Depeche Mode: The Archives

The Exciter Tour - Tour Blog

Anaheim
author: Daniel Barassi (Webmaster)
date posted: Sunday, August 19, 2001

The final North American show, and it was not one to be missed!

If you missed Poe on any of the North American dates, you should go buy her CD('s) right now as an apology to yourself. She put on a great show.

As for the DM portion - where do I start. Since I'll never be able to do this in proper paragraph formatting (I hate typing, yet I'm a webmaster - go figure), I'll do it like this:

> Martin sang "Condemnation", as a special request from David.

> During "When The Body Speaks", David told Martin to get real close to him, since it was the last show.

> During "Enjoy The Silence", Poe's entire touring group (band, family, assistants) came onto the stage and danced along to the song. David also thanked them again for opening up for them (see - I told you not to get to the shows late!). Towards the end of the song, Poe's bass player stage dived into the crowd (Fletch's side of the stage - looked like he made it to about fourth row).

> During "In Your Room", a few inflatable sharks were being tossed around (on the tour projection for "In Your Room", there is a shark and some goldfish on screen). One of the crew got a hold of one of the sharks, and was walking through the media pit (front of front row), moving it up and down to simulate it swimming. David had a very visible smile from this.

> During "Personal Jesus", Peter grabbed Poe's keyboard player, and had him playing the end of the song!

> David completely messed up "Clean" on the first verse, but eventually recovered (smiling the whole time).

> Before "Home", Martin teased that he was going to play another song they had not performed in years. Personally, I thought that was an evil joke!

A great show to end the North American tour. Still, the thing sticking in my head is what I saw at their hotel the next day. I was going to say goodbye to a member of the crew at the hotel, and what greets me outside but David, driving around in a big ol' Suburban type vehicle. Something about seeing him behind the wheel (no pun intended) just looked wrong. I work for the band. I know they have normal lives (more or less) offstage. But that just freaked me out. :)

In case you didn't notice, there are no images from the Pond shows. Thanks to the Pond / Nederlander policy, we were not allowed to even take one still image (thanks guys - big warm cuddly hugs to you all! :P ). At least it allowed me to finally "see" a show, without worrying if my batteries were running down, or if the flash was going to accidentally go off while I took a picture. Anyway, I put up over 400 images from the last couple of shows. How many ass shots of David does one site visitor need (that is a rhetorical question - do not email me with an answer)?

Nichelle will be back to her tour and image duties when the European leg starts on August 28th, in Tallinn. Thanks to all the people who walked up to me at the shows (sorry I didn't talk longer - I was working my butt off), with all the kind words.

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