Bong 10 (July 1990)
Articles:
I Survived The Depeche Mode Riot by Angel Perlas
A Few Facts On Being An Aussie DM Fan by Gavin Dwyer
Depeche Mode Live: A Spectacular Show, A Technical Nightmare by Jonathan Roberts
Pictures:
page 1 page 2 At the Wherehouse instore, March 20th 1990
page 3 Martin in his angel costume
page 4 Fletch at the Policy Of Truth video shoot
page 5 page 6 page 7 the band members live, off duty, and at the Personal Jesus video shoot
Articles:
I Survived The Depeche Mode Riot by Angel Perlas
A Few Facts On Being An Aussie DM Fan by Gavin Dwyer
Depeche Mode Live: A Spectacular Show, A Technical Nightmare by Jonathan Roberts
Pictures:
page 1 page 2 At the Wherehouse instore, March 20th 1990
page 3 Martin in his angel costume
page 4 Fletch at the Policy Of Truth video shoot
page 5 page 6 page 7 the band members live, off duty, and at the Personal Jesus video shoot
Attachments
I SURVIVED THE DEPECHE MODE RIOT
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Angel Perlas.]
When K-ROQ (L.A.) started announcing that anyone can meet Depeche Mode at the Wherehouse, I got excited. March 20th finally arrived. People camped out the night before and even the night before that! On La Cienega the anticipation was just building up. The line extended about 15 blocks. No-one minded the hot sun because it was a big DM family. We were all blasting our radios and singing along to different DM tunes. By the time DM arrived a little before 9pm, in their grey limo, there were around 17,000 devoted fans chanting ‘Depeche Mode’. Some of the fans were getting too wild and started pushing, in the hope that they’d get to meet their favourite group. There were some minor injuries and people fainting, including myself, due to lack of air. My DM brothers and sisters helped me by taking their albums and fanning me. After only one hour of signing, Depeche Mode were asked to leave by the local police, so no-one else would get hurt. Even though it was a painful experience for most of us, we all had fun. Depeche Mode we love you!!!
As a post-script to the Wherehouse Records story, a special tape was put together by Depeche Mode, Wherehouse Records and K-ROQ, and copies have been issued to those fans who were at the store and were turned away due to the sheer enormity of the crowd. [1] The tape is made up of various interviews with DM in the store, general apologies from the band, a special interview between Fletch and K-ROQ’s Richard Blade and the ‘Metalmix’ of ‘Something To Do’. This tape is completely unavailable anywhere else, so no amount of letters to the fanclub or Mute Records will procure one! This is completely a one-off to try and make it up in a small way to those people who were disappointed on the night.
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Angel Perlas.]
When K-ROQ (L.A.) started announcing that anyone can meet Depeche Mode at the Wherehouse, I got excited. March 20th finally arrived. People camped out the night before and even the night before that! On La Cienega the anticipation was just building up. The line extended about 15 blocks. No-one minded the hot sun because it was a big DM family. We were all blasting our radios and singing along to different DM tunes. By the time DM arrived a little before 9pm, in their grey limo, there were around 17,000 devoted fans chanting ‘Depeche Mode’. Some of the fans were getting too wild and started pushing, in the hope that they’d get to meet their favourite group. There were some minor injuries and people fainting, including myself, due to lack of air. My DM brothers and sisters helped me by taking their albums and fanning me. After only one hour of signing, Depeche Mode were asked to leave by the local police, so no-one else would get hurt. Even though it was a painful experience for most of us, we all had fun. Depeche Mode we love you!!!
As a post-script to the Wherehouse Records story, a special tape was put together by Depeche Mode, Wherehouse Records and K-ROQ, and copies have been issued to those fans who were at the store and were turned away due to the sheer enormity of the crowd. [1] The tape is made up of various interviews with DM in the store, general apologies from the band, a special interview between Fletch and K-ROQ’s Richard Blade and the ‘Metalmix’ of ‘Something To Do’. This tape is completely unavailable anywhere else, so no amount of letters to the fanclub or Mute Records will procure one! This is completely a one-off to try and make it up in a small way to those people who were disappointed on the night.
A FEW FACTS ON BEING AN AUSSIE DM FAN
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Gavin Dwyer.]
I thought it was about time a little news was spread about the DM happenings in Australia.
Sydney nightclub The Site held another Depeche night, this time to launch the LP ‘Violator’. There were about 150-200 happy party-goers to dance the night away into the early hours. I spent about four hours there and enjoyed myself immensely! There was an English Depeche fan there and I was able to catch up on the latest news. It made the evening even better.
As a matter of interest – our local FM Station (well, not so local anymore, it now broadcasts to 4 major cities in Australia) 2JJJ has been playing a fair bit of DM lately. Maybe there’s a bit of hope! I’m sure that after they’ve toured, DM’s popularity here will soar.
Unfortunately, being an Aussie Depeche Mode fan is like being a Leper. The fad here now is the glut of ‘Glamour Metal’ bands like Bon Jovi, Metallica etc, and the awful House / Acid fad that just won’t go away! Meanwhile we have to put up with a futile radio network / video shows that only seem happy playing teenybopper stuff like Kylie, Jason, New Kids et al. (No fun for ‘oldies’ like me – 24 – having been brought up on such gems as Joy Division, New Order, DM, Ultravox, The Eurhythmics and such stuff.)
So you can see that it’s quite frustrating being an Aussie fan. All you people in the UK, Europe and the USA, while you’re enjoying heaps of DM tours and releases etc, think of us poor Aussies who seem to get the tail end of everything.
Food for thought, eh?
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Gavin Dwyer.]
I thought it was about time a little news was spread about the DM happenings in Australia.
Sydney nightclub The Site held another Depeche night, this time to launch the LP ‘Violator’. There were about 150-200 happy party-goers to dance the night away into the early hours. I spent about four hours there and enjoyed myself immensely! There was an English Depeche fan there and I was able to catch up on the latest news. It made the evening even better.
As a matter of interest – our local FM Station (well, not so local anymore, it now broadcasts to 4 major cities in Australia) 2JJJ has been playing a fair bit of DM lately. Maybe there’s a bit of hope! I’m sure that after they’ve toured, DM’s popularity here will soar.
Unfortunately, being an Aussie Depeche Mode fan is like being a Leper. The fad here now is the glut of ‘Glamour Metal’ bands like Bon Jovi, Metallica etc, and the awful House / Acid fad that just won’t go away! Meanwhile we have to put up with a futile radio network / video shows that only seem happy playing teenybopper stuff like Kylie, Jason, New Kids et al. (No fun for ‘oldies’ like me – 24 – having been brought up on such gems as Joy Division, New Order, DM, Ultravox, The Eurhythmics and such stuff.)
So you can see that it’s quite frustrating being an Aussie fan. All you people in the UK, Europe and the USA, while you’re enjoying heaps of DM tours and releases etc, think of us poor Aussies who seem to get the tail end of everything.
Food for thought, eh?
DEPECHE MODE LIVE: A SPECTACULAR SHOW, A TECHNICAL NIGHTMARE
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Jonathan Roberts.]
When you go to see a Depeche Mode concert, what are you actually listening to? A singer, three keyboard players and a tape machine? True enough, but you are hearing the end product of months of hard work, which will have started long before the tour got underway.
The huge amount of equipment that the boys use to record their albums would be impossible to carry around the world on tour, so they rely largely on samplers. A sampler (in Depeche Mode’s case, an E-Max II Turbo) digitally records the sounds that the band want to use, and allows Alan, Mart and Fletch to play them back in a concert situation. If you’ve watched the ‘101’ video then you will have heard Alan describe how the sounds are spread across the sampler keyboard enabling him to play ‘Black Celebration’, and the same principles apply to the rest of the songs.
On the current WORLD VIOLATION tour, there are two keyboards in front of each member of the band, but only one of these should ever be in use. This is because the second instrument is there as a backup to the main one in case it should fail. The second device is actually controlled by the first to ensure that they both create the same sounds.
Mart and Fletch also play electronic percussion pads. The action of hitting a pad ‘triggers’ samples on an extra E-Max II, which is kept under the stage for convenience, and to avoid clutter. This arrangement allows the boys to give a more dramatic presentation of songs like ‘Everything Counts’ and ‘Master and Servant’ because they can hit out at the drum pads rather than stand behind a keyboard.
Alan plays percussion too. For this tour we have had a special pair of tom toms built, which have been modified to allow Alan to trigger the sounds on the dedicated percussion E-Max ii as well as to play the drums themselves. Alan’s main keyboard is programmed to select the sounds created by the percussion keyboard which you hear when he hits the drums.
The tape machines that have backed Depeche Mode since they started have undergone as many changes as their keyboard rigs. On the WORLD VIOLATION tour we are using two Tascam MR16’s and of course the obligatory computer. Two sixteen track tape recorders on tour? Well yes: again there is a main machine and a backup. When you’re playing a concert to over 50,000 people, you can’t stop the show just because a tape won’t play, so we run the two at the same time. The computer keeps both machines perfectly synchronised, so that if the main machine stops or breaks for any reason then it can swap automatically to the other and the show can continue without so much as a hiccup.
So as you can see, the Depeche Mode set-up is a vastly complicated network of interlinked musical computers used to recreate their songs in a live situation, perfectly every time. It takes several months beforehand to program everything up and make the machines communicate correctly, and two full-time technicians, of which I am one, and Daryl is the other, to look after the equipment on the road.
This is state of the art musical technology employed by a great band as the best way to bring their music live to their fans. That’s why the show sounds so good!
[From Bong 10, July 1990. Words: Jonathan Roberts.]
When you go to see a Depeche Mode concert, what are you actually listening to? A singer, three keyboard players and a tape machine? True enough, but you are hearing the end product of months of hard work, which will have started long before the tour got underway.
The huge amount of equipment that the boys use to record their albums would be impossible to carry around the world on tour, so they rely largely on samplers. A sampler (in Depeche Mode’s case, an E-Max II Turbo) digitally records the sounds that the band want to use, and allows Alan, Mart and Fletch to play them back in a concert situation. If you’ve watched the ‘101’ video then you will have heard Alan describe how the sounds are spread across the sampler keyboard enabling him to play ‘Black Celebration’, and the same principles apply to the rest of the songs.
On the current WORLD VIOLATION tour, there are two keyboards in front of each member of the band, but only one of these should ever be in use. This is because the second instrument is there as a backup to the main one in case it should fail. The second device is actually controlled by the first to ensure that they both create the same sounds.
Mart and Fletch also play electronic percussion pads. The action of hitting a pad ‘triggers’ samples on an extra E-Max II, which is kept under the stage for convenience, and to avoid clutter. This arrangement allows the boys to give a more dramatic presentation of songs like ‘Everything Counts’ and ‘Master and Servant’ because they can hit out at the drum pads rather than stand behind a keyboard.
Alan plays percussion too. For this tour we have had a special pair of tom toms built, which have been modified to allow Alan to trigger the sounds on the dedicated percussion E-Max ii as well as to play the drums themselves. Alan’s main keyboard is programmed to select the sounds created by the percussion keyboard which you hear when he hits the drums.
The tape machines that have backed Depeche Mode since they started have undergone as many changes as their keyboard rigs. On the WORLD VIOLATION tour we are using two Tascam MR16’s and of course the obligatory computer. Two sixteen track tape recorders on tour? Well yes: again there is a main machine and a backup. When you’re playing a concert to over 50,000 people, you can’t stop the show just because a tape won’t play, so we run the two at the same time. The computer keeps both machines perfectly synchronised, so that if the main machine stops or breaks for any reason then it can swap automatically to the other and the show can continue without so much as a hiccup.
So as you can see, the Depeche Mode set-up is a vastly complicated network of interlinked musical computers used to recreate their songs in a live situation, perfectly every time. It takes several months beforehand to program everything up and make the machines communicate correctly, and two full-time technicians, of which I am one, and Daryl is the other, to look after the equipment on the road.
This is state of the art musical technology employed by a great band as the best way to bring their music live to their fans. That’s why the show sounds so good!
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