After an extended, college-induced break, I return to this blog, bringing with me hopes of maintaining somewhat regular and frequent post output. I think a minimum of one-post-a-week is a modest, but not unachievable, aim. That said, I do have exams coming up soon, so this may all go out the window.
Anyway, I resume activities with the second installment in the Non-Album Tracks series, which highlights some of my favourite songs that were not included on a studio album by their artist. This time, it’s one of the two non-album singles released by Depeche Mode 1985 – the one the band doesn’t hate.
Depeche Mode – ‘Shake the Disease’
[Single - 1985]
Available on:
The Singles 81→85 [1985] / The Singles 81>85 [1998]
The Best Of, Volume 1 [2006]
I’d like to think my default setting when it comes to music-listening is for there to be a reasonably broad array of artists which I am “into” at any given time. That seems to be the case at the moment, where I find myself regularly listening to a variety of performers, spanning quite a few different genres. However, I have to admit this scenario is somewhat rare. Every so often, I find myself getting ridiculously fixated on a particular artist, usually late into their career (or even after it has ended), so that they already have a significant body of work just waiting to be consumed. I end up listening to this artist almost exclusively, for extended periods of time. I buy their music DVDs; I buy books about them; I read every article and interview I can find (the Internet made this a lot easier). I obsess. And if they release new material I jump on it. And when they tour I make sure I get to see them, even if it involves a fair bit of travelling.
The earliest fixation I can recall was with Guns N’ Roses, in the very early 1990s. For one birthday (or Christmas) I got Appetite for Destruction, Lies and both Illusion albums on cassette tape and listened to them like crazy. This lasted until 1994, when my then-casual love for R.E.M. turned into a full-blown obsession. Automatic for the People and Monster were the first albums I got in this shiny new CD format. I picked up Out of Time and Green soon after. Over the next few years I’d work my way back through their pre-Warner Bros. albums, with other landmarks occurring along the way: in September 1996, I turned 13 and got New Adventures in Hi-Fi for my birthday; Up followed in’98; and then in the summer of ’99, I went to my first unaccompanied-by-parents gig to see them play in Lansdowne Road, where I loudly sang along to every word (except for ‘Cuyahoga’, with which I wasn’t quite as familiar at the time), much to the annoyance of the people around me.
When I was in my fourth year of secondary school, the new obsession was Pixies. This particular obsession spurred me on to play music myself, a spurring later augmented by my Sonic Youth infatuation, which kicked off in 2001 and lasted for the next three or four years. This kind of gave way to a Nine Inch Nails thing, though that perhaps wasn’t as strong. For much of late 2008 and 2009, it was all about Tegan and Sara. And I’ve just come off an absolutely massive Handsome Furs buzz (which is impressive given their back catalogue consists of just two albums).
In between all that, it was everything Depeche Mode. From approximately September 2006 until June 2008, I lived, breathed, walked, talked, ate, drank, slept Depeche Mode.
Not that this was a sudden discovery of sorts. Of course, I was already reasonably familiar with the band. I remember when the videos for ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘Enjoy the Silence’ were appearing on MTV with considerable regularity – particularly the latter, which I always seemed to find really depressing and quite boring and the popularity of which I could never understand. I vaguely remember when ‘I Feel You’ showed up and people freaked out about how different Dave Gahan looked. I remember when he had that massive drug overdose in 1996. I have minor recollections of ‘I Feel Loved’ being released and I’m fairly sure I caught their performance at the 2001 MTV Europe Music Awards. I kind of remember Dave Gahan releasing his first solo album. Ish. And that’s about it. Oh – and I obviously knew that song.
I didn’t know anything about the band. I didn’t know that Vince Clarke was a member at the start and that he wrote their songs then. I didn’t know that Martin Gore wrote the songs after he left. I didn’t know who Alan Wilder was nor how much of a genius he was. I didn’t know Wilder left the band in 1995. In late 2005 or early 2006, when I first purchased a Depeche Mode album, I may not have been aware they were still around.
That first album I bought was Violator. A natural entry point, given it’s their most popular, famous album and the one most people seem to cite as their best. Having worked my way all the way through their catalogue, just as I did with R.E.M. a decade before, even going through a brief phase of thinking Black Celebration was superior, I have to concur. Violator is their best. It is also one of the best albums I have ever heard by anyone. Listening to it now, for the zillionth time, it continues to amaze me with just how perfect it is.
Not that I realized any of this when I first bought it: I put it on; thought the first song was okay; didn’t understand why Dave sounded so different on the second track; already knew ‘Personal Jesus’; thought ‘Halo’ was actually really excellent – may have listened to it a second time; thought ‘Waiting for the Night’ was fairly beautiful; knew ‘Enjoy the Silence’; then just kind of stopped paying attention for the rest of the album, ignorant of the fact that track 7, a less familiar single, would later become one of my most loved songs. Violator sat on my shelf for a while after that.
A few months down the road, one of my course-mates in college bought Music for the Masses and loved it. He lent it to me and I was very impressed. Much more instantly impressed than I was with Violator. It did me go back and reassess that one though. I started to love it, but the obsession did not hit yet. That wouldn’t happen until late in 2006, after I had moved to Nagasaki, Japan.
One day, I was having a look at the used CDs in the You-ing (遊ING) in/near Hamanomachi (later moved to the covered arcade nearby) and I spotted a copy of the bands The Singles 81→85 compilation for a very reasonable price. I figured this would be a great way to – hipster-style – get into their “earlier stuff”, y’know, before they became all big and stuff. Nah, that wasn’t really my motivation at all. I was aware that their early 80s output was, well, very 80s. The CD was just cheap. I took the disc, along with a couple of other new purchases, on a group road trip up to Sasebo, the second biggest city in Nagasaki prefecture. The Depeche Mode compilation was enthusiastically received at first, especially when that song came on (track 3 on the collection), but the lack of familiarity with the remainder of the material got the better of us and we changed to something else.
Still, I persevered a bit with the compilation on my own time. Spending some idle work time going on Depeche Mode Wikipedia trails probably helped too, as I learned more about the band’s methodology and their inner working dynamics. The track that really infected me was ‘Everything Counts’. Soon, I couldn’t stop playing it. Something about the contrast between the verses and choruses – having different vocalists take each part definitely added to the effect (also used somewhat on the song this post is nominally about, if I ever get to it…).
I believe this was the point my burgeoning interest in the group crossed over into my trademark obsession. I’m not sure of the exact route I took through their discography. I might have got their then-latest Playing the Angel next. I know that I bought their first three albums in a 3CD box set thing in a really cool music store in Beijing on my trip there in early 2007. I got all of them anyway. I got their live concert DVDs too and would annoy my friends by having them on every time they were over. And I just listened to their music. All. The. Time.
It’s kind of funny how one might consider that 81→85 compilation as their “earlier stuff”. Of course, it is, very literally, their earlier stuff. All their other stuff came after… But that compilation really does mark quite a distinct separation between the two main phases of their career. I mean, with R.E.M., you could possibly consider the big change when they released Lifes Rich Pageant, on which Michael Stipe started making the words he was singing audible and comprehensible. But it might make more sense to look at their jump from indie to major label, between the Document and Green albums. That division seems to have a divisive effect on their fanbase. You had many (more) fans coming on board after they signed to Warner. And you had many old school fans decrying/lamenting the move, putting all their indie label output on a pedestal, saying to this day that Murmur is their best, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I love Murmur too. And Lifes Rich Pageant is in my top three of theirs. But on the other hand, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the tenth album, over a decade into their career, their fifth on Warner Bros. is, to me, their greatest achievement.
I’m digressing wildly here. The point I’m trying to make is basically that the 81→85 compilation was the end of an era for Depeche Mode. Namely, their somewhat camp and cheesy 80s era. After that, they were just… so much cooler (in part thanks to Anton Corbijn coming on board). And their musical output was more consistent, darker and simply better. I don’t think this massive jump forward can be illustrated more clearly in the difference between their last single of 1985 and their first of 1986.
‘It’s Called a Heart’ was released in September 1985 and is considered by both Martin Gore and Alan Wilder to be the worst song the band ever recorded. It’s ridiculous. The melodies are a poor imitation of some of their previous hits. The lyrics are ridiculous. And the less said about the video, the better. Contrast that with just a few months later, when they put out ‘Stripped’. It’s pretty much infinitely superior to the preceding release in every way. And since ‘Stripped’ – and its parent album, Black Celebration - they’ve pretty much kept on form (inevitably with some inevitable peaks and troughs, but no trough as low as ‘It’s Called a Heart’).
‘Shake the Disease’ (we got there finally!) came out before ‘It’s Called a Heart’ and comes just before it at the end of that singles collection. This was before they became all dark and cool, while they still had their true 80s vibe going on. The production does not belie this. There are elements of that early campness in how it sounds, but it’s the song itself that gives it its power and helps it to transcend its somewhat dated trappings. (The video is somewhat decent as well, with some innovative – for its time anyway – dizzy camera work going on.)
The recording, like ‘Everything Counts’, plays off the difference between Dave Gahan and Martin Gore’s voices. Gore opens the song with a falsetto-y “ah”-ing, leading into Gahan’s deeper verses. Then, after the chorus, Gore, mixed so that he’s right in your ears, pleads with you to “understand” him. Brilliant.
But like I said, the song itself is really its strength. I don’t think this is more evident than in the live performances of the song on the tour for Playing the Angel, where Gore sometimes sang it as one of his solo songs in the set (Gore usually sings lead on two songs in the middle of the main set and then the first of the encore). This arrangement strips the song right down, with Gore being accompanied by a piano (and some minimal backing vocals on the falsetto part).
It’s on the Touring the Angel: Live in Milan DVD, but I really like this video from the 2006 Coachella festival. It’s all a single shot, starting way out with a wide view of the stage and then zooming right in on Gore as he sings. It’s really magical. Would have loved to have seen it in person.
I eventually got to see Depeche Mode play live in Dublin, in December 2009, less than a week after I moved back to Ireland. My major obsession had subsided, but I still got stuck in there at the gig, singing along throughout (a little less obnoxiously than I did at R.E.M. in 1999). Unfortunately, we were treated to neither a full-band nor Gore-solo version of ‘Shake the Disease’. Though, for the first song of the encore he did pull out ‘One Caress’ from Songs of Faith and Devotion, which is also one of my favourites.
The highpoint of the gig, actually, was that famous song that bored and depressed me back in 1990. It’s funny. Being an obsessive fan of a band, you tend to hope they play some odd, obscure, rarely-played songs – and then yelp like a child when they do. But something has to be said for those massive hits, the way they connect with the crowd, even though they’ve been played and heard hundreds of times before. I’ve been to three R.E.M. concerts and each time they started ‘Losing My Religion’ was a moment of immense proportions. Likewise, when Depeche Mode unleashed ‘Enjoy the Silence’, predictable as it was, I couldn’t help but be consumed by it – and the almost religious fervour with which it was received by the crowd. Epic.
Wow, funny/sad how I struggled to write 2000-word essays for college, but spewing out the same amount in a post about a band I like is a breeze. True, it helps when you don’t bother to structure the post or stay on topic at all…
