Embed and breakfast man: The Cure

Less keen on Depeche Mode? How about The Cure, then, also from this weekend's Austin City Limits festival:

Gothobit: Gary Biddles

Gary Biddles, Cure roadie turned collaborator, has died.

Biddles made deep connections with The Cure - as Slicing Up Eyeballs remembers, he was briefly lead singer during a last-night jam session on the Pornography tour - and was the first call for former Cure members putting together bands. He was co-founder of Fools Dance when Simon Gallup had his time out from the band; after Gallup returned to Robert Smith's side, Biddles joined Lol Tolhurst in exile in the band Presence.

Presence recorded two albums, but the second had never been heard in public until last month, when it turned up on Soundcloud:


Biddles was interviewd by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer a couple of years back.

No details have been made public about Biddles' death.

Streaming now: The Cure

Generous bunch of streamable stuff over at the site promoting The Cure's re-release of Disintegration.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: The Cure

A&Rmchair goes to the big NME Awards show:

The gig we were at was the NME Awards Big Gig - a show sponsored by Shockwaves, which for many of the fellas keeping babysitters in business that night, seemed an inappropriate product given our follicular state. It wasn't all about the headline act though - The Cure may have managed to pretty much fill the 23,000 capacity venue but it was Franz Ferdinand who gave it some NME flavour - I doubt whether many of the folk there had ever heard of Crystal Castles and you know my thoughts on White Lies already - we missed them both last night by the way, as we were more usefully spending that time patrolling the cavernous Dome looking for its Box Office, queuing up, being sent to another Gate because of a 'ticket misprint' etc etc. White Lies were about to release their follow up album by the time we got in.

NME Awards event hit by Trinity Street collapse

The collapse of Trinity Street has taken out a swathe of the audience for next week's Cure NME gig at the Millennium Dome. Fans who'd forked out for a ticket have been getting this email:

Please read on for further information regarding your tickets for the Big Gig/The Cure at The O2 on 26 February.

We understand you have purchased these tickets from Trinity St, but Trinity St has not fulfilled this transaction and delivered these tickets to you. It appears that Trinity St has now ceased trading and, as of Monday 16th February, was very likely to go into administration. Please note that Trinity St has not accounted to us for any of these ticket monies, and therefore your ticket purchases are invalid.

You may wish to apply directly to the administrators of Trinity St for a refund of your ticket monies (we set out their address below). However, we appreciate that this may take some time and may well not be successful. Alternatively, you may seek to claim a refund of your monies through your credit/debit card company. We also set out some information on this below.

In the meantime, we have managed to make available to you for purchase similar floor standing tickets (as per your original order) which we will hold for you till Saturday 21st February at 6pm. Please use the BUY link and unique passcode, listed below, if you wish to purchase these tickets while you are going through the claims process. This passcode is unique to you and not transferable. Please ensure you use the same postal address for delivery as your original order as any other orders will unfortunately be cancelled.

If you feel you are not in a position whereby you are able to afford to purchase the tickets that have been held for you, we have a limited number of complimentary tickets in the rear seated blocks on Tier 400. We will confirm back to you by 12 noon on Monday 23rd February if your request can be fulfilled. We will try to accommodate as many such requests as possible, but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accommodate everyone. Unfortunately, please bear in mind that the location of these complimentary tickets is towards the back of the arena in the top level, seated, and not standing tickets as per your original request.

Please note that requests for complimentary tickets will not be fulfilled if you have also used the link above to purchase replacement tickets.

Both AEG Live and NME are sorry for any inconvenience that this has caused you. We would like to stress that at the time of working with Trinity Street there was no reason to believe that the company would cease trading.

This has, it appears, gone out to some 500-plus ticket holders (or, rather, ex-ticket holders); many of whom are a bit unhappy. The "sorry" at the end doesn't really seem to be especially heartfelt, and the "look, the tickets have gone, we're not giving you your money back - and good luck with that - but you can have first refusal at buying them again" offer hasn't gone down well.

To be fair to the NME, it isn't their fault that Trinity has gone down, and there is some sort of grudging attempt to do the right thing by offering the lottery for an unnamed number of crappier tickets.

But this is the risk you run when you proudly slap your brand onto other people's services and outsource fulfilment. Especially in the current climate.

And the email does suggest that the organisers are putting their financial comfort ahead of the people who had trusted them when they bought tickets. The tickets are there to be re-sold (and, presumably, offered on the open market if they're not taken up by February 21st) and AEG appear to have details of who had bought what. The only thing AEG doesn't have is the cash, which seems to have disappeared into the Trinity hole.

If you were in charge of the NME brand, you might weigh up who you wanted to take the financial hit - Time Warner Inc, or the people who buy your magazines and products, before deciding if you'll send the 'want to try buying your tickets again?' email.

The collapse isn't the NME's fault, but the way it's been handled since is.

[Thanks to Cat C and Peter D, who both contacted me]

UPDATE: 21/02/09 - There's been a change of heart, and now people who originally bought tickets will receive them at no extra cost. Kudos to AEG & NME for changing their minds

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Graphics

Yes, yes, last year's Pop Charts was fun. But none reached the level of this graphical presentation of The Cure's Friday I'm In Love.

Robert Smith says 'keep off the iTunes'

There was a bit of a cock-up with the pricing of the new Cure ep on iTunes, with the system getting confused and thinking it was an album, offering a £7-99 single-pop. Terribly embarrassing, of course, but it got picked up quickly and the price fixed.

Unfortunately, not before Robert Smith - or, actually, it might have been Arthur Smith off Grumpy Old Men bounced on to the internet to warn his fans:

"This is absurd," Smith wrote. "TMU [shorthand for 'The Men Upstairs'] have managed to fuck this up to another level."

He also posted an email he sent to the label, where he claimed the pricing was "totally fucking wrong".

"I fucking despair," he added.

Smith instructed his fans not to buy the ep off iTunes - although if he was that bothered, he could have just suggested they buy it in individual chunks at 79p a go.

Of course, someone who - not for the first time - is flogging off his back catalogue in yet another remixed form might want to think a little before accusing anyone else of ripping off fans.

The Cure in small doses

That the Cure have a new album coming out isn't much of a surprise. The attempt to drum up a sense of excitement, though - that is. a single a month, every month, on the 13th, in the four months running up to the new album in September.

The 13th, presumably, because they're Goths. And there isn't a 666th day in any month - except February in leap years - so they've had to choose the 13th.

I'm alive. I'm dead. Oh, actually, scrub that, I'm still alive

If, in 1982, some fool had suggested that this motley gang of doom-mongers [The Cure] would be thriving in the 21st century, he would have been laughed out of court.

Never mind that, imagine trying to tell some kid in 1982 that in 2008, the Daily Telegraph would be running a warm, lengthy profile of The Cure.

Ailing Cure fixes schedule

Reading between the lines, the main impetus for The Cure pulling their US tour dates is that even they're bored with themselves:

"We want to remodel/rework the live show for North America," they wrote by way of excuse on their website. "Change things around, incorporate new songs... and we need time and focus to do this."

They'll hopefully be slightly more interesting in time for the rearranged dates, which will now take place in the Spring.

Waiting for a Cure

Clearly, hanging around with Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson does no good for the creative process: Robert Smith has pushed the next Cure album back again. Originally due for May this year, it's now not going to appear before Spring 2008.

She can't sing; he can't dance - it's the perfect pairing

Who knew there were more humiliating ways to earn a living than wanking for coins outside your old school? Robert Smith is working with Ashlee Simpson on a track for her next album.

Yes, there's a next Ashlee Simpson album, apart from anything else. What the hell is Smith doing? Does he need cash that badly?

Grinning goths flog flights

Lastminute's mail out this week is subject lined (we were going to say "subjected" but that seems equally wrong) 'It's friday we're in love'. Surely Martha Lane Fox isn't a closet Cure fan, is she?