This concert was originally scheduled to take place at the University of Melbourne, but was moved to Macys Hotel for unknown reasons.
24 August 1980 / 20 years old
This was the first time I saw the Cure live and it is one of my all-time best gigs—ever! Macy’s was a small venue and it was absolutely packed solid. I remember I had one drink, and after I finished it there wasn’t enough room for me to bend down and put the empty glass on the floor; so I held onto this (plastic) glass all through the gig.
When we arrived at the venue and told the woman at the door we were on the guest list, she didn’t even bother to look for our names; she just said the guest list was too long and they had to cut it down. We asked her to please look, and when she did, said, ‘There’s a note here saying NOT to cross your names off’. Good ol’ Robert.
The crowd would not let the gig end and kept calling the band back for encores, to the point where they ran out of songs. At the time '17 Seconds', their second album was just out, so they had a relatively small repertoire, and so they repeated numbers. I mentioned this to Simon Gallup when they were here in 2007 and he said he remembered that. It’s funny to think back on that now, when they play enormous venues and have, I don’t know how many albums.
(...) I imagined myself at Macy's [1st time I saw them in 1980] listening and getting into the atmosphere during Play for Today. Just wonderful!!! (...)
