Sonntag, 28. Mai 2017

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!!!!


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