Depeche Mode: The Archives

The Exciter Tour - Tour Blog

Vienna, Austria
author: Nichelle
date posted: Monday, September 10, 2001

So both of our largest shows of this tour, and even of Depeche Mode both were ruined by rain. I guess the audience ended up enjoying themselves regardless, it was just a shame that the rain had to be there at all.

In Hamburg, the winds were rather high and small spurts of rain would come in and pound away. The about 10 minutes later, the sun would be out and it would look nice - and this continued on throughout the whole day and night.

MTV was there and filmed the guys as well as some of our crew. Of course Jez entertained them the most, showing them Martin's guitars and cracking them up - he must be the funniest person in the world!

It was a bit scary though because when we got there and did soundcheck, one of the PAs fell down due to the wind - and we thought that if this happened during soundcheck, it could easily happen during the show. So after this and due to the hard rain, we were thinking about canceling the show. And if the rain had gotten harder and caused more damage, it was going to be cancelled. But luckily, the audience was amazing, and with all that rain and getting soaked, they seemed to enjoy it regardless.

It was crazy because I was out at the mixing board at the beginning with my TV crews, and when we left during the third song, we were trying to get out and it felt like we were walking miles and miles to get away from the audience. The people went SO far back on the grass, and when you passed this certain point, there were just HUGE speakers playing the concert, and these people obviously could not even remotely see the band, yet were having the best time listening to the music and dancing. It was a great sight.

Leipzig went on the same way with the rain again. Though it was not as bad during the show, people still waited a long time in the rain and seemed to still be excited about the show. This one was even bigger - 70,000 people versus 60,000 the night before.

The guys had to cut a few songs because they were freezing their butts off, but hopefully the audience enjoyed it just the same.

It was awful that our two largest shows EVER had to come with those conditions, but I think that they came off pretty well and the fans would have enjoyed themselves regardless of the weather. As we know, DM fans are so very dedicated - that is why they are great!

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