A MEMENTO: DEPECHE MODE, GROUPAMA STADIUM, LYON, 31 MAY 2023

 

Blog friend, fellow Home (depeche-mode.com) mod and geniune film star Daniel Cassus returns to reviewing duties for the Depeche show in Lyon on 31st May. As we will see, there is a Spirits In The Forest mini reunion among much else in this great review. Thanks very much Daniel. All pictures are his so don't nick them without saying that. 

May 31st. The day had come. I woke up at 2am to catch a very early flight to Geneva and then a train to Lyon. The plan was simple: try to do a reunion of us fans from Spirits in the Forest. Well, four of us made it. And it was also my first show of this tour. What can I say?

We hung around the merchandise stand right in front of the entrance and we were… a bit surprised (but then again, not that much) with the spike in prices. I was put off from almost everything simply because I am not a fan of the design of the apparel this time. The skull in particular doesn’t say “Depeche Mode” to me. But I did succumb to the grey fleece jacket. 

A man arrived with a plain white shirt with a special message to Dave written with a sharpie on the back. He did find something else to wear during the show and spared Dave from the odd request.

Let’s talk about the show, shall we? We were all seated together on a grandstand on the left side of the stage. Not the best view, but also the best view. Why? I got to see a DM concert from a distance with the crowd in my vision. 

The visual aspect of this tour that deserves a highlight (no pun intended) are the lights. The entire lighting is a show within a show. It’s as if they translated music into colors and beams of light everywhere in the stadium.

To be honest, the crowd didn’t really go nuts until they played Enjoy The Silence. Not even Walking In My Shoes and It’s No Good early in the set got them bananas as I expected. For me every song sounded fantastic. Sister Of Night with Dave on vocals is a highlight of this tour for me. And even though this setlist seems to have copied half of the one from the Global Spirit Tour, I still caught myself singing loud the lyrics to every song. 

Of course I was voiceless the following day. The singalong expected of Everything Counts simply did not happen. It even looked a bit embarrassing to watch Dave trying to get the crowd singing the coda and the response being almost null. What’s wrong with you people? The new singalong at the end of John The Revelator however gave the song a new life. And from that part of the show on, the crowd finally got wild.

What else could I say? Waiting For The Night is a magical moment. Stripped and Just Can’t Get Enough sounded better this time. If there were complaints that they weren’t using the original sound patches when playing live, this time you can clearly hear that, YES, they are using the exact same sound banks pulled from the studio versions. This also goes for Christian’s drum kit live tweaks. Crashes, snares and kicks all sound like the original sounds we’re used from the studio versions of each song. Peter is on the bass a bit more often on this tour (although I’m waiting to see him play My Favourite Strange” again). 

Dave and Martin were flawless in their performances. All in all, a great show to celebrate friendships while enjoying Depeche Mode before our eyes.

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Thanks very much Daniel.

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, OSTRAGEHEGE, DRESDEN, 7 JUNE 2017

Today's review is the second review by Daniel Cassus (@dcassus), following up his excellent Leipzig review from 27 May (http://almostpredictablealmost1.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/live-review-depeche-mode-festwiese.html). Once again, thanks very much to Daniel for a hugely enjoyable review and the wonderful pictures. Remember kids, don't use them anywhere without asking first.

Welcome to another review by me, Daniel. This time I’ll tell you a little about the show in Dresden. I’ll try to focus on what’s different from my other review.

The Ostragehende is also a big open air field like the Leipzig Festwiese, but the stage faces north, and with the sun setting at 21:16h directly to your right, it’s quite annoying to have to deal with the sun in your face until the first few songs of the main set.

This time I got really early (14h) to the venue, so my waiting agony was double the length it was before. Happily, I got to meet fellow homie (www.depeche-mode.com) Kimmie and her friends which helped pass the time and also helped me learn how the early birds organize themselves in line. We even faced a hail shower in what was to be a perfect sunny sky. At least we got treated to a little bit of the soundcheck of Walking In My Shoes.

Daniel on the left with Troy

I also got to meet my friend Troy who took a challenge to get the same haircut as the guy from the In Your Room video. I took the challenge of buying a €20 fanny/bum pack (below) with the DM “Bratwurst” logo. Hey, it’s still hip to wear one in Germany (check the name ;). Although I gotta say the quality is really cheap for the price.

The Horrors came on stage 17 minutes earlier than expected, to my pleasure, which meant 20:40h was already “Revolution” time!

Something funny happened with the screen right from the intro all the way into Barrel Of A Gn. There was a glitch and some blocks were out of place. Even a part of the Going Bacwards video stayed there throughout So Much Love and part of Barrel of A Gun.

Dave was wearing grey suit with silver boots this time. Fletch seemed to be wearing neon pink runners. Did I see that right? For a main band member, Fletch has been blending with the background a lot.

This time Corrupt didn’t have all that delay effect from Leipzig, but A Question Of Lust had it. These are the small tweaks you get to notice from watching multiple gigs. Or maybe just a different impression from watching the show from the FOS1 this time.

On the other hand, there was a lot of reverb and delay on In Your Room. Dave also messed up a few lines and just offered the mic to the crowd, in his “something went wrong” style. By the way, why won’t Peter play the bass on In Your Room? It’s definitely a very bass-y song and could benefit from his show of hands.

My impression about Cover Me being slowed down in Leipzig was just that, an impression. The first verse was precisely the same as the studio version. And Martin’s guitar was sharper than before. My favorite rendition of the song so far.

From my Leipzig review you can tell I'm becoming less resistant to Peter’s interventions. He is pretty much doing all the backing vocals on Barrel Of A Gun, more than Martin. He’s also singing on "Heroes". And he's finally got to write for the album. If I had the chance, I'd have all six of them autograph my Spirit vinyl: Dave, Martin, Andy, Christian, Peter, Kurt and James Ford. Anton can sign my tour book with a white marker, of course.

I noticed the rain-protected side lasers were missing this time. Here’s a picture of the stage without them:

Other things I finally noticed from up close:

 -  Martin has red Spirit flags sewed onto his blaze

 - It’s Dave’s silhouette you see “drawn” on the waves of the Wrong projection video.

 - The panning effect during the Everything Counts intro and the engine start from Stripped are mind blowing from so close

Christian spiced the intro of Enjoy The Silence a little bit this time. I know this is a stab in the heart of the purist fans. But it gets them going. Christian has said it before he always changes something here and there between each performance. The problem with ETS for me is Martin’s solo which must be the worst he’s ever done.

However, Martin did seem to have fun making a Chuck Berry duck walk during the intro of Never Let Me Down Again. Homage? Fun? Rock n’ roll spirit? We’ll never know for sure. Martin was in a special mood. Before Somebody, he greeted "Dreeeeesdeeeennn" in a very deep funny voice, and finished with a “danke” and his typical laughter.

Leaving the show was much easier because they started to remove the barriers between the sectors during “Heroes”. I know this because I started to move towards the exit around this time. Sorry, I was too kaputt to endure the final 15 minutes (and this encore really isn’t my favorite). However, the main exit was still blocked when the show ended. It’s where their vans were waiting for them. Since they’re not party animals anymore, it’s only a matter of seconds between the final bow on stage and their french exit from the venue. Vans are gone, the way is clear and leaving the Ostragehege wasn’t the chaos it was to leave the Leipzig Festwiese.

All in all, a more comfortable show than Leipzig, and a lot less crowded. Band in great mood. I hope you enjoyed my review as much as I enjoyed being there.

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We certainly did enjoy it Daniel - thanks very much!

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, FESTWIESE, LEIPZIG, 27 MAY 2017

Today's review is provided by Daniel Cassus, a Germany based Brazilian Depeche fan who is famous for being on camera more than Depeche Mode (!) during this year's gig in Berlin on the Spirit promo tour. Daniel has written a wonderful review giving the reader a real feel of what this huge gig was like, both in terms of highs and lows. He's also provided a treasure trove of pictures - they're all his so do not use them without asking him very nicely. Thanks very much indeed Daniel.

Hi there, fellow devotees. This is Daniel Cassús, who monopolized the Berlin Telekom Street Gig broadcast from March this year. Today is my turn to review a show for the blog Global Spirit Tour project. And it’s the first German show of this tour, so the black swarm gets hyper excited over this. I’ll try to not bore you, because by now you know the setlist, the tour projections, stage design, etc.

Ever since I moved to Germany I started to indulge in seeing multiple shows, probably to compensate for all the other tours that I only saw on DVD, VHS, LaserDisc, Beta…

In 2013 I chose Munich as my first one because it was the first German show of the tour. For this tour I applied the same logic with a twist: smaller cities if possible. So it happened to be Leipzig, just over 1 hour away from Berlin by train, but a city I had never visited after 4 years living here.

I confess I was somewhat disappointed. Leipzig is much smaller than neighboring Dresden and it sells itself as a city for fairs and conventions, but apparently there were 2 other events taking place this weekend and the city was overfilled with people. Hotels were charging 4 to 6 times more than in Dresden and affordable Airbnb apartments were also disappearing from the radar very fast. With the show foreseen to end by 23h, a sleep over was the only option.

The Festwiese is what the name says: an open air field for events. It’s a great venue for a festival, but this is just one show with two opening acts. Doors opened at 16h, and the band was supposed to go on stage at 21h, the sun was scorching and people were not moving from one place to another. A few passed out. Security guys offered free water to the people in the first rows of each area. A nice gesture from a crew known to be a real family. More on the show's organization that later.

Another downside of the “smaller city” idea was that public transportation was completely chaotic during the exit. All streetcars were crammed with people against the glass.

Enough about the venue. Let’s talk a little about the opening acts because that’s obviously what you came here for, right? Ok, I’ll be brief. F. O. X. was amazing. They have a Le Tigre-Gossip-The Sounds-La Roux-Yazoo thing going on that definitely rings many bells with DM fans. The Horrors, on the other hand, were… well… horrible. Just a Strokes-meets-Oasis on a bad shoegazing day. I confess I didn’t pay any attention to them and kept playing Candy Crush on my phone to pass the time.

Sign o' times: the screens showed multiple alerts about emergency exits. Still, it was stressful to leave from the FOS areas at the end because the barriers were left in place and people were being slowly funneled out. Had there been an emergency, it could have been a tragedy (knock on wood). Also, no video about the charity:water partnership. C'mon, people you're letting me down.

"You say you want a revolution" - well, you know this is the cue to get ready. Band gets on stage and Dave makes his ZooTV-esque entrance by showing his silhouette in front of the colorful video created by Anton for Going Backwards (yes, it’s a reverse video of paint dropping on the lens, I bet Anton was influenced by my video).

You can tell Dave is genuinely enjoying himself when he does the chicken dance. Well, during Barrel Of A Gun he indulged in a monkey dance too. And then went back to the chicken dance on A Pain That I'm Used To. There was even a dog dance at some point too. You see how everything is connected with the Enjoy The Silence tour video? ;)

I was a Corrupt hater when it came out. To me, it was just DM trying and failing to sound sleazy, like Dead of Night and Goodbye. But this song gained a totally new depth played live. They also added some reverb effects on Dave’s voice that makes it special and not just a karaoke version of the studio one.

I’m still on the fence about videos like the ones for In Your Room and Walking In My Shoes. I didn’t pay any attention to the band at all during these two songs. In Your Room in particular has a Pina Bausch feel to it. Walking In My Shoes is pretty literal, down to the “forbidden fruits” part. By the way, did I mention hearing the album version of In Your Room gave me goosebumps?

I noticed the first chords of Cover Me slowed down a little compared to the promotional shows. I hope they don’t turn it into that Personal Jesus drag from the previous tours. Hopefully it just Dave adding 1 or 2 seconds of drama to the performance. That’s ok.

When I saw that Martin didn’t sing any new song and only played his 3 singles I was disappointed. And A Question Of Lust on piano yet again? But Peter toned down his inner Liberace and it was very moving. The same applies to Somebody. And Home with the full band is just pure....oooohhhhh...bliss.

Nothing new here, but I have to just state that Wrong is a killer track. This is how it should have been played on the Tour Of The Universe, preferably as the first song of some encore. It has such a build up potential in this form. I can even waive that the final verse is missing.

Before the show, we were told there would be fireworks 800 meters exactly in front of the stage due to one of the other events in the city. Great planning, uh? These fireworks went off during Everything Counts and Stripped. Thanks to a camera behind Dave, we saw these fireworks on the side screens (or else we would have to turn our heads 180º). I thought they would disturb the show, but they were not audible and created a great effect. Maybe they should adopt this for the future? It was much better than the airplanes passing by every 20 minutes over the stage during my first concert in Buenos Aires, 2009.

I noticed they beefed up the electronic parts in Stripped, I Feel You and Never Let me Down Again (did anyone notice a better bassline?). Great move.

Now I may get stoned for these next two remarks, but I actually enjoyed the video for Enjoy The Silence. Yes, the song hasn't changed since the Exciter tour, but I found the animals cute. Yes, it's another one-pony trick by Anton if compared to the Precious video from last tour, but I'm a dog person and there's a cute boxer in it. And yes, I'm aware that the In Your Room video is also reminiscent of the banned Strangelove one and Cover Me is Enjoy The Silence, Behind The Wheel, and Devotional's Never Let Me Down Again reloaded.

The second hot topic is the t-shirt gun. It's so camp - I like it! On all of the 8 Delta Machine tour gigs I saw, Dave was so exhausted during the deodorant check part, he looked awkwardly not knowing what to do with his hands anymore, already tired of waving them after 800 shows. Now Dave has his hands busy and some fun at the same time. Feel free to disagree with me on everything, but on these two in particular.

Encore time and once again Peter took his xanax and made a beautiful performance of Somebody. I am soooo gonna whisper the lyrics to this song on my SO's ears on the Berlin show later next month. Walking In My Shoes finally got the crowd going wild. "Heroes" sounded so much better live than on the bad YouTube videos I had seen so far. Save your judgement for when you see it live or on the official dvd. Dave's been saying he wants a shorter set, but they play the full album version of "Heroes", not just the short single edit. You can tell this is the most emotional moment of the show for them.

Talk about I Feel You, we all know it has been too long in the setlist, but it finally got the short intro it deserved since after Devotional. The one on Delta Machine was good too, but this is more cut to the chase. Also, either Dave struggled to sing it or someone mixed his mic too low in the first verses.

Personal Jesus also came with beefier electronic sounds and the stereo panning effects are just so awesome during the instrumental part (if you're in the center like I was). Crystal clear sound.

And that was it. Band takes a bow. Dave does a particularly long goodbye on stage. My verdict is that the performance was amazing, but the organization left a little to be desired and the overall experience was very good, but could have been better. But then again, this was just the first out of 4 shows I’m going (so far). I did drop a load of money in the merchandise stands, so they'll use my money to fine tune these small perks. I hope you enjoyed my review and see you next week in Dresden.

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Thank you Daniel - what a great read.