WORLD VIOLATION LIVE WITH DM LIVE WIKI

When I wrote about the World Violation tour yesterday, I deliberately avoided talking about recordings from that tour. As we all know only too well, the band have never released anything officially from the tour - no live tracks on singles, no footage of full songs online and no live video (as it would have been) or DVD ( as it would be now). It's a constant source of frustration to many myself included, as that tour's setlist and accompanying visuals are remarkable and would have made a wonderful live release. As Alan told Shunt however, it was felt that any release would have been far too close to the release of 101, so it was felt that a World Violation live video was not worth doing.

Bearing in mind the recent release of the bewilderingly priced and indeed bewildering generally Mode boxset, it's safe to say that attitudes have somewhat changed about Depeche releases.

The only sniff of anything official appeared on the band's official site a few years ago. Daniel Barassi, the band's Archivist explained how this came about on the site:

Fans have wanted a good recording of this tour for over a decade, but that has been virtually impossible to come by. While audience recording bootlegs (of fluctuating quality) have surfaced of this tour, there has never been anything of true quality that has been available to the fans.

While on a week break in England (in 2002), I (the webmaster) raided the band's office in London. Among the treasures discovered was a videotape with a very simple, hand-written label ("Dodgers 080490"). Dust covered, and sitting in the office since the end of the tour, this tape would have surely been lost and/or forgotten, if I had not "borrowed" it from the offices.

The video featured here was recorded "live to tape". All effects, camera changes, and recorded audio was recorded in a raw, "one take" mix. As such, some camera angles, and audio flaws, might pop up from time to time. For such a historic document, we don't think the occasional flaw (or "video toaster" effect) will distract from the performances.

Voted by you, the fans, as the most desired live concert in the Archives Concert Series, here are excerpts from the World Violation Tour, exclusively on depeche mode dot com.

As I mentioned yesterday, it is well worth watching this only if to give yourself a tantalising glimpse of what could have been. It always strikes me that there are just a few too many effects etc for this not to have been filmed with a view to using it. We may never know though. All we can do is watch clips of the songs, like this one of Waiting For The Night and hope something full sees the light of day one day.

If we want to see or hear anything from the World Violation tour then, we must track it down ourselves. Happily, Matthew Wolfe who runs the legendary DM Live Wiki is on hand to help out with that very task. Matthew provides a service to Depeche fans that is impossible to praise too highly. As well as recordings, there is a treasure trove of information on his site and, if you haven't visited it already, put this down and go there now. You will get lost in the sheer amount of content and will have the time of your life. Once you're done, remember to come back here and finish this article off.

As I did on the Black Celebration special, I asked Matthew if he would be up for chatting about the World Violation recordings and happily he agreed. Here Matthew walks you through the best recordings of the tour and much more:

APA: How many World Violation tour gigs do you have on the Wiki?

MW: On the wiki, 71 out of the 88 concert dates have recordings, with 85 total recordings representing the tour; some concert dates have multiple recordings available (for example, 1990-08-04 Los Angeles has the infamous soundboard vinyl bootleg, and two audience recordings). That's pretty decent representation.

APA: Soundboards aside, which we'll come onto, how is the general quality of recordings from the tour?

MW: There are a handful of true gems, such as 1990-08-05 Los Angeles, the popular 1990-11-11 Milan, and 1990-11-20 London, but the rest rarely get any better than a "good" in my humble opinion. Put it this way, generally I won't go and listen to any random audience recording from this tour out of spontaneous desire. For some reason, the quality of audience recordings just wasn't there on this tour. It probably doesn't help that the crowds were generally absolutely wild and noisy, as heard on most of the recordings.

APA: Is there much decent video about and, if so, are there any you'd recommend?

3. I'm afraid I'm not much of a video collector at the moment. There's good audience videos of 1990-11-11 Milan, 1990-10-05 Gothenburg, and 1990-10-08 Frankfurt (below), but as I haven't ventured significantly into archiving the video "bootlegs", the most I've got on the wiki for these at the moment is a YouTube embed. Eventually, the wiki will expand to include video proper.

APA: Turning to the soundboards, what do you know about these? How did they come about?

MW: Here's the can of worms:

1. July 21, 1990, Shoreline Amphitheatre, San Francisco, California. The soundboard version that floats around (and is available on the wiki, naturally) sounds good and fine - if you can tolerate the heavy rounds of repeated MP3 compression that it's underwent, which tends to give it a jarring, harsh sound. It's usually listenable, but stuff like the swishy-sounding artifacts during Everything Counts really turn this one off for me - maybe I'm just particularly sensitive. I think this one's from a pro-shot video, but I haven't come across any concrete proof so far.

2. August 4, 1990, Dodgers Stadium, Los Angeles, California. This originates from the pro-shot VHS tape copy that BRAT shared snippets of on the official website, which was then pressed to 3 multicolored vinyl and bootlegged a few years ago - jeez, probably close to 10 years at this point? Someone wasn't supposed to share this, but it happened. It's unfortunately incomplete, with the final 5 tracks originating from the 1990-07-21 San Francisco soundboard mentioned above, for some odd reason. This recording doesn't sound quite as clear and good as San Fran, but it is after all an unmixed soundboard feed which has had its quality further reduced by having been pressed to vinyl, and generally worse quality multicolored vinyl at that. I've tried to track down who is responsible for pressing the vinyl, maybe to get the source audio, but that's been fruitless so far.

The nice part about these two recordings is that the four usual Martin acoustic tracks (Here Is The House / Sweetest Perfection, generally played during the second night at a given venue, and I Want You Now / World Full Of Nothing, which was more commonly performed at most concerts) are represented in soundboard quality. That leaves Little 15 / Blue Dress as the odd ones out, but thankfully there's a good audience recording of these both from the third nights in San Diego and Paris, respectively.

APA: There is also the issue of the leaked backing tapes too. What can you tell us about them?

MW: These have been circulating on very mediocre quality cassette copies since the early 1990s. While the backing tape audio does corroborate that about 50% of live Mode is performed live, as Alan said on Shunt, what you hear is not necessarily all that was output to the PA during the live show; some sounds are "backup" on tape in case of some failure, and would be muted in most cases. I've read that hearing these backing tracks caused some fans to become so disillusioned with live Mode that they stopped collecting, but I'm not sure how true that is. They're a fascinating listen once or twice, or maybe as some background music while studying or working, but even the great sounding cassette copy I was able to attain and preserve is rather on the hissy side, in particular the second half as a slightly worse quality cassette was used to make that copy. I've made 2-minute warning snippets of each track available on the wiki. As they're not really a rarity and with any real trading value any more, I've certainly considered making the complete set available, but as they're derived from studio content, they're in even more of a gray area compared to the rest of the wiki, so I err on the side of caution here.

Thanks very much indeed Matthew.

The World Violation tour is destined to be remembered both as the tour that fascinates Depeche Mode fans above all other tours. The combination of the band being as big as they ever had been and the lack of official coverage makes it a tantalising, almost frustrating tour in many ways. Everything you can see and hear about it proves that it was a monumental event from beginning to end - all we need is official evidence from the band to let us make our minds up once and for all.

PUT IT ON - MARTIN GORE AND HIS VIOLATOR VOCALS

When I looked at Martin's Black Celebration lead vocals in 2016 in the snappily titled "More Gore Than Ever Before," I talked about the fact that Martin's proportion of leads on that album was his highest on any Depeche album to date. For maths fans, he sings lead vocals on 36% of the tracks on that album. That's the type of insight you've come here for. On Violator, Martin is a prominent voice on three of the album's songs, taking lead vocal on two and appearing all over another, making it essentially a duet with Dave. That 33% of Violator is what we'll look at today. 

SWEETEST PERFECTION

Violator's second track is an absolute masterpiece. After the opening Depeche Mode does Kraftwerk God-like genius of World In My Eyes, a drumbeat shuffles in from the distance, a bassline begins and all of a sudden, Martin arrives singing another song about some sort of weird obsessive love. You could read it as a song sung by someone holding a person hostage in their garage, standing over that person watching them, or, quite understandably, you could focus on simpler things such as just enjoying the song.

There are two real highlights in the song for me. Firstly, the way the music builds and builds to its eventual explosive climax is superb. From 43 seconds in, the swirling noise that appears gives the song a strange, claustrophobic feel and it builds from there, with typically Wilder like layers building and building. A guitar strums idly before a gloriously metallic noise coupled with odd metal percussive noises (very Some Great Reward) arrives and takes the song in a clanking, oddly percussive direction. But what's this springing into the song like the sun rising over a scrapyard filled with the ghosts of DM albums past? Pleasingly, it's an orchestral section that arrives at 2 minutes 7 seconds, soothing us while Martin discusses swapping whatever his perfection is for "an assorted collection," the contents of which we are clearly better off not knowing. No trade though, as Martin tells the would-be trader to bugger off and, after an odd metal noise that sounds like a robot cat meowing, we back in familiar territory with more Wilder like noises all over the shop. The last two minutes are majestic. The instrumental section from 3 minutes 12 is a riot of noise and phased drums which is definitely a part we all air drum along too. Isn't it? Just me then.

Before you wasted valuable time reading that paragraph, I mentioned that there were two highlights in the song. The second one is the last minute of it where a new voice enters with 48 seconds left. All of a sudden you say "Hang on! That sounds like Dave." You're right, it is. This is new ground for Depeche and it's ground we can all get..erm...on. We are long used to Dave having Martin harmonise or sing counter melody with him, but we are not used to it being the other way round. It's bloody brilliant. Alan lets them sing while creating more noise and fuss behind them, and the song climaxes with backwards noises, more phasing and a general, hugely enjoyable cacophony. As Alan told Shunt:

"The weird stuff came together at the end during the mixing stage. It's the kind of thing you resort to when you haven't really got an ending."

Grumpy bugger. Anyway, the song is a real surprise as it feels more like it should be a Dave lead rather than a Martin one, but it really works with Martin's lead vocal.

The song was played 20 times on the World Violation Tour in Martin's acoustic slot. The video above is from Frankfurt on 14th October 1990. Martin also played it 8 times on his 2003 solo tour, but it's not been heard of since.

WAITING FOR THE NIGHT

Not satisfied with giving us the Martin singing lead and Dave providing counter melody shock of Sweetest Perfection (I have 31 days to fill this month so bear with me), the band continued to smash perceptions with what I'm going to call their first official duet track. And please let me assure you that I am not just doing that because Waiting For The Night didn't fit anywhere else and wouldn't have filled a blog on its own. No. To my mind, or more accurately, for the purposes of blog symmetry, Waiting For The Night sees Dave and Martin share vocals.

The song itself is a haunting, bubbling epic; a perfect centrepiece for the album. Alan and Flood attempted to create a Tangerine Dream like feel to the song (see Alan's Shunt Violator Q&A) and the effect they create gives the song an intense but uplifting feel. The bubbling synths that underpin the song are the star of the show and the duet accompanying them enhances the intensity of the song.

Dave's parts are understated, almost whispered in places. Martin's harmonies counter those whispered lines beautifully. In the verses, the twinkling synths evoke the stars the that are guiding Dave and Martin and it is frankly perfect. It is such a gorgeous song. Alan being Alan, more noises interrupt the calm, especially the "what the hell is that ?" awa-awa-awa-awa-awa-awa-awa-awa thing that arrives at 3 minutes 6 seconds, shaking you from the reverie the song has induced.

At 3 minutes 33 when Dave starts squinting and the world starts, er, rose tinting, ghostly noises emerge alongside Martin's singing leading us into the last chorus with Martin now adding counter melodies in the places he was previously silent. It works wonderfully. The song then plays out with a final haunting synth line, leading into Martin's "Ah-ah-ah-ah" where ghostly versions of himself sing along before the song ends leaving you mesmerised as only Depeche Mode at their very best can. In 1990, you'd then get up and change the tape or record over and start Side B. If you were the lucky owner of one of those fancy CD players, you'd get woken from your trance by the first note of Enjoy The Silence. Bloody hell, Waiting For The Night is an absolutely sensational song.

The band loved it too, playing it on all 88 World Violation Tour shows, As we know, and as we'll hear more about later on this month, there is no official footage of the World Violation Tour so videos like the one above from Frankfurt are the only way we can see just how wonderful this song was live on that tour. Martin left his keyboards and guitar behind and stood behind a mic to duet with Dave and Anton's majestic film played behind them, unsurprisingly complimenting the song perfectly.  The song has also been played live another 131 times by the band on the Exotic (3), Exciter (85) and Tour Of The Universe (43) tours. It always goes down well but has never matched its glorious World Violation Tour version.

BLUE DRESS




In an NME interview on 17th February 1990, Martin said

"Then there's Blue Dress - that's the pervy song! The idea of watching a girl dress and realising that this is 'what makes the world turn'."

That says it all really. If my theory about Sweetest Perfection above is in any way accurate (it isn't), then Blue Dress is clearly the second part of Martin's until today unacknowledged history as a serial killer. In this song, "pervy" by his own admission remember, Martin watches someone put on a dress from, one can reasonably assume, is an initial state of nudity. It's a odd topic for a song certainly but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it works. Blue Dress is a cracking song.

Alan disagrees of course, but Alan would. When asked about Blue Dress in one of his Shunt Q&A's, he said:

"Not one of my favourites - hence penultimate track on LP (filler position). I would put it in the same bag as Get Right With Me on SOFAD."

Harsh from Alan there. I certainly wouldn't say that Blue Dress is a filler track by any means. It's impossible to imagine Violator without it and there can surely be no sane argument made for any of the B-sides taking its place. The same can't said for Get Right With Me to use Alan's comparison. For pedantry's sake, I should point out that Get Right With Me isn't SOFAD's penultimate track either. I tried to avoid writing that but felt I couldn't move on without doing so.

Alan's ambivalence towards Blue Dress mirrored the band's approach to it as a live track on the World Violation tour too. It only appeared twice, both times in Martin's acoustic set. He played it at San Diego Sports Arena on 31st July 1990 and at Bercy in Paris on 23rd October that year. Here is the Paris concert featuring version from the ever marvellous dmlive.wiki :

https://dmlive.wiki/wiki/1990-10-23_Palais_Omnisports_de_Paris-Bercy,_Paris,_France/Source_1

After World Violation, the song continued to be ignored until resurrected by Martin for his solo slots on Touring The Angel (two appearances) and the Delta Machine tour (13 appearances including the one above in Moscow on 7th March 2014). Always warmly received (at least by me), Blue Dress seems destined to forever remain a rarity.

Martin onstage in Paris, 23 October 1990 - picture courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Vidoes Facebook Group

That then is an analysis of the 33% of Violator that features the angelic tones of Mr Gore. An assorted collection, but what a collection.

THE VIDEO WITH NO SINGLE NUMBER 1 - HALO

When you listen to an album and every track stands out as a potential single, you know that you are dealing with a classic. Violator is one such album and Halo is a song that could and arguably should have been a single from the album. According to Alan on his Violator piece on Shunt, the song was on the singles shortlist but it didn't make the cut. Instead, as with Clean, a video was made to use on Strange Too, the Violator era video compilation.

A promo cd was prepared by the band's US label, but no official release ever existed. 

By the way, if someone tries to sell you a Mute promo 12" containing 5 mixes with the catalogue number DJ12MUTE747, don't buy it. It's a bootleg.

Halo is a sensational song, a glorious melody that builds to a mesmeric conclusion, all of which envelops some of Martin's greatest lyrics. Drum samples from When The Levee Breaks via a hip hop record that used the sample and strings constructed from a sample of an Elgar piece (as Alan told The Electricity Club in 2011) amplify a Flood and Alan arrangement that gives more than a nod towards the approach the two would take on Songs Of Faith And Devotion. Once Halo ends, you want to play it again. And again. And again.

The NME review of Violator by Paul Lester on 10 March 1990 named Halo as the album's standout song. The review said:

"Best of all is Halo, a dim-lit, menacing, slug-funk (Slug funk? I've no idea either) dirge that achieves the impossible of being both grimly oppressive and gloriously uplifting. It has been glued to my turntable for the last two months and it is the finest thing Depeche have ever done."

I can't disagree with any of that really. Martin's lyrics stand out for me here too, however. As Martin said in an NME interview on 7th February 1990:

"If you listen (to DM songs) there's always a sense of guilt. On Halo on our new album, you're right that I'm saying 'Let's give in to this' but there's also a real feeling of wrongfulness."

The lyrics certainly suggest a reluctance to do something ("You wear guilt/like shackles on your feet/like a halo in reverse") married to an ultimate decision to set that aside and just crack on with whatever was planned (Sex basically. It usually is with Martin. That or religion). The chorus, one of Depeche Mode's finest, sums that decision up beautifully:

"And when our worlds they fall apart

When the walls come tumbling in

Though we may deserve it

It will be worth it"

In other words, we're all going to die anyway, so let's stop worrying and have a bloody nice time instead. Though Martin put it somewhat more eloquently.

The video for the song was filmed on 2nd August 1990 at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, two days before the first of the Dodgers Stadium gigs. Alongside the band, Anton and his donkey are two actresses called Pam Heffler and Jenna Elfman who take on the roles of dancers in the travelling Mode circus. Alan and Andy are naturally dressed in black, carrying signs and looking like electro-undertakers. Dave, a brooding caravan based presence, initially chats up Martin's fellow clown. He is apparently The Strongest Man In The Universe, but as you can see below, he certainly doesn't look like it. Martin takes on the role of badly juggling clown, and despite his average attempts, he charms his fellow clown, leading her to reject Dave "Strongman" Gahan and join Martin in his bed under the caravan.

I love the video but then I would, wouldn't I? 

As part of our research for Halo - The Story Behind Depeche Mode's Classic Album Violator, I spoke to Pam Heffler about the video. She remembers filming for one day and one evening and she was delighted with the end result, calling the video "eclectic, creative and unusual in a great way."  

Halo is a track that has certainly stood the test of time and remains something of a favourite of the band's if the amount of times it has been played is anything to go by. DM Live Wiki notes that the song has, thus far, been played live 431 times. The band have usually favoured a fairly standard version of the track when playing it live but on the Delta Machine tour, they, quite marvellously, used the 2004 Goldfrapp remix of the song for the live shows in the encore. On the Global Spirit Tour, the song somewhat randomly popped up at one gig only in Dublin on 15 November 2017:

Luckily for me, I was there. It was strange to see a song like Halo suddenly appear as the band are not known for playing songs at random on tour. Like me, everyone else in the crowd was caught by surprise thinking "Hang on...Halo?" before going completely bonkers as you would expect.

The reaction of the fans there that night, of fans keeping an eye on the setlist suddenly exploding with surprise and jealousy, and of fans disappointed on every other night of the tour when Halo didn't appear sums the appeal of this song perfectly. It's a much loved gem, a single that could have been, and an absolutely classic, peak era Depeche Mode track that sums up everything good about this band.

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SPORTPALEIS, ANTWERP 9 MAY 2017

The next guest reviewer is Linda Meijer who is an Assistant from DM TV Archives, the wonderful site that gathers and preserves all Depeche Mode's TV and radio appearances for us all to enjoy. Linda specialises in finding all sorts of Depeche goodness and, as well as the Archives site, she also uploads interviews to DM Live Wiki, is a co-moderator of Depeche-Mode.nl and a co-admin of Depeche Mode Classic Photos and Videos on Facebook. Essentially, Linda is a godsend for Depeche fans. I was delighted when she volunteered to review the Antwerp gig.  I know you're going to love this.

Writing a review of a concert can be hard enough in itself, but when also you have attended another concert two days prior by the same artist which is still fresh in your memory, it is hard to go about writing without comparing the two concerts together. I've been thinking about writing this review without mentioning the concert in Amsterdam whatsoever, but it is impossible for me to so, so unfortunately I will have to make do...

I must admit that my overall experience is a bit spoilt since I had bought Early Entry tickets for both Amsterdam and Antwerp. For those wondering just how relaxed Early Entry is, I will say that it can vary, depending on both the crowd as well as the organisers. In Amsterdam, the people waiting in the Early Entry line were a lot more anxious, and once you start feeling a level of tension in others, it's hard for a group to take it down a notch. By the time we were almost left in, there was some pushing, stepping on people's feet, arguing about who gets to stand in front of whom. It's all a bit silly, of course, when you consider the fact that everyone will get a decent spot anyway. Once inside, we had to form a tight formation which no one was allowed to move away from, and the guards warned us that anyone who starts running will go back outside. So by the time we were at the stage barriers, there was a whole lot of adrenaline going on. In Antwerp, the fans were a lot more relaxed. Our line was supposed to be in the shades, but since we had all written numbers on our hands, we walked about in the sunlight. Once we were let in, we were allowed to walk around and go to the bathrooms or put our stuff in lockers or buy drinks. People respected the numbers on each other's hands a lot more, and so by the time we were front of stage, everyone was feeling amicably with one another.

This amicable feeling, along with the fact that it was my second concert of the tour which meant that I no longer had that typical teenage-ish fangirl "OMG they are back!" sensation that I had in Amsterdam, meant that I could enjoy the concert in Antwerp with a relatively clear mind without needing to shout at the top of my lungs every minute. The fans around me seemed quite relaxed also, which was kind of a bummer for The Raveonettes, since hardly one seemed to be excited about seeing a support act. The crowd was a lot more quiet during their set in Antwerp than in Amsterdam. Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that many of the faces who attended the Antwerp gig were also in Amsterdam where they played the same setlist, and thus they already knew their tricks.

I had landed in the middle part before the stage between Dave and Martin's spots, with only a short girl in front of me, so I had a pretty good spot. The stage actually seemed lower and smaller in the Sportpaleis than in Ziggo Dome, so there was a good view of the entire stage. As usual, the bass comes in pretty strong when you're front row, punching you in the stomach with every beat, so I'm not really able give a proper assessment of the sound quality in the rest of the venue, unfortunately.

Having Going Backwards as the opener was a good decision. It's no intro à la A Pain That I'm Used To, but at least it starts with more of a groove than In Chains and Welcome To My World. Although I feel that Anton's creations are a matter of hit and miss, I think that the colour-splashing backdrop that emerges from the dark really appeals the eye, especially once Dave arrives on the platform, thus forming a black apparition. This time around, Dave showed up in sunglasses, which he took off once he stepped down from the platform. Naturally, he received a warm welcome.

It being Dave Gahan's birthday (55 years old, a "significant birthday"), there were a few fans who thought of celebrating Dave's senior citizen status: apparently a group of fans wore birthday cake-shaped hats which you can see here:

A German woman named Annett had brought some white and red heart balloons with her as well as 4 red balloon letters that spelled "DAVE". She asked us to hold them up while the band was playing So Much Love, going along with the theme of the song. I myself had brought couple of "Happy Birthday" balloons which I had let spread around, as well as two silver balloons for myself that had the shape of number 5, thus forming 55. Since Annett and I were standing second row at the front of the stage, there is a considerable chance that the band saw the balloons... But all of that did not matter much because we were trumped by a French guy who goes by the name "Dave Spirit" who surprisingly managed to spread eight friggin' thousand LED-containing "Happy Birthday Dave Gahan" balloons among a 20.000 sized crowd which were meant to be activated right after So Much Love, thus not only obliterating my and Annett's tiny balloons but also leaving the band visibly in awe as they saw nothing but thousands of red and blue waving lights. Many fans continued to wave the balloons throughout the gig, but it became spectacular again when Peter Gordeno began playing the "Happy Birthday" song on his piano after Martin had performed A Question Of Lust, which cued the audience once again to wave about frantically with their balloons, on which Dave commented "a big party". You can see it here on this video from YouTube (which also shows my mediocre "55" balloon):

All this along with the birthday cake that a bakery delivered to Dave at the venue around twelve-ish, along with skull shaped Belgian chocolates that I had indeed seen in Dave's car as they left their hotel the following day, makes it clear that his birthday certainly wasn't forgotten.

It's hard to gauge the liveliness of the overall crowd when you're pretty much front row, because it can be said that the people at the front are far more active than those in the back. I thought the crowd was quite active: what they lacked in jumping and arm waving in comparison to the crowd in Amsterdam, they made up in singing along to every lyric of every song. Or so it appeared in my vicinity, because although I could hear plenty of people singing along to the chorus of Everything Counts, Dave Gahan was visibly underwhelmed, and at one point started laughing at us and looked at Martin and mouthed something to the effect of "it's not working". Apparently, no matter how many times Dave did the "come on then" hand gesture, the crowd simply wasn't singing loudly enough. But from what I could see of the crowd, everybody was tagging along. It was also clear that many people had not looked at the new setlist yet, because at the start of quite a few songs, noticeably Home, Everything Counts, Somebody and "Heroes", people would only start "woo"-ing once the first lyric had been sung, as a way of saying "Hey I recognise this song!" I do not mean that as critique: it's just one of those things of which you easily forget that not every fan reads every detail about a band every single day until there are no more surprises left. Overall the reception of most slower songs like In Your Room and Martin's solo songs went relatively well, although the classic showstoppers like Personal Jesus and Never Let Me Down Again were of course received best. Even Wrong, of which I don't exactly remember it getting a good reception eight years ago, went down quite well with the crowd. But, understandably, the new Spirit songs Cover Me and Poison Heart, which are very slow songs to boot, did not exactly entice everyone up in the nosebleed sections. But hey, you can't have everything. I was also pleased to see that the amount of smartphones/cameras around me wasn't too obtrusive, meaning that most people seemed to prefer actually seeing the band with their own two eyes rather than through a camera lens, something that Dave has commented on recently (http://www.t-online.de/unterhaltung/musik/id_80664426/musik-dave-gahan-findet-handys-bei-konzerten-nervig.html)

Most eyes were focused on Dave anyway, since Martin did not appear to be particularly attentive to the crowd so far during this tour. The only eye contacts and smiles he makes are during the few moments when Dave is looking at him for eye contact, or when Dave hugs him like he did before Walking In My Shoes. He did smile when he steps on the catwalk during his solo bit, but it had a bit of a "Hey were go again" twang to it. But maybe he has other things on his mind still, like his two newborn children with whom he won't be spending any proper quality time until a year from now. Oh well, at least he was wearing body glitter for the first time this tour, hopefully that will activate his tour-mode soon enough.

Kevin May was also correct in his review of the Amsterdam gig about the crowd's delay in managing to spot Dave up on the higher platform. Not only did it take me a while to find Dave on there, but I could hear the crowd having trouble seeing him on there immediately too. A light on the man there would indeed be best. Speaking of lights, I really like all the lights that shine down on the stage. They especially wowed me during Everything Counts: the light blue lights that swirl on the band sort of reminds me of sunlight that can be seen underwater. As for the screen projections, the aforementioned backdrop for Going Backwards but also the ones for Cover Me and "Heroes" work really well, I think. But, personally speaking, I think the projections for Where's The Revolution and Martin's solo songs are too simplistic and the one for In Your Room is too bright.

I would say that the concert in Amsterdam was slightly better simply than the one on Antwerp because of Dave Gahan's enormous energy that he exuded during the former. Still, it should be said that comparing Dave's different levels of energy between two gigs is like comparing Mercedes and Ferraris - one might score better on one test, but the other one is still hella good. All the hip shaking, the ball grabbing, the finger pointing, the smiling, overall engaging with the crowd... He could never half-arse it, not even if he tried. And so it still leaves for a very memorable night. That and the eight friggin' thousand balloons.

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Thank you very much indeed Linda. 

A DM LIVE WIKI BLACK CELEBRATION SPECIAL

For those of you who don't yet know, DM Live Wiki (https://www.depechemode-live.com/wiki/Main_Page) is a site that, firstly, acts as a Depeche Mode live history and secondly, hosts hundreds of Depeche Mode live recordings from the very earliest up to now. The site continues to grow with the help of the likes of Angelinda from DM TV Archives, who has added interviews to various gig pages. All the recordings are unofficial and contain no commercially released tracks. They are gathered together from various sources who have taped the band's gigs and are presented on DM Live Wiki to download free.

The Black Celebration Tour section is certainly worth a visit as it contains a number of must hear recordings:

https://www.depechemode-live.com/wiki/Category:1986_Black_Celebration_Tour

My personal favourites, other than the ones we'll hear about in a bit, are the excellent Munster (20 May 1986) and Valbyparken (19 August 1986) shows. I caught up with Matthew Wolfe, the man behind the site, to find out a bit more about it and, naturally enough given what I'm doing at the moment, to chat Black Celebration.

APA: How did DM Live Wiki come about?

MW:  I've always been a proponent of sharing live recordings. I started collecting Depeche Mode live recordings back in 2009 and sharing whatever I could on a torrent tracker for live recordings of bands called DIMEadozen. I've amassed quite a collection of recordings, good and bad, and a few years later I posted a thread on the excellent fan site "Home" forum containing download links to what I felt were the very best soundboard, FM, and audience recordings from each tour. I thought, why not take that a step further and make something similar on a public website and expand it to include more recordings, information, etc?

I started on the wiki in mid-December 2013 and my colleague Ronny helped me populate the set lists for every gig and also gave me the awesome domain name depechemode-live.com that he had sitting unused for years. I also included download links to the same great recordings that were on the Home forum. I made the site public on January 27, 2014. Angelinda also contributes a lot of effort by adding interviews to the wiki - she also contributes to the DM TV Archives project, among other DM-related projects. I know the wiki is a little clunky as far as navigation goes, plus a rating system for users to rate recordings and improved search capability to be able to drill down types of recordings and such would be beneficial, and the streaming capability could be improved for sure, but overall I think the use of a wiki works pretty well for my purposes.

The site uses torrents for downloads of the full recordings to help avoid any legal issues by making the recordings available via regular direct-download links. You know how stuff on YouTube often gets taken down even if it's live stuff like this - the same thing could happen to the wiki. I'm hoping one day the site may get some sort of official sanction to allow direct-download links without worry of them being taken down or something, but to date I haven't had anybody representing the band or any of its labels contact me about anything regarding the site in an official capacity.

I work on the site whenever I get some spare time, and I usually add entire tours' worth of recordings at once. Shortly before Christmas I added all of the available recordings from the 1990 "World Violation" tour, so that was something of a little Christmas gift to many Mode fans around the world. There are about 450 recordings and about 300 interviews available currently. I set up a discussion forum as well, but it doesn't get much traffic right now - that's no big deal, it'll always be there. I pay for the wiki and its infrastructure entirely out of my own pocket plus the servers are all managed and administrated by me; the cost is pretty modest, so I don't mind. I'm happy to provide the wiki to fans around the world!

Some things coming up in the short term on the wiki: my colleague Vince and I are working on remastering a great sounding FM broadcast master tape of 1984-11-30 Basel, so that will appear soon, and of course the Devotional tour in its entirety is next. Long-term, I've been toying with the idea of a compilation perhaps titled "The Essential Live Mode" which includes some of the best recordings from each tour all rolled up into one big compilation - I'm sure something like that would be immensely popular, especially for more casual collectors who just want the best few recordings from each tour to enjoy. I've also got a bunch of soundcheck tapes coming in the next month or so, and that may be interesting to some of the more devoted collectors

APA: It seems the site has caught the imagination of Depeche fans - is that fair to say?

MW:  I'd like to believe so. The site receives around 150 to 200 visits per day on average - I'm sure the awesome domain name I've got helps (thanks Ronny & Carsten!). Once in a while I get pleasant emails thanking me for providing all of these recordings and the information. I really enjoy the emails where people generously contribute their own tapes for me to transfer - for example, the partial recordings of 1990 Cleveland and 1993 Chicago were both taped by German fans who mailed the tapes to me and even paid for shipping! Both of those recordings were basically uncirculating and, considering the entry-level equipment used, sound pretty good when I transferred them on high-end Nakamichi cassette decks. The Demos & Studio Pre-Mixes page is quite popular - it doesn't quite relate directly to Depeche Mode's live career, but I think a trustworthy resource on that topic was long overdue. If you haven't visited that page before, definitely give everything a listen - there's probably around an hour of juicy audio there.

APA: Do you intend to keep growing the site? Is the aim to get EVERY possible DM gig recording up there?

MW: Absolutely! The goal is to have every circulating recording of Depeche Mode available to stream and download on the site. It's a bit tougher with videos - currently I host streaming copies of videos on my server - so I'll probably need to rethink that and maybe use YouTube or something. I'm not a big video collector to begin with, I've just the better circulating recordings like pro-shots and some live TV spots, so maybe once all the audio's more or less available I'll work more on videos.

APA: Turning to Black Celebration, the site currently (I think) has 44 of the 76 shows on that tour. For someone new to Depeche recordings, what ones would you recommend?

MW: 48 out of 76 dates have recordings as of this writing - you were close! I think the short list would be:

• 1986-04-10 Birmingham - a really nice sounding 12-track FM broadcast
• 1986-04-16 London - the best pro-shot PAL DVD out of the three available, generously given out free by the DM TV Archives; the soundboard audio by itself is also available to stream and download if you go back to the main page for that date
• 1986-05-02 Stuttgart - a superb audience recording, plus a pro-shot DVD and soundboard audio are all available, but the DVD & soundboard audio aren't quite as good as London so my main reason for listing it here is the audience recording
• 1986-06-24 St. Paul, Minnesota - another excellent audience recording, sourced from master tapes

APA: The Brighton gig from the BC tour is notable for having a version of Here Is The House, a song that was swiftly dropped from the set. What's that recording like?

MW: I actually just re-transferred my tape copy of that recording the other day for improved quality to help celebrate the gig's 30th anniversary. It's not a superb audience recording, but it's definitely listenable with the advantage of having a really quiet crowd during songs. It's somewhat incomplete as well, missing six tracks entirely. "Here Is The House" was assumed to have been performed at the first concert of the BC tour, 1986-03-29 Oxford, and it was performed at the Brighton gig, but then dropped; the recording of the next concert at 1986-04-02 Dublin confirms that. The performance of "Here Is The House" is a touch rocky as some keyboard mistakes were made. I'm not sure why the song was dropped from the set list. Feel free to stream the entire available recording of that gig, or just "Here Is The House", at the recording's page here.

There's a 20-second soundboard snippet of "Here Is The House" being performed during tour rehearsals in March of 1986 and it sounds simply amazing; it's a shame the full tape isn't available as all of the snippets sound great. You can hear it and read more info about that tape on this page: 1986-03-00 Black Celebration Tour Rehearsals, Nomis Studios, London, England, UK

I really hope that full tape will be circulating one day - even better still if I'll have the opportunity to transfer it to ensure it sounds its best!

APA: Do you think you'll be able to get the remaining 29 gigs?

MW: It would be awesome to have a complete set of recordings from *any* of the DM tours really, but there's no guarantee all of the gigs were taped and that those tapes are still in existence or playable; there are so many factors involved, especially with analog media being the king back then. I'm always welcome to helping anybody with transferring tapes though and I've got phenomenal equipment for working with cassettes (details are here: Equipment: Nakamichi Dragon) which will extract every detail from just about any tape. If anyone's reading this that happens to have any recording of DM from any tour, on pretty much any format that you'd like me to digitize or at least compare it to any existing copies that may be floating around, please shoot me an email! I'd be more than happy to check it out and cover shipping costs both ways (or one-way if you don't need the item returned). Check out this page for more info if you're interested: Contributing

Well, if that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will. The amount of work that Matt has put into the Live Wiki is heroic and there is so much to explore there that you will lose days at a time easily. Go and check it out and make sure to listen to Matt's Black Celebration recommendations. 

And remember - if you have a tape or two kicking about that contains a show or shows not on Matt's list get in touch with him. We'd all love to hear the result.