It’s Friday – I’m in Love with The Next Generation of Cure Fans. Or is it 10:15 on a Saturday night? I can’t tell anymore. I’ve got the Coronavirus blues. But I’m still in love with fans. Let’s think about happier times, shall we? During The Cure’s 2016 Tour, I shot outside arenas across the globe. I interviewed dozens of concert goers, some who are young enough to be my kids. However, if a generation gap existed, I certainly could not tell. Cure Fans, The Next Generation (TNG for short), is the term my friends and I crowned these twenty-somethings with. We met them following The Cure in 2016. I’m thinking about them a lot today.
Covid19 and Concerts
Today, May 16th, 2020, marks 2 months going on three of the shelter – in – place orders in New York. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has changed everything. Summer fun will be summer at home, at least here in New York City. The experience of music has shifted. Yesterday Einsturzende Neubaten released a new record. Great! A normal happy day! Except I can’t go to the record store and buy it. And gigs? Nope. Neubauten, like The Cure and so many bands I love, have been around for about 40 years. I was supposed to see Neubaten, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, and many more live concerts this year. Going to gigs has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. Nope. It’s all not happening. The closest we can get to the thrill of a live show is confined to online viewing. There probably wont be any gigs for the remainder of 2020. We’re in withdrawal. I stare longingly into the future for the day we can return to the sweaty pit.
Pause Anxiety
This morning, as I woke up and lost the battle to not immediately look at the news, I abated my crinkly nerves by pressing on the little Instagram circles. The stories. A simple video from @belalugosis_dead, of her roller skating and listening to “Leave Me Alone” by New Order made my heart feel a little softer. My shoulders released their ‘get ready for attack’ grip that has been ever-present since the pandemic began. I was reminded of me, decades ago, when I used to walk around my forsaken hometown, listening to the exact same song. In a really good way.
Me and You and all those 40 year old bands
I met “Bela” by following The Cure on tour in 2016. Just as I met Hello Image, Aaron, Kewpeydoll & Siouxlita in 2018, and many more. Cure fans – The Next generation. We stay connected via social media and only see each other at Cure Shows, or other infrequent one-offs. Shoot. It’s no like we’re close friends, nor live in the same cities. But we do span the globe, and share many of the same passions and dispositions. In some ways, we barely know each other. In other ways, it feels like we’re distant cousins. How does this work? When I was filming the Dreamtour in 2000, they were toddlers or in pre-k. Weird. I would argue, however, that it is only weird because for years we were sold on peddled myth that rock n roll music is somehow tied to teen lust or youth, and dies there. That anyone who loves the music they heard at age 16 at age 46 is on a nostalgia trip. This, is simply bullshit. Music is timeless, especially when done with mastery as with bands like The Cure.
The Next Generation
The act of finding this lot, the next generation, gives me hope. I like the idea that I have friends who appreciate a VHS hand me down. The torch has been passed. And yes, I am being cornier than the lyrics to “Blasphemous Rumors.” I keep up with goth/post-punk news with people like Andi Harriman, who writes about 80’s Goth Subculture but were not alive when it happened. It doesn’t matter. She gets it more than 90% of Americans who were alive when it happened. TNG are super cool. And I’m a TNG to the generation before me. An obvious statement. But when you see it in pictures, or better yet, experience it at a concert, the phenomenon becomes something to be cherished.
The Right Words During The Apocalypse
I struggle to find the right words to describe why all of these people are making me feel especially cozy and slightly nostalgic right now. With death staring all of us in the face more loudly during this pandemic, perhaps it helps me to feel connected to the next generation. With the jokes of “OK Boomer” and “OK Karen” and so on, it feels good to walk a path where those terms don’t exist.
Maybe today’s sentimentality comes from the memory of a decade ago when common ground between myself and that 20 something friend of mine, typically from film set work, didn’t exist in quite the same way. I starting very late in the game working in the film industry, a 30 something PA in a sea of 20 somethings. I lied about my age because damn, I wanted in. Great people. Amazing experiences. But when I referenced my favorite band, The Cure, they usually said – who? This gap was not a bad thing, so much as is was an expected thing. The same kind of expectation one has when waiting in line at the post office. A normal, expected, and uneventful part of life.
80s is The New 80s
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Looking back, something shifted in the later aughts. We had the subcultures of the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Some shapeshifted, some died, and some moved further underground. There was a cultural gap for a while. I wondered if people who still listened to Echo and The Bunnymen, Bauhaus, and The Fall would go the way of Lawrence Welk fans. But I was wrong, thankfully. The post-punk scene is experiencing a beautiful renaissance, in which young fans keep discovering this music and making their own every day. For PUSH, we call them Cure Fans – The Next Generation. But you can apply “TNG” to any band followed by fans who weren’t even alive when you went to see that band 25 years ago for the sixth time. I found out about the recent concert broadcast by OMD by @andythecurefan, another TNG.
Too Old. Too Young.
Andy technically falls into the “too old for TNG” category: he’s 32.
But not five years back, he was given a hard time for being too young
to be a Cure Fan. Pause Anxiety. SAY WHAT? I couldn’t believe it either.
Who makes these rules anyway? But the TNG kids have all had to deal with
that weird backwards stereotype.
W
orse than any yahoo who would tell someone they are too young to enjoy anything, is the fact that they are this age and dealing with our new Covid reality. It’s hard on everyone. But if I’m honest, I’d much rather be 49 than 29 right now. Or even worse, 19. You’re supposed to be out in the world experiencing everything full tilt in your 20’s. Then again, we live inside our phones these days, so maybe it’s not such a hard pill to swallow.
Cure Fans: TNG
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Thanks, team TNG. Today, you made me happy. You help keep time fluid. Thanks for annihilating the gap. Friend, younger sister from another mister, fellow fan in a pit: the label doesn’t matter. It works. Let me know how you’re doing these days. Or just keep sharing it in your lovely Instagram stories. I’m enjoying them thoroughly. I can’t wait to race you to the front row at the next Cure show, someday.
