Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

[sschulties]

Greetings and Salutations.........

I heard back in the day that The Cure covered this classic Pink Floyd song during a soundcheck.

Does anybody have any recordings of this song?

[dsanchez]

Yes it was played during the soudcheck in the mytic Orange concert

http://curefans.com/index.php/topic,145.0.html

There's a soundcheck recording, yes, but don't know if includes "Sets the controls..."

[japanesebaby]

Yes it was played during the soudcheck in the mytic Orange concert

was it? actually, i wonder if there's any other proof of them ever playing that than the mention in melody maker magazine in 1986.
there's a recording of the soundcheck but it's incomplete and certainly doesn't include any pink floyd cover.
maybe they did play it and it' just not on the recording because it's incomplete. i don't know.

anyway, what Melody Maker did write (in 1986, august 30th):

...
[Interviewer:] And "Pink Floyd At Pompeii"?
[Robert:] "Yeah, everyone says that. Did you notice we played 'Set The Controls At The Heart Of The Sun' at soundcheck?"
Yeah. they played it. Perfectly.
...


i cant prove anything but i really wouldn't be surprised if this keeps being mentioned just because of this melody maker article.

there's a quote from tim pope on http://www.cure-concerts.de/concerts/1986-08-09.php (from 'a visual documentary').
but it seems to me that tim pope is more or less just quoting what melody maker wrote. so...?

maybe robert said it just because the interviewer brought up the pink floyd reference, because the comparison between orange and pompeii was somehow bound to come up anyway. at least i don't believe much anything robert says in any of the 80's interviews anyway - he was a pathological liar! and maybe he bought the interviewer a pint if he'd just print that, saying that he heard them play 'set the controls...' - who knows....

by the way, there's nothing about this on 'ten imaginary years' which at least i think is generally "closer to the source" kind of a source than 'a visual documentary'.


anyway, i'd surely be interested if anyone has any other proof for this, other than that melody maker clip, ad/or anyone has a complete soundcheck recording. or, anyone who attended the soundcheck who could confrim it?
note that the set list on http://www.cure-concerts.de/concerts/1986-08-09.php is printed on grey, meaning it's unconfirmed.

[dsanchez]

maybe robert said it just because the interviewer brought up the pink floyd reference, because the comparison between orange and pompeii was somehow bound to come up anyway. at least i don't believe much anything robert says in any of the 80's interviews anyway - he was a pathological liar! and maybe he bought the interviewer a pint if he'd just print that, saying that he heard them play 'set the controls...' - who knows....

According the french magazing L'Equerre, during the "In Orange" show, The Cure went with Melody's Maker Steve Sutherland (chief editor) and Tom Sheehan (photographer). These people actually WERE at the show, and if they wrote that The Cure played "Set the controls..." it's because they saw it. I don't really see a reason why Melody Maker would lie about this.

[japanesebaby]

maybe robert said it just because the interviewer brought up the pink floyd reference, because the comparison between orange and pompeii was somehow bound to come up anyway. at least i don't believe much anything robert says in any of the 80's interviews anyway - he was a pathological liar! and maybe he bought the interviewer a pint if he'd just print that, saying that he heard them play 'set the controls...' - who knows....

According the french magazing L'Equerre, during the "In Orange" show, The Cure went with Melody's Maker Steve Sutherland (chief editor) and Tom Sheehan (photographer). These people actually WERE at the show, and if they wrote that The Cure played "Set the controls..." it's because they saw it. I don't really see a reason why Melody Maker would lie about this.

and surely there were a lot of other people at the soundcheck too than just them two. but that's not the point. i wasn't saying "it's not true because nobody heard them play it". all i was saying that we just cannot say for sure because nobody that we know (or nobody that knows somebody who knows somebody who knows.... ...somebody who knows us, like it goes ) has confirmed it to fans/people who run the generally most accurate and reliable info sites. like said, look at the color of the set list on cure-concerts.de: it's grey. it means there's no actual confirmation coming directly from anyone who was there. that doesn't mean they didn't play the song, all i'm saying is that it's quite surprising that nobody can confirm this: after all, it would have been a very unusual song choice indeed(!), not to mention it was a huge event for sure (as they were filming a video too!), plus it was an open-air venue so there must have been lots of fans outside the venue during the soundcheck, i can believe. and yet, no fan has ever confirmed that he/she heard them play that song.  
and why not look at some other info sites too: even www.impressionofsounds.com says:
"The band, between the takes, played Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (by Pink Floyd) according to the Melody Maker magazine. "
http://www.impressionofsounds.com/1986-2.html

i guess we can agree that people who run these two sites have been collecting data for a loong time and even they don't say it with certainty. that's all i'm saying here, that this information has always been based entirely on second-hand sources (from whom we cannot ask directly, to be sure) and therefore we don't know with certainty either. so let's not pretend we do know. let's just say that it might have been played (because there is one second-hand source that says so) but let's add that there is no actual confirmation.

i never said "melody maker was lying", did i? i just said that robert used to say a lot during that time (a fact).
you are just interpreting my words a bit wrong now.

[dsanchez]

i never said "melody maker was lying", did i? i just said that robert used to say a lot during that time (a fact).
you are just interpreting my words a bit wrong now.

japansebaby wrote:

"and maybe he bought the interviewer a pint if he'd just print that, saying that he heard them play 'set the controls...' - who knows...."

[japanesebaby]

i never said "melody maker was lying", did i? i just said that robert used to say a lot during that time (a fact).
you are just interpreting my words a bit wrong now.

japansebaby wrote:

"and maybe he bought the interviewer a pint if he'd just print that, saying that he heard them play 'set the controls...' - who knows...."

a joke, anybody? lol  

don't take it so personally my dear david, even though it's your favorite sure concert. like said, all i was saying is that let's not say "yes, they played it" when nobody can actually confirm it, not even people who have been collecting data a lot longer than this forum has existed want to say it with certainty.
take it easy

[dsanchez]

like said, all i was saying is that let's not say "yes, they played it" when nobody can actually confirm it,

but MM confirmed it

also there's the fact that no-one denied this. I know Druide was at the show, but don't know if he was at the soundcheck.

anyway, to be precise in my second reponse of this topic I would say "Yes, according to MM, they played it"

happy?

[japanesebaby]

like said, all i was saying is that let's not say "yes, they played it" when nobody can actually confirm it,

but MM confirmed it

no, you confuse the meaning of which the word "confirming" is used by these info sites: sites like cure-concerts.de never accept/display some info there just because it said so in some magazine. i'm not saying MM was wrong in this case (because i don't know, frankly), but i think it's an old wisdom "don't believe everything it says in the papers"...
so, what comes to how these sites work, all info must be confirmed first-hand - only that means it is fully reliable, that you have someone to ask directly.
so MM didn't "confirm" anything, they simply started the "rumour" by writing that the band played it. and that's exactly why everyone's been looking for a confirmation for about, eh, 22 years now. so far, there's been none. otherwise the font color on cure-concerts would have change. so we can't just say "MM confirmed it" now - that's actually circular deduction:
"MM wrote something > nobody else ever confirmed it = must mean that MM was right". see? doesn't work that way.  8)


happy? : i was never happy or unhappy about anything. i was simply offering input into this thread, trying to provide the only data that we actually have about this, the only source where this information comes from (the Melody Maker interview) - the source that still remains unconfirmed.
besides, this source wasn't quoted in the previous thread about 'orange' (see your own link above) so i thought it would be pretty relevant to bring it up.

so, until somebody, some fan who really was there comes up and says whether they played it or not, until then everything written in some magazine will remain speculation only. interetsing specualtion but neverthless, unconfirmed...

[dsanchez]

so, until somebody, some fan who really was there comes up and says whether they played it or not, until then everything written in some magazine will remain speculation only. interetsing specualtion but neverthless, unconfirmed...

Interesting, we can't believe TWO persons from MM who were at the concert, soundcheck, previous, etc; but instead, have to wait for some fan for his final word. Interesting point of view

[japanesebaby]

so, until somebody, some fan who really was there comes up and says whether they played it or not, until then everything written in some magazine will remain speculation only. interetsing specualtion but neverthless, unconfirmed...

Interesting, we can't believe TWO persons from MM who were at the concert, soundcheck, previous, etc; but instead, have to wait for some fan for his final word. Interesting point of view

: is it? isn't it pretty common (and well, wise too) to rely on direct eyewitnesses a lot more than second-hand sources, hearing something from the someone (whom you don't even know personally).


or, are you saying that you know those MM people personally, can you ask them? no, you don't.
nobody was saying they were lying (like you wanted to hint). it's just really interesting that the cure plays such a remarkable song, something they never ever played, before or after that - and nobody (else) heard it. that's just interesting, something that makes you think "wow, really? how come?". so you start looking for eyewitnesses, someone else to confrim it = see it's all natural, nothing else.

besides, could it be possible that the soundcheck that the MM mentions is not the same soundcheck where the recording comes from? could be. at least to me it's very much possible they made a bit more of soundchecking there since they were after all going to record a video there(!). or perhaps they were jamming for the MM guys or something. who knows. "soundcheck" might mean a lot of things. and again, it doesn't mean the MM guys lied - i never said that and nor did anyone else in the sites i linked to.

of course MM is (or used to be, R.I.P.) a reliable and respectable music magazine, nobody ever said that. but let's use our commons ense here. if you run an info site then you're responsible for what info you put there. so eyewitnesses do count. there's nothing wrong in doing that, being punctual and precise and wanting to be absolutely accurate about what info you release. it doesn't mean you were saying "MM is lying" or "it's not true what they wrote". it's not that at all. it's just saying "this is interesting, could anybody confirm this?". what's so strange about that? i don't know. i think it's only something that can be expected from anyone wanting to run a detailed information site. if you don't do that, you end up having all sorts of dubious stuff there soon.
the end of story.

[dsanchez]

Since Orange is my favourite Cure concert (from any band -ever). I've just contacted the guy who wrote the article in L'Equerre Magazine. We will see first if he answers, second if he confirms what MM said.