The big day finally came.

I was tired, had finished school late (out of all days) and was drowned in work, but I decided I would nonetheless take a break from all the hustle and bustle for the duration of the concert.

Once on the premises, there was no mistaking the headliner: some die-hard fans had Depeche Mode tattoos on their faces while others had their logo as wallpaper on their smartphones. Even the person next to me had first seen them live in 1984 and was going to attend their second show in Paris in two days. To be honest, I felt a bit of a greenhorn amongst all these people — even more so as most of the audience was twice my age.

(Just a quick side note on the current logo of the band: it consists of three equilateral triangles, one pointing to the right and two pointing up, representing the initials of both the band and their latest album, Delta Machine. It reminds me of how my own initials are the same as my current favourite band, Animal Collective.)

I went to my seat fives minutes before the official start of the concert, but for some reason the opening act was already well under way. It didn’t really grab me, though, so I nonchalantly put in some earplugs to save my hearing for the main act. The band thanked us, wished us a good concert (at least that’s what I assumed; I wouldn’t know, really), and left the stage. A few moments later, the lights came back on and a voice informed us that we would be treated to a 30-minute-long intermission. As it turned out, it lasted 45 minutes, but it is a well-known fact that concert venues have their own way of measuring time. I kept my earplugs in as the four-on-the-floor background tune looped on. I knew that I would most definitely put my hearing to great use for the rest of my life, what with my budding passion for music and all, so I thought I might as well start to take care of it.

The concert was overall quite enjoyable, although I’m a bit disappointed that they only played five songs off their latest album and none from their second latest, considering they were my two favourites. Oh well, I guess the blame’s on me for missing their previous tour. Either way, the songs they did play from the album were quite memorable and probably made for most of my favourite songs of that concert.

In my opinion, some of their golden oldies, although reworked, didn’t sound that exciting live. However, I felt really nostalgic listening to Enjoy the Silence live because it was the background song of a Macintosh Pac-Man game I used to play about ten years ago. Looking back, I would never have thought that I would one day hear them play the song live, and this is also one of the reasons I missed their previous tour: going to their concerts had for some unknown reason always been out of the question for me.

The visuals were also memorable but I won’t expand on it in this article. To finish, Dave Gahan’s stage presence was top-notch as always, and listening to Martin Gore play some acoustic songs was delightful. Indeed, his voice had often been concealed by Dave Gahan’s on the recordings, except maybe in “Heaven” where it was allowed to reverberate longer.

Overall I spent a lovely evening. Two days later, as I was listening to their latest album on my headphones, I felt really strange realizing that they were playing those very songs live, at that very moment, and just a couple of metro stations away from where I was. I’ll be sure not to miss their next concert in Paris!

(For a $9-word account of that same concert, I will refer you to this other article I wrote: Depeche Mode grows graver and grander at Bercy, Paris (concert review) (also in French!))