It's easy to forget Depeche Mode was one of the bigger acts of the 80s. It's not like say, The Replacements love that occurs. You'd hear Depeche Mode on pop and rock stations. The only Replacements I ever heard on the mainstream rock stations was "Merry Go Round" and even the one only played it because they were trying to expand their Playlist at the time.
Both bands have value. I passed up Depeche Mode's 80s electronica because I wasn't in that headspace. But a buddy gave me a copy of DM's 1997 album Ultra; said I would like it. And I did.
The Replacements were one of those quasi-punk bands that could actually write songs and play their instruments. Don't Tell a Soul is a great album. There were other upper Midwest quasi-punks that fit that bill: Husker Du (I prefer Bob Mould's solo albums), Soul Asylum, ect.
One thing you can be sure of; no celebrity wannabe is ever going to brush-up their 'real regular person' image by saying "Yer...I was really into Phil Spector actually" But I would: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnWOBMQhNBQ
This archive really shows that the Rose Bowl Show was a one-off. The rest of their U.S. shows in the ‘88 tour and other U.S. tours throughout the 80s and 90s were Arena level events, even in LA area, tended to be at the Forum-type venues.
I went to their 88 show in DC and it was at Merriweather Post Pavilion: a really big venue (20k).
What I always find funny in retrospect is that when I was in high school Depeche Mode was coded as kind of underground, a band for kids who were nerds at school but aspirant cool sophisticates in their own minds. There was no internet, so the idea that hundreds of thousands of kids across America were in your exact market demographic making it in fact LARGE and mainstream and not tiny and insidery, was something you would have a hard time realizing as a teen. Plus you would not be motivated to think about it, thinking instead about how you were unique and sophisticated unlike your peers listening to Guns N Roses or Rick Astley or Whitney Houston. by "you" I mean "17 year old me" ha ha
This might explain part of its appeal to Asian American kids at the time? I think the instant categorization of Asian kids as "nerds" was applied unselfconsciously in the 1980s by peers and teachers. "actually I am secretly very cool, I listen to a British New Wave band that's not for the likes of you" was an antidote. In retrospect, probably actively marketed that way.
As I would discover from hanging out with LA-native friends of mine when I lived there for a few years in the late 80s / early 90s, the KROQ band they had really cared about in high school that nobody outside LA ever cared about at all was Oingo Boingo.
> "The songwriter is supposedly half-black but he didn't know that until he was 30."
If so, his father can't have been very black since Martin Gore has the recessive traits of blue eyes and fair hair.
Maybe his mother caught a bad case of the zeitgeist in the '90s and thought it was cool to confess to a fling with a black guy, even attributing paternity to a later child?
I must quibble with your putting the Mexican-American love for Morrissey in the past tense. It is still happening. Why? I don’t know, & I don’t care. I am happy when people like things.
I was discussing this phenomenon with my family the other day. I've never really listened to Morrissey at all, but they have--my wife back in The Smiths' heyday and our teenaged children more recently. Their theory is that as a non-native speaker (or even better, non-speaker) of English, your standard Mexican Smiths fan is freer to concentrate on the sound and ignore the whiney-boy lyrics.
> I can recall Depeche Mode's catchy single "I Just Can't Get Enough" on KROQ-Pasadena in 1982.
Before I read this post I couldn't name one Depeche Mode song, but this was definitely a song I recognized. In look through their song list, I also recognized "People are People". As an aside, the Korean in my class was a huge Depeche Mode fan.
> KROQ played a lot of Depeche Mode
Due to the death of radio, a part of Americana has been lost. Radio stations used to compete with each other, either focusing on a particular genre or certain bands within a popular genre. Through this (and with a healthy dose of payola) bands were able to break through and achieve mainstream popularity. Now, due to the popularity of SiriusXM and people being their own curators of music, the exposure to something new isn't there anymore. I think the last summer song, i.e. a song that became popular to multiple stations playing it in heavy rotation, was Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, and that was 11 years ago!
What always struck me was their popularity in Eastern Europe.
On their last tour they played Budapest (twice), Romania, three separate cities in Poland, Estonia, and Croatia.
Most bands of their size give these places a miss as lower incomes means lower ticket prices but it seems the demand is there for DM.
BTW am not a huge fan but I saw DM in the late 2000s and they were superb - Gahan has a mesmerising frontman effect that you only see with short guys like himself, Jagger, Bono, Daltrey, etc.
This whole idea of members of the elites sharing with us, the plebes, their homey little attachments, really ought to be the red flag that everyone recognizes as the prelude to a ration of patronizing BS.
Remember when Hillary Clinton, the former candidate who is now distinguished as having lost a popularity contest to Donald Trump, shared with an indulgent female interviewer that she keeps a bottle of hot sauce in her purse so that she can spice up her food if it is too bland?
Gosh. If anyone actually bought that, I don't know what to say.
I don't understand your thesis about Asians. Harris was talking about her white husband, and white Waltz. DM was loved by upper middle class whites (boys), the technocracy types. I don't remember it being Asians. Actually Harris was stereotyping white men of liking the same things.
There is a point that you could talk about. (I live in South Korea). In Asia, the Disney movies with little black kids (Moana, new Mermaid), get a lot less viewing than white stories. Also Asians will honestly speak of black criminals, it's nice to hear some reality.
It's easy to forget Depeche Mode was one of the bigger acts of the 80s. It's not like say, The Replacements love that occurs. You'd hear Depeche Mode on pop and rock stations. The only Replacements I ever heard on the mainstream rock stations was "Merry Go Round" and even the one only played it because they were trying to expand their Playlist at the time.
I'm a year older than all of them. I should point out that The Replacements were awesome and Depeche Mode sucked. So there's that.
Both bands have value. I passed up Depeche Mode's 80s electronica because I wasn't in that headspace. But a buddy gave me a copy of DM's 1997 album Ultra; said I would like it. And I did.
The Replacements were one of those quasi-punk bands that could actually write songs and play their instruments. Don't Tell a Soul is a great album. There were other upper Midwest quasi-punks that fit that bill: Husker Du (I prefer Bob Mould's solo albums), Soul Asylum, ect.
Emhoff moved from Central NJ to LA at age 17 from NJ, probably only spent 1 year in California for high school.
Depeche Mode was played a lot in the NY area, but I remember them being bigger in here in the late -80s.
One thing you can be sure of; no celebrity wannabe is ever going to brush-up their 'real regular person' image by saying "Yer...I was really into Phil Spector actually" But I would: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnWOBMQhNBQ
I thought the singer was odd looking, but i didn’t know it was because he was the bad kind of Asian
Does that make Dave Gahan the (unwitting) Patient Zero of the Indian Wordcel takeover of the Anglosphere?
https://www.takimag.com/article/indian-summer/
Bad kind of Asian?
Mal-Asian
Racist
😂
http://archives.depechemode.com/past_tours/
This archive really shows that the Rose Bowl Show was a one-off. The rest of their U.S. shows in the ‘88 tour and other U.S. tours throughout the 80s and 90s were Arena level events, even in LA area, tended to be at the Forum-type venues.
Right, so Depeche Mode being about to bring 60,000 to the San Gabriel Valley's Rose Bowl in 1988 had a lot to do with the geography.
I went to their 88 show in DC and it was at Merriweather Post Pavilion: a really big venue (20k).
What I always find funny in retrospect is that when I was in high school Depeche Mode was coded as kind of underground, a band for kids who were nerds at school but aspirant cool sophisticates in their own minds. There was no internet, so the idea that hundreds of thousands of kids across America were in your exact market demographic making it in fact LARGE and mainstream and not tiny and insidery, was something you would have a hard time realizing as a teen. Plus you would not be motivated to think about it, thinking instead about how you were unique and sophisticated unlike your peers listening to Guns N Roses or Rick Astley or Whitney Houston. by "you" I mean "17 year old me" ha ha
This might explain part of its appeal to Asian American kids at the time? I think the instant categorization of Asian kids as "nerds" was applied unselfconsciously in the 1980s by peers and teachers. "actually I am secretly very cool, I listen to a British New Wave band that's not for the likes of you" was an antidote. In retrospect, probably actively marketed that way.
No clue. I've always been a hard rock and metal guy.
That shows one's age
> "But then I moved to Chicago where nobody cared about Depeche Mode."
Sorry I missed ya, Steve, but I was there. And I cared.
I just wanted you to know.
As I would discover from hanging out with LA-native friends of mine when I lived there for a few years in the late 80s / early 90s, the KROQ band they had really cared about in high school that nobody outside LA ever cared about at all was Oingo Boingo.
Lol, I knew about about Oingo Boingo too, but you're right, I thought they were overrated so I didn't care.
> "The songwriter is supposedly half-black but he didn't know that until he was 30."
If so, his father can't have been very black since Martin Gore has the recessive traits of blue eyes and fair hair.
Maybe his mother caught a bad case of the zeitgeist in the '90s and thought it was cool to confess to a fling with a black guy, even attributing paternity to a later child?
The story is plausible. I could imagine Gore having a father who looked like Nat King Cole.
https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/Map_GoJq_NMq89FXRaRRGQ--~B/aD0zMDAwO3c9MTg3NjtzbT0xO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/4b7d41d528512e0a2d0f6a706700146c.jpg
I must quibble with your putting the Mexican-American love for Morrissey in the past tense. It is still happening. Why? I don’t know, & I don’t care. I am happy when people like things.
I'm out of my element here, but I thought that Mexican Americans liked Los Lobos or maybe Santana, for obvious reasons.
But now I find that they disproportionately like an Irish singer...
I was discussing this phenomenon with my family the other day. I've never really listened to Morrissey at all, but they have--my wife back in The Smiths' heyday and our teenaged children more recently. Their theory is that as a non-native speaker (or even better, non-speaker) of English, your standard Mexican Smiths fan is freer to concentrate on the sound and ignore the whiney-boy lyrics.
> I can recall Depeche Mode's catchy single "I Just Can't Get Enough" on KROQ-Pasadena in 1982.
Before I read this post I couldn't name one Depeche Mode song, but this was definitely a song I recognized. In look through their song list, I also recognized "People are People". As an aside, the Korean in my class was a huge Depeche Mode fan.
> KROQ played a lot of Depeche Mode
Due to the death of radio, a part of Americana has been lost. Radio stations used to compete with each other, either focusing on a particular genre or certain bands within a popular genre. Through this (and with a healthy dose of payola) bands were able to break through and achieve mainstream popularity. Now, due to the popularity of SiriusXM and people being their own curators of music, the exposure to something new isn't there anymore. I think the last summer song, i.e. a song that became popular to multiple stations playing it in heavy rotation, was Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, and that was 11 years ago!
What always struck me was their popularity in Eastern Europe.
On their last tour they played Budapest (twice), Romania, three separate cities in Poland, Estonia, and Croatia.
Most bands of their size give these places a miss as lower incomes means lower ticket prices but it seems the demand is there for DM.
BTW am not a huge fan but I saw DM in the late 2000s and they were superb - Gahan has a mesmerising frontman effect that you only see with short guys like himself, Jagger, Bono, Daltrey, etc.
This whole idea of members of the elites sharing with us, the plebes, their homey little attachments, really ought to be the red flag that everyone recognizes as the prelude to a ration of patronizing BS.
Remember when Hillary Clinton, the former candidate who is now distinguished as having lost a popularity contest to Donald Trump, shared with an indulgent female interviewer that she keeps a bottle of hot sauce in her purse so that she can spice up her food if it is too bland?
Gosh. If anyone actually bought that, I don't know what to say.
My travels in Mexico revealed that the Depeche Mode song "Enjoy the Silence" is insanely popular with young mexicans.
Since I’ve never even heard of Depeche Mode maybe I won’t be able to say much about this topic.
I started my college years in the mid 80's in Seattle... and Depeche Mode was huge. Maybe the entire west coast was bonkers for them.
I don't understand your thesis about Asians. Harris was talking about her white husband, and white Waltz. DM was loved by upper middle class whites (boys), the technocracy types. I don't remember it being Asians. Actually Harris was stereotyping white men of liking the same things.
There is a point that you could talk about. (I live in South Korea). In Asia, the Disney movies with little black kids (Moana, new Mermaid), get a lot less viewing than white stories. Also Asians will honestly speak of black criminals, it's nice to hear some reality.