The Cure Live In Amsterdam 1979 vinyl captures the band at a genuinely pivotal moment, recorded live at the Melkweg Club on 10th December 1979 from an FM radio broadcast that aired nationwide across the Netherlands. This is not a bootleg or a rough audience recording. It is a clean, broadcast-quality document of The Cure in the thick of their earliest and most formative period, just as they were finding the darker, more atmospheric direction that would define their next decade.
Why This Performance Matters
By December 1979, The Cure had released their debut album and the Three Imaginary Boys era was giving way to something sharper and more angular. The setlist here reflects exactly that transition. You get the post-punk energy of early cuts like Boys Don’t Cry, Killing An Arab and Grinding Halt sitting alongside Play For Today and A Forest, tracks that would appear on Seventeen Seconds just months later in 1980. Hearing Robert Smith and the band road-testing that new material in a live context, in front of a Dutch club audience, is the kind of specific detail that makes a live recording worth owning. The double appearance of A Forest, opening and closing the set as an encore, tells you everything about how much weight that song already carried.
The Cure Live In Amsterdam 1979 Vinyl: Pressing and Format Details
This release comes from the ICONIC label, catalog number ICONICV 7, pressed on 180 gram premium vinyl with high grade lacquer cutting processes applied to a digitally remastered source. The result is as clean and detailed a presentation of this broadcast as you are likely to find on wax. The sleeve carries a branded design built specifically for this release rather than recycled artwork, giving it a distinct physical identity on the shelf. It is a limited edition pressing, so the run is not open-ended.
Who Should Own This Record
Collectors focused on The Cure’s early catalog will recognise immediately how well this setlist documents the band in transition. Fourteen tracks across one LP, drawn from the band’s first two years, recorded with broadcast fidelity rather than the compromised sound that plagues most live material from this period. If you care about The Cure before the big commercial breakthrough, before The Head on the Door and the mainstream years, this is the era that built the foundation. A room-filling 180 gram pressing of a 1979 Dutch FM broadcast is a specific and genuinely interesting thing to have in a collection, and this pressing treats the source with the technical care it deserves.
Tracklist
1. SEVENTEEN SECONDS 2. M 3. SATURDAY NIGHT 4. PLAY FOR TODAY 5. FIRE IN CAIRO 6. A FOREST 7. THREE IMAGINARY BOYS 8. ANOTHER JOURNEY BY TRAIN 9. JUMPING SOMEONE ELSE'S TRAIN 10. KILLING AN ARAB 11. SUBWAY SONG 12. GRINDING HALT 13. BOYS DON'T CRY 14. A FOREST (ENCORE)
