Depeche Mode started their European Tour in Berlin

It was almost half past eight in the evening last Friday, and it seemed, like that it would be a bitter evening for Berlin. Their football club Hertha BSC has played well so far in the Olympia stadion, but though their rival Eintracht Frankfurt had already shot a goal. A few hundred meters away at the Waldstadion it didn`t look much better. For more than 45 min. more than 20.000 people got bored with an English Drum&Bass-Band. But then it was half past eight, the light was switched off, the support act disappeared - and everything went great!
When the light was switched on again, they came onto the stage, and they knew, that there was no need to introduce themselves to anyone - Andrew Fletcher, keyboarder; Martin Gore, componist all of their great hits; Dave Gahan, singer and sexgod. It started with their classic "A question of time", the 20.000 people started to scream, Depeche Mode was in the city! And they came in order to remind them and their fans the time, which you had been through together. 18 long years have already past since a few boys from the British city Basildon found each other in order to found the music group "composition of sound" and to make music with keyboards and drum machimes. But first when they found their singer in Dave Gahan and named their group Depeche Mode from a French magazine, they started to be on the right track. There`s a lot to say about the interim financial statement 1998: to say it in numbers for example more than 50 million sold albums. But their influence is bigger. They were the first who understood to do the "life game" with electronic music perfectly. They bet on the pure fun with dancing, when nobody wanted to hear anything from it. And for more than half a generation they were their youth band. At a time, when there were still some rockers, once called "heavies" - and then of course their enemies, the Depeche Mode-fans, called "the popper". They wore 501 Levis jeans as well, black motor-cycleboots and white t-shirts. There was the flag from the United States on their jeans jackets, their favourite film was called Quadrophenia, and they drove tuned Vespa-rollers. These were the 80s, and Depeche Mode delivered the soundtrack to it.
And now in Berlin? They started their German tour here, which leads them to all big cities until mid October with their tour called "the singles 86>98". And of course a CD with the same title will be released these days. This tour is a kind of saying thank you to the fans, as a kind of reparation for all the care and frightness which they had to go through the last years when it was about the future of their band - and about (their idol) Dave Gahan`s life. He was in Los Angeles, took a load of heroin, once got divorced and married again, and did a lot of other unreasonable things. One time it was really serious: But thanks God Dave survived his suicide try. And also Alan Wilder left the band with bad argues; it seemed, that the band was history.
So no easy times for the fans, but now they are honoured here in Berlin and they see a stage, which comes along like a gift, as if it wanted to say: Please forgive us all the stupidities, here we are again!! Good evening, Berlin, are you ready??, like Dave Gahan asked one time. Purple curtains, a kind of huge box with video screens in the middle, on the left and right side each two huge letters with lighter chains. On the left a "D" and an "M" on the right side. Especially the light: Never before has it been used so perfectly at an open-air gig. Never to show-off, never too much, but always suitable, and especially when the strong beats of their faster songs came out of the loundspeakers, the light effects ruled the show too.
Not any other band managed it to write so many hits in almost two centures that they can`t play them all at one concert, but of course you can hear "everything counts" as their last addition (wrong!!!), and before that "just can`t get enough", "stripped", "walking in my shoes", "personal jesus", "a question of lust" and, and, and. At the end, after 1 hour and three quarters, you find out, that you don`t have to be a fanatic DM-fan, you know each of their songs though! At their live gigs DM especially "live" from their frontman. Dave Gahan wears a shirt and narrow leather trousers, and as he seems to be flying over the stage - he´s not running, he trips-, as he turns around and shows his pelvic bounds in the keyboarder`s direction, then he does something, which his idols Kraftwerk explained in one of their biggest hits: computer love. Here the tension excists of the mixture: The machines are standing in the back (even the drummer doesn`t seem to be human), and in front the pure rock'n' roll is "jumping". Dave Gahan catches the microphone stand and whirls around, and sometimes he dances himself into the groove of the band, that he bends like a curve. This mixture has even taken place on the last albums of Depeche Mode. The guitare, played by Martin, is nowadays part of the instruments repoirtoire of the band. Only on their latest album Ultra they cared about music to dance to again and they chose Tim Simenon as their producer, a former DJ who had a music band in the late 80s called Bomb the Bass. He was on of the first musicians who recorded albums only with samplers.
The influence of DM on the development of the dance music, the main pop music from the former 20 years, was mentioned very lately (nowadays). And it`s probably more on ideal one. The band wasn`t sampled very often, but musicians and djs like Air, Tricky, Todd Terry or Derrick May often name Depeche Mode as their favourite music group.
It`s the attitude, which they like: Show/Learn the computers how to dance. And at the latest with their legendary American tour which lead them through the football vanues of the country and with a gig in Pasadena with more than 75.000 enthusiastic fans it`s sure, that depeche Mode perform perfect synth music. The Waldbühne, which is sold out, is also a perfect place for it: The crowd lifts up their arms, move them synchronicly and melt into one another at this occation. And when the light is switched off and the lighters are on during the balads, and you look from the platform above the stage into heaven, then you can see some aeroplanes blinking in their approach, and at these moments nobody can be sure, if even there above aren`t some DM fans who have some lighters in their hands.
It was a quarter past ten at this Friday evening, when Depeche Mode disappeared into the darkness of the night, however it was a great evening for Berlin. Because a few hundred meters away their football club won the game 3:1.