Depeche Mode for Dummies, breve guida all'ascolto

...coff coff... ecco, ora vi spiego tutto. Un attimo, eh!

No e' che ultimamente, probabilmente incuriositi dal mio comportamento totalmente DM-oriented, diverse persone mi hanno chiesto di passar loro un po' di canzoni dei Depeche Mode. Ora, tralasciando il fatto che per una come me anche fare una selezione un minimo "umana" (cioe' che non comprenda un numero di canzoni pari a tutto l'album meno una, tanto per far vedere che non e' proprio tutto-tutto) e' un'impresa, pensavo che e' ancora piu' difficile far piacere i DM ad un'audience prevenuta in partenza, se l'audience in questione non ha idea di *chi* siano i Depeche Mode.
Oddio, finora sono soddisfattissima dei risultati (il mio coinquilino e la mia collega sono quasi partiti di testa anche loro, tant'e' che la seconda mi accompagnera' a vederli quando torneranno in UK), ma temo che con i prossimi "soggetti" la percentuale di successo si abbassera' alquanto, cosi' ho pensato di buttare giu' un paio di righe per descrivere un minimo i vari album, e inquadrarli in un contesto.
Chiaramente ho cercato (con forse scarsi risultati... ) di essere il piu' sintetica possibile. Non mi sono concentrata tanto sull'obiettivita', considerato comunque che questa miniguida e' pensata per degli amici e non per un pubblico di critici musicali (anche se a volte, credetemi, le due categorie si sovrappongono in maniera abbastanza inquietante!). Infine, ho pensato che aggiungere quanche aneddoto qua e la' avrebbe potuto rendere la lettura un po' piu' piacevole.
Per ora sono arrivata a SOFAD, e vi sarei grata se voi tutti mi faceste da beta-readers.

Ah, chiaramente essendo gli amici inglesi, la "guida" e' in inglese pure lei. E no, il titolo non sara' reso noto: potrebbero risentirsi!!!




DEPECHE MODE FOR DUMMIES.


1981: Speak & Spell - The debut album. Depeche Mode are, at this stage, Martin Gore (keyboards, songwriter, vocals), Dave Gahan (lead singer), Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher (keyboards) and Vince Clarke (main songwriter, keyboards, vocals). Almost all the songs are written by Vince Clarke. Despite the lyrics being sometimes obscure, the sound here is very “eighties”, all keyboards and drum machines. Its’ the poppy (and sometimes cheesy) phase of the band, well epitomized by “Just can’t get enough”, one of their most famous songs. Still, elsewhere in the album they were slightly darker and less “commercial”, i.e. in songs like “Photographic” (still quite popular), “Puppets” and “Ice Machine”. Vince Clarke will quit the band after this album and create new groups: “Yazoo” first and then “Erasure”.

1982: A Broken Frame - Martin Gore takes over as songwriter and the sound starts moving towards different and more intimate directions. Being a “transition” album, it is often considered their worst creation. It is, in fact, very heterogeneous, featuring songs written by Martin Gore at the age of 14-16 (very poppy and naïve, then) as well as more “recent” ones, where he starts to develop his own trademark style. Songs like “The meaning of love” and “See you” are evidently very different from “The Sun and the Rainfall”, “Satellite” and “Leave in silence”. Personally, I find this album very interesting!

1983: Construction Time Again - Alan Wilder joins the band. He’s a very talented musician and the only one with a solid musical background. He also takes care of most of the “in studio” work, mixing etc. While still heavily influenced by the 80’s music style, his album marks the definitive change of musical direction of Depeche Mode. Apparently Martin Gore wrote most of the songs in just a couple of weeks, inspired by social and environmental matters. But the most remarkable thing is that is now that they start creating their own sounds by sampling and processing virtually every noise they could reach, from trains passing on bridges or through tunnels (as in “Pipeline”) to building sites, toys, pebbles and... cutlery!

1984: Some Great Reward - Recorded in Berlin, where Martin Gore was living by then, is heavily influenced by the city’s atmosphere: gloomy and slightly kinky. This is very evident in both music and lyrics, which still are pervaded by a subtle and sometimes hardly noticeable irony. “Master and Servant” is a good example: whilst everyone considers it just as a hymn to BDSM, the song is actually making fun of society, where everyone is virtually someone’s servant. So, if we have to “play this game”, better to play it in bed where, at least, “you’re fulfilled at the end of the day”. Other than this, Martin’s style starts to become more and more evidently defined. He talks about love, lust and life in general in his own peculiar way, a mixture of passion, deep devotion and cynicism (he himself once said: “When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy -- but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life”). Can’t explain it any better, you have to listen by yourself!

1986: Black Celebration - Ethereal and “industrial” atmospheres, amazing lyrics and reverbs, this album sees an increasing involvement of Alan Wilder in the production and features some of fans’ favourite songs, often referred to as “classic Depeche Mode”. “Stripped”, for a start, where sampling, synthesizers and lots of sound effects perfectly entangled meet typical Martin Gore-style lyrics (apparently inspired by books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451). Although some songs are genuinely pretty bleak (“Fly on the windscreen”, in example, which has been discarded as a single because the very first line goes “death is everywhere”, or “Sometimes”, that together with “Blasphemous Rumours” from their previous album is the only Depeche Mode song that I could honestly label as “depressive”), the album in itself is not that “pitch black”. I’d rather say that it is kinda sweetly melancholic. Also, Martin’s subtle sarcasm is always there. In “New Dress”, for example, where he attacks the hypocrisy of media (“Famine horror, millions die, Earthquake terror figures rise, Princess D is wearing a new dress”) or the eponymous “Black Celebration”, which some believed to be nothing less than a hymn to Satanism, whereas it’s pretty obvious that the only thing he’s celebrating, here, is the end of a bad day (“Let’s have a black celebration tonight To celebrate the fact That we’ve seen the back Of another black day”). Another two “classic Depeche Mode songs” are A Question of Time and A Question of Lust (the band is still playing them live). If it wasn’t clear enough, this is one of my favourite DM albums, which also features one of my most beloved songs of all times: “It Doesn’t Matter Two”. Makes me weep instantly. Probably it would be much more popular, now, if it was “cleaned” from all the weird sound effects (a “bare” version has in fact been played live during their 2001 and 2006 tours).

1987: Music For The Masses - A fundamental milestone in DM career from different points of view, this album led the band towards mainstream. Alan Wilder was heavily influenced, by then, from Philip Glass’ music and this influence is pretty evident throughout the album. It features again some “classic DM” songs, like “Strangelove” or “Behind the Wheel” (where Martin Gore develops his ideas of... well, slightly alternative ways of loving).
Although, again, Gore was being sarcastic from the very start (the title refers to the fact that they still were, by then, not that popular), this album provided the band with an amazing success in US. The American leg of the Music for the Masses tour, in fact, culminated with a complete sell-out gig at Rose Bowl, Pasadena, creating the foundation for their breakthrough, which would happen with the following album “Violator”. Also, the famous music photographer Anton Corbijn (U2, Nirvana, Tom Waits, Bjork and many more) becomes their art director, taking care of photos, videos and visual art during the following tours, helping the band to rebuild their image, “devastated” by years of bad propaganda.
Probably the most famous song on Music for the Masses is “Never let me down again”, a sort of anthem for every DM fan, also slightly controversial from a “lyrical” point of view. In fact, maybe in order to escape the rumours about a possible homoerotic content of the song (“I’m taking a ride with my best friend, I hope he’ll never let me down again”), Martin Gore declared that the song is about his best friend, Andy Fletcher.
It’s not. It’s about drugs.

1990 : Violator - Probably the most famous Depeche Mode album and, to date, their best selling one, featuring some of their more popular songs, such as Personal Jesus and, obviously, Enjoy the Silence. With this album, they finally reached the international stardom. Although the band claims to have been heavily inspired from blues music while writing and recording this album, the blues influence is probably clearly evident only on Personal Jesus, which has been in fact covered by a blues’ legend like Johnny Cash.
Enjoy the Silence is presumably their most famous song of all times. Originally it was supposed to be a ballad, but Alan Wilder changed it into a sort of dance anthem, which instantly became a worldwide tremendous success, also thanks to the supporting video (the “king with a deckchair”, travelling all over the world to find a place to sit down and “enjoy the silence”).
Though, Wilder never felt acknowledged enough for making the song what it eventually became, this leading to an increasing tension between him and the other members of the band. Moreover, the band was probably unprepared to handle such a big fame, so, after reaching the top, they almost predictably started to drop. One after another.

1993 : Songs of Faith and Devotion - When released, this album appeared as a sort of “deviation from the main road” of Depeche Mode musical style. For the first time, guitars (although heavily distorted) and live drums play a main in the sound, and live strings and gospel choirs contributed to give a peculiar taste to this album. Influences from rock and grunge are evident especially in tracks as “I feel you”, “Rush”or “Mercy in you”. Allegedly, it was Dave Gahan who pushed the band toward this path (he was living in LA and was well into the rock scene there), something like “it’s rock or I’m not going to sing”. The making of the album was really hard. By then, Gahan was deeply heroine-addicted and used to disappear for hours without any other member of the band realizing what was going on, being themselves too busy trying to manage their own problems. In fact, Gore had severe issues with alcohol (he could keep drinking non-stop for many days) and Fletcher started to develop a mental breakdown. Virtually, the only one still working on it was Wilder, but communication amongst the members of the band was severely compromised and agreeing on anything seemed the most difficult thing in the world. They could spend days in studio without reaching any result at all. This led to a strange atmosphere pervading the whole album, a sense of tragic and unfinished. Despite all this, the outcome was absolutely amazing, the album was another great success and it was followed by the Devotional tour. Here things started to completely fall apart. The tour had to last for 14 months, since they were spending in parties and drugs more than they were earning. They had separate rooms and separate cars, trying to meet the other members of the band as less as possible. The psychiatrist the management employed to try to ease their problems freaked out and ran away in no time, leaving a report which said “You are all very sick and need a serious psychiatric treatment” (apparently Gahan, as high as a kite, tried to bite his neck, believing himself to be a vampire). Also, during the tour, Wilder needed surgery for kidney stones, Gore started having seizures due to his crazy lifestyle, Fletch’s mental instability led him to leave the tour and Gahan broke his ribs stage-diving and eventually suffered an heart attack due to overdose and was dragged to the hospital (while Gore, still onstage for the last encore, was singing “Death’s Door”).
When the tour was over, Wilder left Depeche Mode. The band seemed to be over too.




TBC

Anzitutto vorrei congratularmi con l'esimia collega per il suo zelo missionario: ciò è davvero ammirevole, e sicuramente otterrà ottimi risultati! Poi, come ho già detto, l'idea della Guida all'ascolto è fantastica e mi trova a dir poco entusiasta...

Che dire, Isa, la prima parte che hai postato mi è piaciuta moltissimo, direi che è perfetta. Mi piace anche l'idea di aggiungere qualche gustoso aneddoto... quelli del Devotional, poi, fanno tanto rock & roll e sicuramente possono risultare interessanti per dei profani che magari disprezzano la musica elettronica perché la ritengono incapace di coinvolgere. In realtà mi sono accorta che la gente che non li conosce spesso vede i Depeche come un gruppo di "tecnici del suono" tristi e noiosi che fanno le ragnatele in studio passando le ore ad ascoltare e riascoltare uno stesso suono modificato al computer... niente di più falso, tanto che noi sappiamo benissimo che in realtà i Topastri il lavoro "vero" lo hanno sempre fatto fare ai vari Ben Hillier e agli altri nerd con cui hanno lavorato, mentre loro uscivano a divertisse, a magna' e a gioca' a bigliardino...

bel lavoro, Isa, ottimo il taglio, forse un tantino troppo lungo su qualche punto, ma non saprei dire quale. per il titolo, io onestamente lo lascerei, non vedo perché dovrebbero offendersi, è scherzoso e palesemente una citazione! una volta scrissi una "guida all'html per chi ha fatto il classico"...

non ho capito xò se la guida andrà a fare da libretto a dei cd, o se poi la scelta dell'ascolto sarà lasciato ai singoli lettori. consiglio cmq, per ogni album, di indicare 2-3 canzoni "consigliate", così anche chi magari la legge per caso può andare "a colpo sicuro".

cmq io non sono d'accordo sul fatto che l'aspetto "rock" vada sottolineato: una delle peculiarità dei dm è stata (quasi) sempre quella di avere chi gli sistemasse e pulisse i suoni, e di sicuro degli esperti di musica (come sono gli amici di Isa) possono apprezzare questo fatto. ad esempio di violator inserirei waiting for the night a scapito di altre canzoni più famose, e di black celebration metterei senza dubbi o fly on the windscreen o it doesn't matter 2 (magari sarebbe opportuno anche spiegare che esiste realmente una it doesn't matter "1"). poi ovviamente farà Isa a suo gusto, e conoscendo i suoi polli...

Figuriamoci se io e il signor Cesare potevamo essere d'accordo su qualcosa... Comunque quello che penso io è che se i "devotizzandi" in questione sono inglesi, e se ritengono davvero di essere esperti di musica, non apprezzeranno MAI i Depeche. Sarà fatica sprecata e io scommetto quel che vi pare che continueranno a disprezzarli come prima.

Intanto grazie mille per aver letto e commentato! E sono contentissima che vi sia piaciuta!


Hai ragione, Cesare, penso anch'io che sia a volte un po' troppo lunga ma non saprei effettivamente dove tagliare. Per quanto riguarda il resto, l'idea era di fare un CD contenente solo alcune canzoni per ogni album, ovviamente a mia insindacabile discrezione, il che vuol dire che non necessariamente ci saranno tutti i singoli (tipo "People are People" non comparira' manco per sbaglio!) e che alcuni album, tipo Violator, Black Celebration e SOFAD, "rischiano" di essere proposti per intero!




Non preoccuparti Isa, aspetta che arrivi la seconda parte, quella con la descrizione di Exciter, e il confronto esplodera' anche tra il Signor Cesare e me!!!

Comunque, ti diro', purtroppo credo proprio che tu abbia ragione. Qui, se non ci sono chitarre e batteria pestata, quasi nessuno prende in considerazione qualsivoglia gruppo musicale . Temo che l'unico che eventualmente potrebbe apprezzare sarebbe Sua Signoria (che una volta infatti mi cito' Black Celebration)... se non altro perche', suonando le tastiere, ha almeno una vaga idea di cosa sia un sintetizzatore...

Beh, è che gli inglesi spesso non sanno andare oltre certi pregiudizi atavici, in ambito musicale... Ai loro occhi il mondo è solo chitara&batteria, ma peggio per loro, in fondo: non sanno che si perdono! Oh, forse l'unico albo dei Depeche che potrebbe aggradare ai britannici è SOFAD: lì la chitara tutto sommato ci sta, e pure la batteria. Ecco, SOFAD secondo me è l'unico che potrebbe conquistarli. Ma per fortuna non hai solo colleghi inglesi, con gli altri potresti avere più successo... e infatti mi auguro vivamente che Sua Eccellenza non ci deluda, lui che è anche un polistrumentista, che diamine!

Infine, concordo assolutamente sul fatto che Violator e SOFAD vadano proposti per intero: la perfezione non si tocca, e in quegli album non c'è una canzone che non sia bella... provare a togliere qualcosa sarebbe un sacrilegio, mentre per gli altri sceglierei massimo tre canzoni, come diceva il signor Cesare, e non necessariamente i singoli... anche se la scelta è comunque difficillima!

Infatti, nel caso in cui dovessi estendere l'opera di devotizzazione anche agli altri (in realta' la devotizzanda in questione e' al momento solo una, che tempo fa mi aveva chiesto di passarle qualche canzone) punterei tutto su "I feel you".

Se non gli piace nemmeno quella, ci rinuncio in partenza!

In ogni caso spero di proporvi entro stasera la seconda parte della guida: la scadenza che mi sono fissata e' per domani!!!

Assolutamente d'accordo: pure secondo me I feel you e qualche altro pezzo un po' rockettaro di SOFAD (tipo Rush) possono essere un'ottima cartina al tornasole... se non apprezzano neanche quelle, allora è un'impresa disperata!

Ultra-time!

1997: Ultra - As Depeche Mode often said, the most important thing about this album is that it has actually been recorded. With Wilder out of the band and Gahan still deeply in love with heroin, the only creative member left was Gore, who to be honest wasn’t that healthy himself. The band was literally shattered. They managed to get together in studio, but in 6-weeks time they recorded just few tracks and only one vocal. Gahan was way too weak to sing, so they sent him back to LA, telling him to fix his problems first and maybe to see a singing teacher. He didn’t. Gore, exasperated by the situation and fearing that was going to be the end of the band, called him on the phone, threatening to finish the album all by himself. In response, Gahan looked for comfort in drugs again, overdosed of speedball and was declared clinically dead for two minutes. The paramedics miraculously managed to resuscitate him. He was arrested for possession and spent two nights in jail, then was forced to go into rehab. He finally managed to get clean, and has been clean since. They started working on the album again, with wonderful results. Ultra may well be considered as a direct following of Violator, with very powerful, massive electronic sounds and perfectly fitting guitar inserts. The opening track, “Barrel of a Gun”, is well representative of this album, while “It’s no good” , another “classic”, features a very catchy sound and hooking, trademark keyboard lines. DM also show once again that they know well how to use guitars in the song “Useless”, which features some very good riffs. “Home”, sung by Martin Gore, one of the most beautiful and beloved DM songs of all times, reaches enticing peaks of introspectiveness, sweetness and melancholy both in music and lyrics, as well as “Sister of Night” (very intense Gahan vocals). Another beautiful song, often underestimated, is “Freestate”: very atmospheric, a perfect mix of electronic base and guitar riffs, with splendid lyrics. Gahan’s soft and wistful voice glistens like a jewel.
Unfortunately, due to the missing of a proper, powerful enough single and to the lack of support from radios, the album didn’t sell as much as it would have deserved and remains wrongly underrated. Still, it’s one of the most important DM works: if anything else, it’s the one which, in fact, saved the band.

Edited by HolyGahan - 19/8/2009, 23:51

Bel lavoro Isa! Sei riuscita a dire l'essenziale e questo è veramente ammirevole, io non sarei mai riuscita a non dilungarmi fino allo sveno! Lo so per esperienza personale e immagino non sia stato facile per te... E' una guida scorrevole e per niente pesante, nel senso che si fa leggere con gusto e penso che per un non Devoto questo sia un requisito essenziale!
Sulla scelta dei brani non saprei che dire. Se opti per quelli più, passatemi il termine, orecchiabili l'impatto con quelli più prettamente Depeche potrebbe essere devastante, per orecchie non use a tali... armonie. D'altra parte se proponi direttamente pezzi come Pipeline o IYR il risultato potrebbe essere comunque negativo. Della serie: 'mazza che depressione! Ma che è?... Una bella impresa!
Dovresti mettere in cantiere l'idea di una guida per ascoltatori avanzati. 250 pagine di assoluta libidine non ce le leverebbe nessuno!

PS: aspetto Exciter trepidando!

Isa, la recensione di Ultra mi ha quasi commossa, lo giuro... Ne hai fatto un'ottima sintesi, peraltro ottimamente scritta. Ho apprezzato molto anche i riferimenti all'uso delle chitarre, visto che prima si parlava dei pregiudizi del pubblico anglosassone nei confronti dei gruppi elettronici... peraltro, a questo proposito, mi viene in mente che proprio "Barrel of a gun" è stato, credo, l'unico singolo dei dM a finire al primo posto nelle classifiche britanniche. Miracolo!

E ovviamente quoto l'idea di Ale: ci vorrebbe assolutamente una guida per devoti "avanzati" ... Depeche Mode for advanced devouts...

A questo punto però aspettiamo con trepidazione la guida agli ultimi album...