Depeche Mode: The Archives

The Exciter Tour - Tour Blog

Santa Barbara
author: Daniel Barassi (Webmaster)
date posted: Sunday, August 5, 2001

The hometown show (for Martin, at least). The layout of this venue was rather odd. You walk in, and you have the concession stands. Along the right side, there's a long fence. What was amazing was that literally 25 feet from the fence, behind an ambulance (it was just there, on call - no one was injured or anything), the band were freely walking around. If only people knew that while they were buying their t-shirts and beer, the band was within shouting distance. Well...a few people did notice actually...

The show started off rather early, due to the many curfews imposed on the venue (one of which was, sadly, a low sound level). It was odd seeing DM come on stage with the sun still out. Probably the absolute lowlight of the tour so far for me was during "Dream On", when some ass in the front pit decided to shower David with his beverage - twice! People...if you see a band member come to the front of the stage, and they look a bit sweaty, this is not a cue to shower them with unsolicited mystery liquids! They have electric fans on stage, and water bottles all around the stage. Sufficies to say that the unwanted drenching pissed David off (he spit at the guy in the crowd, then came back and almost speared the guy with his mic stand - thank god he didn't). After security dragged the loser's ass out of the pit (to the chanting of "kick him out" from the crowd, and a "thanks a lot fuckhead" greeting from David), the show went on. A few songs later, David came back out to the same area of the crowd, and was "high fiving" people and shaking hands, making up for the earlier show interruption. The performance highlight was when Martin came back out after his earlier performance of "Sister of Night" to sing "Home", he said "this is home" (meaning his new hometown, not necessarily the song title). The lyrics took a new meaning with that.

After the show, David went to Los Angeles, while Martin, Andy, and much of the rest of the main touring crew went to an aftershow party. Since I don't do the whole party thing, me and my "plus one" of the night (Chad) simply drove back home. I then spent Monday processing all the images I took over the last three days. As I type this now (8:55 am, pst, Tuesday morning), I should comment that I passed by the line already forming for The Tonight Show performance (it's down the street from my home). It is already a rather large line. This should be as energetic a crowd as the one the band had last time when the band performed "It's No Good" on the Leno show (which can be viewed in the Video / Television area). Oh yeah - go look at the >pictures from Santa Barbara!

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