Depeche Mode | Music For The Masses Tour, Festhalle Frankfurt
Writing blog entries retroactively gives you, among other things, the opportunity to reflect on the good old times one remembers.
Concert tickets were still small pieces of art and did not come ‘off the peg’ like they do today, they were designed individually for every tour, they were not just on plain paper but included elements of current album artwork. And when you came back from the ticket shop you were happy to have scored tickets and held them joyfully in your hands.
Alan Wilder was still part of the band (at the time it wouldn’t have crossed our minds that this could no longer be the case in some future day), Depeche Mode shows were still almost 100% ‘synthesized’ and with ‘Music For The Masses’ they had released one of their best, stylistically defining and most important albums next to ‘Black Celebration’. For us, these albums where what Depeche Mode was about.
So we had our tickets, were very much looking forward to the show (that much I remember) and the ticket and initial marketing flyer promised ‘In Concert + Guests’.
At the time ‘guests’ were never that important to us but when the information was released who the guests would be at ‘our’ show in Frankfurt, I’m sure we were delighted, just the same as we would be delighted to see that combination again today.
Depeche Mode AND Front 242 on the same evening, what a musical treat it must have been for us that love synths! Going through some piles of old papers recently I was pleasantly surprised to find some old flyers that promoted the show and announced the ‘Special Guest’:
Again, relying on the web community for information about the setlist I would say that the ‘Music For The Masses’ tour was indeed about promoting the respective album. The songs were namely Pimpf (Intro), Behind the Wheel, Strangelove, Sacred, The Things You Said, Nothing, Pleasure, Little Treasure (Never Let Me Down Again b-side), and Never Let Me Down Again. If you count the intro that makes 50% of the show being about the latest album, a pretty good ratio I would say.
I like ‘what-if’ scenarios. What if I would have been asked to compile a mini setlist for the band to play based on this shows setlist, three songs in the main set plus one encore? It would have been Strangelove, Stripped, Black Celebration, Encore: Shake the Disease (not necessarily in that order).
Good times! How do you remember these shows and album? Leave a comment and let me know.
Links:
Depeche Mode
The evenings Depeche Mode setlist on setlist.fm
Front 242
The evenings Front 242 setlist on setlist.fm
Festhalle Frankfurt
Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion
Post last updated on 05. September 2020