NEWS NOTES:

The Cure begins a 25-date tour--which includes six stadium shows--on Aug. 20, with a gig at Giants Stadium in New York. The English band’s local date is at Dodgers Stadium in early October. Among the support acts being considered for the tour: Love and Rockets and the Pixies. Robert Smith, the Cure’s lead singer, doesn’t like to fly, so the quintet group is coming over to the States on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II. . . . A new album by the original lineup of Poco--including Jimmy Messina, Richie Furay and Randy Meisner--is due in late August. Actually, it’s the first time this lineup has recorded an album: Meisner was replaced by Timothy B. Schmit before the first Poco album was cut in 1969. Richard Marx produced two songs on the album, titled “Legacy.” . . . Marx, meanwhile, is set to play the Ventura Theatre on Monday and the Roxy on Tuesday as part of a mini-tour of nightclubs to warm up for his tour of larger halls, which kicks off at the end of the month in Australia.

Jesse Sublett, the Textones’ bass player, is set to be man of the hour at a book signing for his murder mystery, “Rock Critic Murders,” on Saturday at Vagabond Bookstore in Westwood. The book, published by Viking, is set in seedy clubs in Austin, where Sublett toiled for years as a musician.