Donnerstag, 20. Juli 2017

Depeche Mode in Moscow, July 15 or 2nd takeover by Arkadi

And here it comes, the 2nd takeover by Arkadi. I'm very happy that he wrote the Moscow Blog, because he is from Russia and so he took the chance to see Depeche Mode in Moscow.
I wanted to go to Moscow, too but you need a visa and it is not easy to travel there because of the language and the Cyrillic script.
That is why I decided against it. So what a pleasure of me to read Arkadi's report:

Moscow, Otkritie Arena 15 July 2017
Hi, here is Arkadi, and, after Leipzig 27 May 2017, it's a great pleasure for me to take over Claudia's blog for the second time. The show of Moscow was the second scheduled in Russia for the "Global Spirit Tour", after Saint Petersburg two days ago. By now we know that there will be one more gig in Moscow during the winter leg, on 25 February 2018, while Saint Petersburg apparently came away empty-handed for the winter (Frankly no big regrets about it. I second the opinion of Thomas and Nancy, if you check their contribution on this blog, describing the quality of the audience in Saint Petersburg. Though the city itself is definitely worth a visit).


Otkritie Arena is a new football stadium build for the world cup 2018. It already hosted a couple of matches of the recent Confed Cup, and is the new home grounds of the Football Club "Spartak", a team extremely popular in Russia and the current champion of the Russian Premier League. Spartak's colours are red-white, and so the colours of the arena.








"Otkritie" means "discovery" and is the name of a Russian bank, which bought the name rights for the stadium. The bank seems to be quite involved with football, as it has Cristiano Ronaldo making advertisements for them on the Russian TV.






When I entered the arena, after buying some merchandise, which was significantly (~30%) cheaper in Russia than in Western Europe, the warm up act was already on the stage. It's not a band which supports Depeche Mode at the last concerts of the first tour leg, but a female DJ Maya Jane Coles. She played some electronic stuff while the screens left and right (but not the main screen) showed animated cartoons featuring weird plants and fabulous creatures.

It rained a bit before the show, so I enjoyed the support act standing at the very edge of the pit still covered by the stadium roof. Fortunately, the rain stopped before the main act. Quite disappointing was the discovery that there are no any beverages sold in the stadium except for water! No vodka, no beer, even no coke or so. It doesn't come as a surprise that the Russians do their own "warming up" before the concert, quite many of them were drunken when entering the stadium.





The band entered the stage at 20:35 and played the standard set list. I hoped that they would consider both shows in Russia as connected and expected something different be played by Martin than in Saint Petersburg, but no luck. ( normal setlist with " Question of lust" and " Somebody" ).
Here are some impressions from the show.







One "speciality" of the concerts in Russia is the audience extensively using LED lights of their mobile devices for creating a very intimate atmosphere in the arena. Of course the songs of Martin were accompanied by those illuminations, but also some slower songs sung by Dave. Dave seemed to be quite moved by it when he entered the catwalk during "Cover me".




A couple of anecdotes from the show. During one of the songs, the live camera captured a girl in the front row, who was holding a piece of paper with the following message to the band: "My parents met at your concert. Now I'm 15 years old". So sweet! It must have happened during the Exciter tour :)


At the very end of the show, after saying goodbye, Dave recognised a girl in the front of the stage begging for a drum stick. He went back to Christian, took one of the sticks and threw it into the crowd. Apparently the stick didn't quite hit the target first, so Dave bowed towards the crowd shouting to them and pointing with his finger to the girl. He finally made sure that the drum stick would go to the right person. Haha! I found a picture of this girl's poster on the internet.






Well that was my last show of this tour leg. Claudia is fortunate to go to one more in Cluj. I already can't wait for the end of September to see the next one.


Thank you, Arkadi. 
The both two little stories are so sweet. That's one of the reason I like to go to many concerts of a Depeche Mode tour. 
In most cases Depeche Mode does not change the setlist and yes, I think they follow a kind of show that choreographed them for themselves or Dave did. But these small stories are so fantastic, they constitute the special atmosphere of a town or a country. You will always remember these stories. You do not know yet when you will think of them again or in what situations, but you will.
In our Depeche Mode friend group, we often tell these little stories when we meet after a tour.
Arkadi says more often "Claudia, I know this story already" and I then answer "yes, that is true, but another person from our group not and the story is worth being told!"

And like Arkadi I will go next year in February to Moscow to see Depeche Mode for their second concert in Moscow on this tour.

Tomorrow I will fly to Cluj with my younger son and Sunday we have the luck to see Depeche Mode on their last summer gig of the Global Spirit tour. 








1 Kommentar:

  1. Thank you for your feedback! Happy to come next year to Moscow by myself again!

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