I came to a few realizations before and after seeing The Cure recently for the umpteenth time here in New York City at Madison Square Garden. The before realization came to me while watching an old Michael Caine movie called Deadfall. It was a very polite and enjoyable crime, drama, thriller type of movie. In the film, during his first encounter with Fe, Henry Clark (Sir Michael Caine’s character), his love interest (8:15 into the movie), describes to her what the British describe as the cure. They are at an exquisite sanitorium (more like a resort) with beautiful masseuses, manicured grounds, and pleasant enough doctors. The context and approach to creating sobriety is to make the patient as comfortable as possible to help smooth the rough patches of addiction. “The cure,” in essence, is if you have a drug or alcohol problem, the best way to clean up is to kill the urges with pleasure. I believe the band’s name comes from this movie reference or the civil and British convention to withdraw. The after-realization is, I think, seeing The Cure when they are not obligated to play their hits is the way to go—either seeing them play album renditions or experimental music shows. They are burdened by having so many crowd-pleasing hits that by the time they finish filling out their playlist, little time is left to play non-hit songs that are amazing musically or interesting variations of hit songs. The Cure has many instrumental, soundtrack, or extended play music that we never hear live. It is my “Wish” that it is time for The Cure to play in smaller venues with a more esoteric or varied playlist; think about it…