Fast Fashion Statement

We're gonna reach out and touch faith, wrapping two postpunk birthdays around the weekend.

Firstly we have a formative, founding force behind one of our era's most very beloved bands.

He'd have been just 61 today, had he not passed away suddenly six weeks ago.

He began playing music in the mid 1970s as a bass player, and he was handling that instrument in the band he helped invent when they had the epiphany so many had back then, and decided to go all-synthesizer.

Transitioning his skills to the keyboard bass universe, his group exploded as the '70s became the '80s and the synthpop thing was suddenly everywhere.

You look up 40 something years later and Depeche Mode are still one of the most popular bands on Earth.

The go-to guy in the group for the business aspects, he piloted their career into the absolute stratosphere and is kind of their unsung, behind-the-scenes hero in many ways.

Anyway he is gone from us now and there's no telling whether the band will continue without him, so his passing is sort of the end of an era.

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of DM's first three records, in particular the third one from 1983, when they almost went political and ended up sounding like a more synth-y Gang of Four.

Today's share show is probably the finest document of that period in terms of live performances, shaped as it is into the best it can be by a concerned citizen a ways back.

Depeche Mode

Hammersmith Odeon

London, UK

10.8.1983

01 Everything Counts
02 Now, This Is Fun
03 Two Minute Warning
04 Shame
05 See You
06 Get the Balance Right!
07 Love, In Itself
08 Pipeline
09 The Landscape Is Changing
10 Photographic
11 Told You So
12 New Life
13 More Than a Party
14 The Meaning of Love
15 Just Can't Get Enough 

Total time: 1:09:14

Dave Gahan - vocals
Martin Gore - keyboards & vocals
Andrew Fletcher - keyboards & vocals
Alan Wilder - keyboards, vocals & percussion

discotraxxx composite of the original BBC preFM CD, with
Track 01 and bits of Tracks 03, 08, 14 & 15 patched with a master off-air FM cassette of the original broadcast
459 MB FLAC/July 2022 archive link

I should mention that any DM bootleg you could imagine, in every conceivable version and iteration, is available for download at an extraordinary site you can find right here.

If every band had a comprehensive accounting of their ROIO material as well-laid-out as that page, my job would become redundant... and I'd be thrilled because I'd spend a lot less tedium time repairing them.
Anyway a happy 61st b'day to the late, great Andy Fletcher from Depeche Mode, and I shall return on Monday with a real Kick In the Eye!--J.

7.8.1961 - 5.26.2022