Archive for April, 2006
Let me see you daaarrrncing!
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
Depeche Mode eh? Where to start.
Caught them at The Nynex this week, what an absolutely cracking gig that was.
Now, I’m bit of an angsty-old-school Mode fan so I was hoping to hear more of my dream setlist, Love In Itself, Something to do, If You Want, Blasphemous Rumours, that sort of thing.
As it turned out the set was mainly their more ‘modern’ (by my standards anything post Music For The Masses is modern!) stuff, not surprising since it’s the Playing The Angel Tour.
Anyway, what was it like?
Brilliant that’s what… the place was packed to the rafters, the sound, delivered by half a dozen very impressive linear arrays, was pristine yet ear splitting, everyone was screaming their lungs out with the words to all the songs yet the music was so perfectly loud you could barely hear your own discordant scream-along never mind your neighbours’.
The lighting rig was superb and you should’ve seen the kit these guys had in the wings, you could’ve cut an album using just the foldback kit alone and FOH looked like Darth Vader’s bathroom.
Martin Gore came dressed as the drummer’s girlfriend as usual, and at one point I think Fletch pressed a button or something too. Seriously. As for the rest of the band they had a drummer (a drummer? in Depeche Mode?) and some stand in for Alan Wilder, who I for one sadly miss and cite his leaving as the reason for their departure from what I know as Depeche Mode… your mileage may vary on this one naturally.
Plus, have I just never noticed it before, or, is Dave Gahan camp?
The music? Top - Question Of Time made Nynex explode and Martin’s ‘unplugged’ Shake The Disease was superb. Old fave Just Can’t Get Enough roused the crowd no end as did stadium essential Everything Counts.
Seriously, however sad I may be by clinging on to the Mode of old you had to be there to appreciate just how stupendously rocking this gig was. It’s nearly twenty years since I saw them live and believe you and me they still have it. In spades.
And the crowd? I haven’t been amongst so many people my own age since school - it was top and on more than one occasion I thought I’d died and gone to milf heaven so there you go, make of that one what you will.
Depeche Mode… still top.