K. Close III

Sex – Pain -= Angel =- Love – Vice

Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 | LiveJournal Archives

As my lovely heatherejc mentioned, by a strange twist of fate, she and I ended up going to see Depeche Mode last night – for free. We don’t usually go to things last minute, especially a concert thats starting in 2 hours down in Dallas, but we were both really big fans in High School (me more than she) and we didn’t feel like we could refuse. Besides, if we didn’t go, I kind of think the tickets would have just gone to waste. I mean, I guess we could have taken them and then gone and sold them, but that would have been rude and we still would have had to go to Dallas just to do so. Besides, they weren’t really ours to sell.

So we took care of the dogs and headed down to Dallas. After a couple of round about detours, we found ourselves among a lot of other people who looked suprisingly to be in our same demographic (I don’t know why that surprised me, but I expected a bit more “moody” looking crowd). It was a lot of people that looked like they worked in the same kind of places that we did, just wearing black t-shirts. Though there was also a fairly good population of late teens dressed in semi-gothy clothes an makeup. As was predicted by one newspaper columnist, there were a WHOLE lot of Violator t-shirts. Crazy.

Anyway, for free, our tickets weren’t half bad. We were up in the higher section, we were kind of near the back and kind of off to the side, but really, in the grand scheme of things, we probably could have been worse (but not much). We found our seats after being all but strip searched by this guard making sure people didn’t sneak into the sucky section. I mean really, the guy totally stopped us and demanded to see our tickets, both of us, even though we were together, to go up to the suckass section of the show… we’d already been admitted to the stadium and passed security, I can’t imagine that we’d be trying to break into the shitty section to steal worse seats than we could have already had.

Never-the-less we were led by the hand to our seats and we realized they would do nicely. We had a good view of the stage, we were fairly near the front of our section and we were on the outside curve so there wouldn’t be many people to block our view. We sat around and waited for the show to start. The Bravery opened up and they weren’t bad. They were definitely The Killers lite. In fact, a couple times, I almost thought they were starting up a Killers song. They seemed really excited to be at the show themselves and commented more than once how fortunate they were to open for Depeche Mode. They seemed to be a little lost on that huge stage but were fairly good. Not so much as to make me go and find their CD (like I did with Boom Boom Satellites after seeing Moby) but they were entertaining. I felt a little bad for them because they only had like one person standing up and really cheering for them in the whole audience.

We ran out to get food during the intermission. It wasn’t great, but it was edible. Heather peed a third time, we got some drinks, and realized that Depeche Mode was actually running out on stage as we getting back to our seats. The show was really good though. They played most of their new album, a couple of songs from Exciter, but then most of the show was from Violator or even older. Heck, they played at least one song from Speak and Spell. I totally didn’t expect that.

They looked good and sounded good. Martin Gore can’t hit the high notes anymore, that was obvious when he sang Somebody. He’s also got a bit of a double chin going on. He wore this weird mohawk hat when he first came out and we were so happy when he ditched it. We thought he was wearing it for fear of going bald, but he had more hair than the other two – and it was poofy! He also sounded a bit flat at times. I dunno. Dave Gahan was really energetic which was nice to see. He danced and strutted all over the place. He had a bit of a David Bowie thing going on with his poses and gyrations. The women in the audience were still going nuts over him, I attribute some of the ringing in my ears last night to the fact that he took his shirt off and grabbed his crotch. His tattoos were pretty badass though. His voice is still really strong, but the old Speak and Spell stuff was really weird because his voice has evolved so much.

He seemed really excited when the audience could sing entire refrains and choruses.

There were some really cool screens (like most modern concerts) behind the stage, but they were kind of lopsided and crooked which made for a really cool effect. The six of them were most often showing different images in each, but occasionally would tile together and you got some interesting effects from them being uneven. They used a lot of light and color too to make it really stylized and interesting.

Really, I’m glad I went. We really enjoyed ourselves and are glad we fell into the tickets. Heather said she forgets how much she enjoys concerts. I have to agree. I don’t enjoy them as much as I used to, but I still really enjoy them. I used to be in that group that rushed the stage and did all the crazy shit right up front, but that just isn’t me anymore (not that the concert last night was that kind of concert anyway). Thanks Daryl, wherever you are. Your loss was really our gain!

Boom Boom Satellites – Missing Note – Out Loud

Tags: music

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