Depeche Mode in Lille, May 29 or "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues"

After my the Bratislava concert I had a break of a good week before The concert two day ago in Lille.
In this week I worked a lot, spent time with my kids, weeded in my garden, went to the gym. No time to breathe deeply. A few friends sent me reports for the concerts I missed, so I worked here for my blog.
It's self-made stress, I know, but Sunday evening I had so much things to do, so I fall in bed after midnight. I have two children, boys, 17 and 18 and when I'm not at home I cook for them, so they are provided, when I'm not at home, that's very important for me.

The alarm-clock rang at 6o'clock in the morning. After a shower, I grabbed all my things ( technical devices, food for the office, food for the travel, clothes for changing....).It was a very hard office day unit 2 O'clock p.m. I worked near to the central station and I picked up my friend Thomas. He came from Frankfurt to drive with me and to other friends by car to Lille.
After a nice vegan burger meal, we met the two others and started the travel to Lille. It was a very warm sunny day and the car of my friend Manuel was an older one and it became so hot in the car, wow, a little bit cruel.

We arrived in time at Lille. We didn't see anything of the town, because the Stade Pierre Mauroy is not in the city centre, but in an industrial area.
I came 2013 to Lille to see the Depeche Mode concert of the "Delta Machine" tour, but the show was cancelled because the heating system of the new stadium failed... to I spent a lonely day and night in Lille before I went by train to London.

The stade looks very modern, a few games of the European Championchip was played here last summer. The roof was closed, because the weather forecast announced rain.

We came fast in the arena despite the controls at the entrance. Many police with machine guns. That's Europe now.

Depeche Mode booked not the whole stadium, only in one half. All was well organized, but no wonder, it's a new modern football arena. So with a large beer we entered the standing area. No front of the stage area, but I like it more when there's no special area for people with more money. We found a good place at the left side with a good view to the stage.We missed the supporting bands....
" Revolution" of the Beatles and the show started at 9 o'clock p.m. and Depeche Mode came on stage with the snippet of their own "Revolution"song.

Setlist as normal including the change between "Question of lust" and " Home".
From the first moment there was a very good mood.The french people ( and many belgian fans) waited for Depeche Mode a long time, first show in France in Lille, and the welcomed the band with a huge applause.

The first two songs worked very well, everybody wanted to hear songs of the new album. Dave came down at the left side of his podium and pulled his red jacket after the first song. It was so sultry in the arena, instead I changed my t-shirt, I was sweaty and Dave even more.
He was wearing red shoes and I had to think of the line from the song of Bowie : Put on your red shoes and dance the blues, let's dance". So he danced and posed in his red shoes, I was very surprised.
At this evening I have finally arrived. France was always a good place to see Depeche Mode and they gave Dave and me a great welcome, so we felt very embraced. Sounds strange, but  I try to speak about my feelings of this evening.

" Barrel of a gun", well sang by Dave. I like the end with this lines of Grand Master Flesh and the furious Five of the " Message": "Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge". And maybe there is a small message inside of Dave for us. Many people think he is a little bit arrogant, but I think most of time it is a wall because he is a fragile man, he try to protect himself from the many demands of the fans.

"Pain that I used to", I like this fast version and many fans started to dance. We had a group of young ( they was maybe in the middle twenties) belgian fans in front of us, and they danced very wild together. They looked so happy and this made me happy.

" Corrupt" is not my favorite song, but I listened to the sing and enjoyed the singing of the man in the red shoes.
" In your room" and " World to my eyes" are great hits and the french fans started to have a big party.
First time on the tour I had goosebumps.
" Cover me" is one of the best songs for me on the  new album and live and Dave walk on the catwalk the fans hang on his lips as he sang: the air is so cold here, to cold to see....!"
On the contrary... the air is so hot here, to hot to see....

Ok, then came Martin's part and please understand, I was so thirsty... I went out to buy a beer, but everything was closed. You couldn't buy anything, a lot of people collapsed because the sultry weather and the temperature inside the arena. It was unbelievable.
I met an dutch friend and he said, this would never happen on a concert at the Netherlands. Yes, I know, I was in Amsterdam, best catering of all times.
So I walked in at " Home"! Martin and the french and belgian fans celebrate this great song and I'm finally home. Home is where Depeche Mode is and now it's my home again. Dave introduced Martin and Peter Gordeno and Christian Eigner and Andrew " Fletch" Fletcher. I liked this, because please don't forget, they are a band !!!

Without beer but happy yet we started the second half of the concert with Dave. His great ballad " Poison heart", then "Revolution". Made many pictures of the screening, This is the best screening of the tour of Anton Corbijn.

"Wrong", very powerful and then " Everything counts" with a kind of "Kraftwerk" intro. The mood reached the highest level, good old times.

With " Stripped" in an touching version we cooled down a little bit before " Enjoy the silence ann Never let me down" brought the pot to cook-over. We danced, sang, waved our arms like small fishes in a big swarm. Not the black swarm, we are in France, but the Devotee swarm.

Now the short break. Look at this wonderful atmosphere with all this handy lights to welcome Martin Lee Gore back on stage:

"Somebody" with Mr. L Gore, I love the lines of the songs so much and thought on passed times.
Dave walked back in his shoes, his red shoes and sang " Try walking in my shoes". That fits!!
Now " Heroes", the homage to Mr. David Bowie, chameleon of the pop history, and the audience celebrate this song very well and so I could give this interpretation a chance the first time. Dave sang it very well, I didn't like the kind how Martin and Peter intone the song, sounds like U2. But here in Lille the song worked!!!

" I feel you", one of my highlights of this tour, what a powerful version. Now we climbed the last part of the mountain. Mr. Gahan did his best like always at " I feel you". Think that this song is one of his favorite live songs. Last but not least " Personal Jesus". Couldn't take pictures anymore, I danced, sang, screamed with all the other raging fans. Met my " Personal Jesus2 again in Lille.
Thank you, Lille for this great concert.


We ran outside very quickly because we need something to drink and we bought a tall "Leffe".
Back to our car and fast on the highway back to Cologne. Happy, but sweat!

So, I'm so excited to go to London on Friday and see the concert on Saturday!
I will have another fan takeover there.

Depeche Mode in Leipzig, May 27 or fan takeover by Arkadi

I'm very proud to post here the report of my friend and longtime travel mate Arkadi.

He wrote an exciting, detailed report opt the Leipzig concert of Depeche Mode, yesterday. I 'm now really sad to missed the concert, but you cannot have everything! Excuse me for complaining at a high level, I already know how good I have it and am grateful for it!

I saw Arkadi  very often on the tour 2006. But I spoke the first time with him in Copenhagen . I looked for a common friend and asked him, if he had seen him. Already 2006 we started travel together and until today I'm sure I've seen the most concerts together with him.

We have a very long tour together before us, together with his girlfriend we will also go together to Latin and South America. 

So, enjoy it! 

Leipzig Festwiese 27 May 2017

Hi, here is Arkadi, and with a great pleasure I will take over Claudia's DM blog for the show at the Festwiese in Leipzig on 27 May 2017, the first of 9 gigs in Germany scheduled for the first leg of the Global Spirit tour.

The capacity of the sold-out Festwiese is 70.000, the biggest crowd so far on the tour. When we stopped at the tram station at about 7pm, the view of a sheer endless number of people at the entrance was overwhelming. The weather was great, so appeared the mood of the crowd. We quickly checked the merchandising stand before moving to the queue for the entrance.

A couple of weeks ahead, the organisers of the German gigs distributed information, that there will be quite restrictive security checks at the entrance, e.g. only small bags were allowed to take with. Those warnings sounded even tougher in the light of the recent extremely sad event in Manchester. Surprisingly it took no longer than 10-15 min to pass the security checks to the Festwiese - maybe because most people didn't bring any bags at all and no jackets were necessary at +25°C - the job of the security guys was quite easy. And so we entered the concert area.

 The crowd inside was even more stunning. I took us quite a while to figure out our way to the FOS 1 area, across numerous queues for food, beer and toilets. We arrived in FOS 1 when the second support act, The Horrors, were half-way through with their set. We were positively surprised still being able to get a decent place on the right-hand side of the cat walk, quite close to the stage. The FOS 1 area was significantly smaller than those FOS areas in Nice and Bratislava, the both shows we went to before Leipzig. We didn't pay much attention to The Horrors, as seemingly most people around us. Instead, we organized ourselves some beers, chatting and observing people next to us. Everyone in FOS 1 was given a blue Livenation bracelet to re-enter the area when going to the food stalls or toilets.

At 19:43, "Revolution" by The Beatles signalised the beginning of the DM show. The band entered the stage for "Going Backwards", with Dave wearing a glittering red jacket.

The standard sequence of the songs followed. I noticed that Martin and Peter extended the outro of "In You Room" by playing keyboards after the song playback actually stopped. A detail like this appears to be minor and will not be recognised by the most concert goers. However, it documents the slow but steady evolvement of the live performance on a tour like this. A dozen gigs later songs may sound noticeably different than before.

On "Cover Me" Dave for the first time entered the cat walk, which he repeated later on a couple of occasions, quite exciting for us staying right beside.

Starting from the Budapest gig, they changed the sequence of the two songs sung by Martin, with "Home" now following on "A Question of Lust". I'm actually wondering why it took them 7 shows to come to this obvious conclusion. After "Home" the crowd keeps singing the melody of the song, conducted by Martin and, later, Dave re-entering the stage. And Dave played with it quite extensively in Leipzig. He seemed to be so excited, that he not only introduced Martin and Peter, as he regularly does at this moment of the show, but also mentioned Christian and Andrew Fletch Fletcher (!).

As already mentioned in this blog, the big screen in the background of the stage actually consists of two parts, the main upper and the lower stipe, with a walk path between them. Dave walks up there a couple of times during the show, e.g. for "Where's The Revolution". I think he can do it more frequently, spontaneously (but you and me know, Dave and spontaneity is quite a contradiction).

Before the show, there was a loudspeaker announcement that there will be fireworks near Festwiese, at the site opposite to the stage, however related to a different event in the area, not to the DM concert. Obviously, they made the announcement to avoid people possibly starting to panic when hearing explosions. However, when the fireworks started during "Wrong", Dave seemed the one most impressed. Though he didn't lose a word on the fireworks, he suddenly started waiving hands, the action actually exclusively reserved for "Never Let Me Down Again". The fireworks continued through "Everything Counts", with Dave on the cat walk facing the lighting panorama.

On "Never Let Me Down Again", after starting the hand waves for the second time this evening, Dave once again entered the cat walk, now armed with an impressive gun, he shoot t-shirts in the air.

After the standard encore set, the memorable and, for us, the best so far of the current tour, Leipzig show ended. The band quickly disappeared as did we, to avoid the crowds and traffic jams when leaving the Festwiese area. Four and a half hours later we safely arrived in Cologne, from where we will start our trip to the next show in Lille.

Have I promised too much? Wonderfully written. Thank you so much, Arkadi!

Happy to go tomorrow to Lille, too. Please stay tuned and join me for a whole day.

Yesterday in Leipzig my Facebook friend Daniela made pictures in the photographer pit. Watch her genius pictures here:
www.black-cat-net.de/galerie/musiklive/konzerte/2633-live-depeche-mode-leipzig-27-05-2017

Thank you, Daniela!!!!

Depeche Mode in Prague May 24,17 or fan takeover by Mirko

It would be so great to see every concert of a tour, but that will remain a dream and so I wasn't at the concert in Prague.
Fan takeover this time by my friend Mirko.
I met Mirko the first time 2001, as I looked for a travel mate via the fan base depechemode.de, because nobody of my friends want to go with me to Los Angeles. I didn't want to go alone, because in Los Angeles you need a car and I'm not the best driver because I didn't have a car in my normal life. Mirko wrote me an email, that he want to go to L.A as well and sent me has phone number. I dialed the number and thought :" strange, I dialed this area code so often in my life before..." and when he answered, my first question was : " Do you live in Burgdorf ? Yes, " he said, " but how could you know this? I didn't give you my address!" " I was born in this small town and lived there until age 5 and called so many times my grandma, which lived there until her death!", I answered.
Wow, and so we made this week together in L.A with 2 concerts in L.A and 2 concerts in Anaheim and spent such a wonderful time together, drank a lot of beer, drove through California.
We got friends and some day I visited him at home and this visit was full of memories on my childhood for me. "So I thank you, for bringing me here, for showing me home!"

 He now wrote this fan takeover and he travelled with Lars and Sven, which are friends of mine, too.
Great guys from my home!!!
So, enjoy!

Mirko and I, Bratislava 2013 ( picture by Lars).

Mirko: 

Shortly after the departure from the "Hostel" place Krumau, we made a small stop in MIRKOVICE, here I had to stop absolutely.

 

So on to Prague, we stayed in the stadium "Eden Arena", where there are rooms with a view to the stadium, means one part of the stadium is a hotel.

The weather was wonderful, great to drink many tasty beers in the sun. For this reason, we have missed both supporting acts.

Some songs of The Raveonettes I liked, only the sound was very shrill.

But the sound get much better with Depeche Mode.

Many friends like Celine, Mani, Andre, Peter and Jiri, who have "accompanied" us on the last tour, we were able to see again, later we saw Jiri's Dave Gahan scarf  several times at the catwalk. 

Sven, Mirko and Lars, my lovely friends from Burgdorf, near Hannover.

Already at 19:45 pm the concert began, exactly to the point they come to the stage on the ever-same side. Once we clapped each other and already it went off

The atmosphere around us was not as good as we thought. The people tried to make many and good photos in the FOS area, later they learned from us how to celebrate!!

Seven beers later, the concert was to fast finished, the band was in a super mood. At "Everything counts" Dave came on the catwalk and asked the audience to continue singing. I have not noticed this yet. At "Never let me down" Dave shot t-shirts again in to the audience with his T-shirt gun. I do not know what to write more, because every song touched me. Goosebumps because the many new versions they played on this tour. We are just for Father's Day in Pilsen and look forward to Leipzig, where our women will celebrate with us the next Depeche Mode concert.

Thank you for this short but crispy report! I like it and very good pictures.

So enjoy another few pictures by my Facebook friend Stephan:

#globalspirittour #depechemode #devotees