thanks to kenny, joshua, philip jamieson and kristina spurgin.

festival info

'curiosa' touring festival, put together by the cure

stage 1 - the cure / interpol / the rapture / mogwai
stage 2 - muse / auf der maur / the cooper temple clause / head automatica

tweeter center (capacity 19,900)

reviews/comments

from philip jamieson:

mogwai started out the mainstage at curiosa to a small, seated audience. lovely weather. the tweeter center (in my opinion) is notorious for terrible sound, mainly because they seem to be able to hush sound levels to obscenely low volumes (due to some lame sound ordinance laws), losing the impact of big sound all together. well, mogwai fought through this to the best they could but in the end the overall sound wasn't as "big" as it could have been. those who were in attendance who were mostly 'gwai fanatics and we made as much noise as possible to make the band feel as good as they could, given the poor time slot and lack of folks inside the venue. the set was superb, with 'helicon 1' being particularly incredible. one of my friends who was sitting on the lawn called me on my cell phone after the song finished to tell me that he was now a convert to mogwai. 'helicon 1' was unbelievable.

'hunted by a freak' got a big applause as usual and 'ithica' was vintage 'gwai from top to bottom. excellent. 'herod' was a bit condensed and the noise fracas at the end really made them stand out from all of the other bands on the bill. i think they went over quite well. they certainly deserve to be higher on the bill than the rapture, who went over like a lead balloon.

from boston.com:

for those who had arrived early, however, there was an abundance of vibrant new music by bands -- all selected by smith -- who have embraced the cure's alter-ethos. an expansive second stage set in the tweeter's parking lot flowed seamlessly with the main stage, and a crowd that ranged from old-time goth rockers to parents chaperoning children moved with ease between the two performance spaces.

the earliest of these arrivals were greeted by sheets of guitar rock from scotland's mogwai, following an introductory second-stage set by head automatica. mogwai's main-stage set showed a beauty in noise that at points recalled my bloody valentine.

photos

some fantastic images are at defyunlearn.com

click on photo to go to the mogwai page.thanks to carina