Lead Singer Dave Gahan Is ‘A God On Stage’
A show many Stateside fans were anxiously awaiting, Depeche Mode took the stage just as of Montreal played their final notes to an uproarious and eager audience. The New Wave legends’ influence on music is immeasurable – lead singer Petter Ericson Stakee of the British rock band Alberta Cross told JamBase that DM was probably the band’s biggest influence and described lead singer Dave Gahan as “a god on stage.” Live sampling and electronic dub segments have become so prevalent in mainstream rock music and much of that can be traced to Depeche Mode and their international popularity. As for the show, the band opened with a trio of new songs from ‘Sounds Of The Universe’ with ‘In Chains’, the single ‘Wrong’ and ‘Hole to Feed’. Every headliner of the weekend had their own stunning visual display and DM’s video wall fit their style well. For ‘In Chains’ the screen featured an old white man’s face next to a young black boy’s face. As the song progressed, the faces slowly transformed until the old white man was the young black boy and vice versa. (WH)
The crowd dynamic was something I had only previously witnessed watching videos of Glastonbury as the entire audience swooned with their hands in the air as DM poured through their vast catalogue with hit songs like ‘Enjoy The Silence’, ‘Personal Jesus’, ‘Policy Of Truth’ and ‘A Question Of Time’ rousing the crowd to their highest levels of euphoria. Gahan’s voice has a commanding power from the lower register that billows out clear as a bell all the way to the back of the field. Industrial strength drum lines and synth-ed out keyboards are Depeche’s modus operandi and seeing it unfold in the flesh is something I would have never imagined if they hadn’t been brought to the Lollapalooza stage. That’s the beauty of an event like Lollapalooza, as Perry Farrell told us the Monday before the fest when asked what his favorite thing was about music festivals, simply offering, “Everyone wins, the musicians win, [the fans] get to hear the music that they’ve been listening to on their iPods or online all year. They get to actually see them perform. Everybody at the festival wins.”
Source: JamBase
