from Ross B.
I was at this gig (...). The venue was Palmerston North Show Grounds, now known as "Arena Manawatu" - an awful basketball-stadium venue, but with a decent capacity so there was a big crowd (by NZ standards). There was no support band; they played the Carnage Visors movie as the intro, which made the crowd rather restive. The gig was good, but the second encore was brilliant; the house lights came up, the crowd started leaving, but after 10 minutes, the lights went out again, the band came back on and Robert said "Now that the people who didn't want to see us have gone..." Then they played Boys Don't Cry followed by a sort of jam session that went on for a long time.
The Cure like to have a concert atmosphere controlled as soon as their audience walks in the door. "That's why" said guitarist, vocalist and keyboard player Robert Smith, "members of the band made a film to support their New Zealand tour. We wanted an atmosphere we could control and regulate from the very beginning. We wanted to set the mood and rather than leave it to some support band, we made a film.
The 30-minute film was projected on to two huge screens above the stage in the Manawatu Sports Stadium last night. The idea for the film originated during the making of the British band's second album "Seventeen Seconds". We had some ideas left over after the recording, and rather than just sort of throw them away, as usual we thought about a film. "Carnage Visors" turned out to be a chunk of black and white animation - a single, flowing piece with puppets jerking and writhing to the specially written sound-track.
possible venue name confusion
Despite the above information 'Palmerston North Show Grounds', it states that the sports complex was called 'Manawatu Sports Stadium' from 1981 and the concert apparently took place in the basketball hall, which was called 'Arena 2'. The correct name of the venue should therefore be 'Manawatu Sports Stadium - Arena 2'.
thanks to Petr H.
