Nebraska!" Kasher joked to his crowd as he launched into Organ's opening track, "A Red Handed Slight of Hand." As he grabbed his face, pounding out organ notes on his keyboard with one hand, Kasher's scream of "I've been making money off of my indifference!" might have been the best line of the night.
If art is hard, Kasher works his ass off to make it looks easy.
Robert Smith, the enigmatic and über-misunderstood front man of legendary alt-rock moodsters The Cure, didn't need to make it look easy or hard-most people came to see his band anyway and it would have been hard to disappoint them. The crowd responded to The Cure well, carrying some of the Cursive energy over to the main stage for Smith.
The first couple of songs came from The Cure's latest self-titled release. While their radio single "The End Of The World" proved itself worthy of a place in The Cure's singles catalog by giving the song some life left out of the studio version, other songs didn't fare as well. Most were darker, longer and fairly unknown to the crowd.
By the time The Cure came out for their second encore of "Fascination Street," "Close To Me" and "Boys Don't Cry," most people were ready to go home and beat the traffic. For such a quiet crowd, though, the number of people that stayed through the two encores kept the show going until the last minute.
For the most part, Curiosa, even for those with lawn seating, was worth the full $20 price of admission. Despite a lame-duck crowd for most of the night, there was still something different going on at Curiosa.
The second stage provided welcomed relief to those who couldn't get past the lawn and Cursive played one of the shortest, most intense sets to come through Salt Lake City in a while. A good time was there to be had, and by the end of the night, if you didn't, well, boys don't cry, right? Quit complaining.
fkamer@chronicle.utah.edu