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Just downloaded via BitTorrent: Depeche Mode live at the Hammersmith Odeon, October 25 1982. It seems to be a rip of a very ancient VHS recording from Danish TV. It is professionally filmed and may have been of good quality once in a grey and distant past; unfortunately, time and probably several generations of copies have not been very kind to it, but at least it still has colour and the sound quality is listenable (but then again, my criteria for what is "listenable" may be a bit more generous than those of the man in the street). The performance itself is from another era: no Dave Gahan the Sex God, but 20-year-old Dave who is in a merry little pop band together with his rather ill-clad mates, no sheet metal, no black leather on any one of them (apart from maybe their shoes, which I can't see very clearly on account of the bad picture and the angles chosen), no Corbijn film projections, no guitar from Martin, no live drums, but a tape recorder in mid-stage... Still, it's not at all bad, and this concert has in fact been released on record on the B-sides of several limited edition 12" singles.
What makes this hilarious and slightly painful to watch is that everything — yes, even the songs — is subtitled in Danish. While this gives acceptable results for the songs from A Broken Frame where there was a lyric sheet, the Speak & Spell songs, often rather nonsensical in their own right, become slightly surreal in their Danish interpretation by ear. "Drenge møder drenge og er sammen / Drenge møder drenge, fryd og gammen / Lad være at sige nej / Drenge siger: nu!"
I for one would love to see this show released on DVD — with good image quality and no subtitles. Even if it's not the least bit representative of where Depeche Mode is today, and even if there is no overlap between their 1982 and 2005 live sets (except, maybe, "Just Can't Get Enough", which I understand they've been playing on their US gigs over the past weeks), this is a historical document that should be available to the public. And of course, a complete The Videos 81>85 (instead of the very thin selection on Some Great Videos) and a DVD re-release of The World We Live In And Live In Hamburg wouldn't be too bad either.
What makes this hilarious and slightly painful to watch is that everything — yes, even the songs — is subtitled in Danish. While this gives acceptable results for the songs from A Broken Frame where there was a lyric sheet, the Speak & Spell songs, often rather nonsensical in their own right, become slightly surreal in their Danish interpretation by ear. "Drenge møder drenge og er sammen / Drenge møder drenge, fryd og gammen / Lad være at sige nej / Drenge siger: nu!"
I for one would love to see this show released on DVD — with good image quality and no subtitles. Even if it's not the least bit representative of where Depeche Mode is today, and even if there is no overlap between their 1982 and 2005 live sets (except, maybe, "Just Can't Get Enough", which I understand they've been playing on their US gigs over the past weeks), this is a historical document that should be available to the public. And of course, a complete The Videos 81>85 (instead of the very thin selection on Some Great Videos) and a DVD re-release of The World We Live In And Live In Hamburg wouldn't be too bad either.
amused