Depeche Mode!

Depeche Mode still has it.

Last night, I saw them play for the first time in my life. That might seem odd, considering I’ve been a fan of their music at least since the late 80s. Alley, on the other hand, has seen them at least 15 times over the years.

First, I thoroughly enjoyed the show—plenty more on that below—but I also thought about you a little bit, and how much I wanted to share a couple of observations with you, and also a Generation X-specific joke.

Here is a rare selfie with both of us (is it a selfie if there are two of us? Groufie? Wefie? Let me know if that’s a linguistic rabbit hole you’d like to go down), so that you can see Alley’s sweet tat, bro:

As an unrelated side note, I don’t advise getting a tattoo when you’re a young teenager.

Anyway, in case you’re curious about whether a bunch of sixty-somethings can still rock out with an amazing show, let me answer that question for you by way of a few videos. But first, here’s the Gen X joke I wanted to tell you (you have to play these back to back, and you have to have grown up watching MTV during the late 80s and early 90s):

The first clip is from the show last night. Hoe Lee Crap.

The second clip is from our generation’s Aristotle, Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead, a show very representative of the time in which Depeche Mode first began to pervade my own listening habits. Naturally, I was drawn to the show’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 parody vibes.

We were pretty close to the band while they were performing, especially considering the size of the venue, but the display the band had taken the time to set up helped everyone there feel a lot closer. Here’s a pic of Dave Gahan up close from one of the big screens:

Here’s a clip of Enjoy the Silence, a huge radio hit from 1990’s Violator:

Nearly everyone who has heard of DM knows this song, Personal Jesus. This was their closer:

The visual elements were impressive. Here are a couple of different ways the big display behind them looked during the show:

This show was amazing. I’m still in the habit of calling them “shows” because most of the bands I saw live played at smaller venues with hundreds, not tens of thousands of fans. This was a full-fledged arena concert, though.

As we were ping-pong-balling our way into the venue from the outside, lost in a swarm of humans, it became clear that it had been a very long time since I had been in a venue like this.

Once we were seated and the lights were down, I noticed an interesting effect during a strobe-light moment, and I realized that I could conduct a brief scientific experiment in the vein of Al-Kindi or Vera Rubin. My Crocs usually look like this:

However, inside the venue, they looked like this:

Physics-oriented folks among us, let’s talk about this in the comments.

Music has long been an important part of my life, and ever since childhood, I’ve been in the habit of having music on any time I’m doing work with my mind or body. If I’m writing or reading, I’m definitely listening.

Depeche Mode has been with me through much of this journey, and I’m glad I got to see them play live.

If you enjoy hearing what I think about music, or just enjoy stories about music, I should have something fun for you in the very near future—a collaboration with

Kevin Alexander

, who has a deep knowledge of music history, whereas I really just know what I enjoy. In spite of listening to 8+ hours of music nearly every day for the last 40 years, I’m only an expert in knowing what I love.

Here’s a link to a story I recently wrote about my interview with the Misfits:

Thanks for indulging me today! Let me know if you’re a fan of DM in the comments, and feel free to tell me what some of your favorite live band experiences have been!