Way back yonder in 1992, The Cure toured the world and elsewhere, and upon the conclusion of their extensive jaunt, they culled through the sound board recordings of those shows and the following year released not one but two live albums: Show, which landed in record stores in September 1993, and Paris, which followed suit the very next month.
Last year, the band celebrated the 30th anniversary of Show by reissuing it as a double-LP for Record Store Day in April, but given that they spent a good chunk of 2023 on the road, it’s perhaps understandable that it’s taken them until early 2024 to get around to offering a similar reissue for Paris.
Finally, however, it’s happening: on March 22, The Cure will release a newly-remastered version of Paris on CD as well as on vinyl. Better yet, they’ve added two previously-unreleased performances which will serve as bookends to the contents of the original album.
The tour that resulted in the Show and Paris live albums was actually a bit detrimental to Smith’s mental health, as he detailed in a 1996 interview with Jonathan Bousfield.
“We did a world tour, we were constantly playing those songs, and I just got into a mindset that I found it very heard to break out of,” said Smith. “So I had this kind of dark persona and looking back I realize that there were always people living vicariously through me. I was very easily seduced into playing a role, people were nudging me along, and I ended up becoming something other people wanted me to be and getting gratification from the fact that other people were enjoying themselves because of it. It just became a vicious circle.”
As a result, Smith stepped away from just about everything for a few years, but as history reveals, he returned a few years later “primarily... because of the music." (Mind you, it adds a certain pathos to the title of the band's subsequent album, Wild Mood Swings.)
The Cure in concert at Unipol Arena, Bologna in 2016.
The remastering of the album was done by Cure frontman Robert Smith with the assistance of Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios in London. The vinyl was cut by Showell, also at Abbey Road. The aforementioned two new performances are “Shake Dog Shake,” which now opens the album, and “Hot Hot Hot!!!,” which has been transformed into the album’s new closer.
[Whether coincidence or not, it’s notable that “Shake Dog Shake,” which originally appeared on the band’s 1984 album The Top, often popped up in sets during the band’s 2023 90-date, 33-country “Shows of a Lost World” tour.]
Also, the band has offered an additional incentive to purchase the reissue: 50% of the recording royalties from the sale of Paris will be paid to the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.
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Here's the full track listing for the CD and 2-LP versions of the album:
Side One
Shake Dog Shake*
The Figurehead
Play For Today
Side Two
At Night
In Your House
One Hundred Years
Side Three
Apart
Lovesong
A Letter To Elise
Side Four
Catch
Charlotte Sometimes
Dressing Up
Close To Me
Hot Hot Hot!!!*
CD
Shake Dog Shake*
The Figurehead
Play For Today
At Night
In Your House
One Hundred Years
Apart
Lovesong
A Letter To EliseCatch
Charlotte Sometimes
Dressing Up
Close To Me
Hot Hot Hot!!!*
*Previously unreleased
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