It's okay to sit down at shows
I’m going to level with you, stranger on the internet, because you deserve that much: I turn 40 this summer. I lead a sedentary professional life that revolves around the never-ending search for the perfect lumbar pillow. I am the father of twins on the verge of 3 years old, and thus I haven’t had a good night’s sleep or complete, coherent thought in same. My left eye has twitched since last November. All I ever want to do is lie down. There are orthotics in my shoes and a hot, burning spear in my vanity. I feel like I’ll never be cool or rested again. And yet, God help me, I still like going to live music. I’ve been doing it regularly since I was 14; for more than a decade there, I did it almost every night. I can’t or don’t want to give it up. Old and tired as I am, my spirit is still willing to buy advance tickets, even if my flesh usually just wants to blow it off.
You could map my physical deterioration (my Disintegration; ugh I hate myself) to shows by The Cure, actually, from my earliest, athletically drug-fueled attendances that were just preludes to staying up all night, doing more drugs; to my second-ever date with my now-wife, when we drove three hours on a whim just to go to one (When the hell did we ever have such energy?); to the most recent time we saw them in 2016—on our daughters’ second birthday, actually, where my exhausted wife and I stood in a crowded general admission pen, checking Setlist.Fm to guess at what songs were still coming up so we could identify the earliest possible moment we could leave without regret or feeling lame.
I say all this by way of expressing my gratitude that The Cure gets it: You shouldn’t have to stand through a long-ass show. You can sit down, the band recently averred, by way of refuting an announcement made by Royal Festival Hall—where Robert Smith is curating the Meltdown Festival this summer, booking other acts with similarly aging fanbases like My Bloody Valentine and Nine Inch Nails. “You are encouraged to stand at this gig,” the venue apparently announced, which spurred The Cure to get online and say, no, fuck that. There are seats there. You paid for them and, statistically speaking, you’re probably pushing 40 or well over it. So if you want to sit down, sit down. You’re gonna enjoy “This Twilight Garden” a lot more if you do.