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Tour Of The Universe - Tour Blog

"The Socal Shows" - August 16th through August 20th
author: brat
date posted: August 25th, 2009

Hi everyone

Your friendly webmaster here, with a report of the Southern California shows. As we were not allowed to shoot any shows except for Anaheim (union rules), the images with this blog entry will solely be from Anaheim. On with the shows...

Hollywood Bowl (night one)
If there was any concern over Dave's health, it was gone as soon as soundcheck started. Loud, deep, and clear. Highlights of the soundcheck included Mr Gordeno playing a bit of Hava Nagila for Mr Kessler (to the beat of Behind The Wheel, no less), and then Dave getting on the drums, and having a go...as a joke. Quite funny. As for the actual show, a solid set from the boys.

Hollywood Bowl (night two)
Song changes. As with any "second night" show, the boys changed it up a bit. During the first encore, Martin sang Shake The Disease (to deafening screams from the crowd), and then after Stripped, the band surprised the crowd with Behind The Wheel. Again, a great show, in a legendary venue.

Anaheim
My first night in a few years as a tour/web photographer. I was a bit rusty, but as you will see, there are some good shots in the bunch. The only unusual thing of the night was that the band did not use the provided catwalk for Waiting For The Night. It was used to great effect by both Martin and Dave during other songs, though.

Santa Barbara Bowl
Again, another show that we could not record (audio, video, not even pictures - sorry). The band went on a bit earlier than usual, due to curfews at the venue, but still put on a great show...for a few minutes. About two minutes into Walking In My Shoes, the sound went something like this: "Morality would frown upon, decent CLICK". The power to the screens and to the sound blew. While we can not even link to video from the event, I can suggest that a bit of searching around on the web will yield you some video of the power outage. The joke always used to be "What would Depeche Mode sound like, unplugged?", with the answer being "painted fingernails clicking on a keyboard". This time, though, though the power cut, Christian kept drumming. Dave started pointing to Christian, then clapping. All in all, the power was out for a little under 15 minutes. When the band came back, they restarted Walking In My Shoes, and continued the show. The only thing was that the screens didn't come back until close to the end of the night. For those in the pit, it made for a nice, intimate show. The people in the back were probably not too pleased, though.

Another highlight was the guy who managed to run onto the stage from stage right. He just ran up there, behind Martin and Dave, and was starting to linger, when security yanked him off the stage. Dave had a few words for the mystery man, and the show continued, albeit slightly shorter. Due to curfews, and the power outage, a few songs got trimmed from the set. Overall, though, a great show as always.

Next stop...Vegas, baby!

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