How I went to a Depeche Mode concert.
So, it happened. On July 19, 2017, Depeche Mode played a grand concert at the NSC "Olimpiyskiy". I'll tell you a little about how it was.
Kyiv became the 30th city on the tour in support of their new album Spirit.
Running ahead, I will say that there were not so many songs from the new album at the concert. For some reason. Mostly old hits were played. Of course, the hits were pleasing, but the question still remained open.
30,000 tickets were sold for the concert. It will become one of the most visited concerts in Ukraine in 2017. Sounds impressive.
11 trucks with hundreds of tons of stage equipment and 60 technical personnel arrived in Kyiv to install the stage.
The height of the stage is the same as a 6-story building, the width is 50 meters, a huge screen covers the entire width and height of the stage. And also a special 20-meter platform facing the audience.
Why they made this platform remains a mystery to me. Because Dave came out on this platform three times during the entire concert to wave his arms and shoot gifts from an air gun into the crowd. And Martin jumped out for a minute. That's it.
According to rumors, the members of the Depeche Mode group flew to Kyiv on their own charter flight. They stayed at the Fairmont Hotel on Podil for $ 1,000 per day.
In the household rider, the band members requested 100 kg of ice and 120 large towels. And also black cups with silver spoons. Aesthetes, though. :)
The band brought their own cooks.
Fans
I arrived at the Olympic Stadium at 15:00. There were already people hanging out at the entrance, roasting in the sun. After chatting, I found out that some fans started queuing at 10 am. It's interesting that there were only young people there. It's normal, I was like that once too. Fascinating experience. Waiting for the meeting is no less interesting than the meeting itself. But I'll still come back here later. I still need to have a hearty dinner and preferably not drink a lot of water. )
Organization, damn...
I returned to the Olympic by 17:00.
Police all around. I passed the first gate without incident. Near the second gate with turnstiles, I, like all the fans, was stopped by security with metal detectors. For some reason I thought there would be British people, but it turned out to be ours. I talked to them.
Gulliver is not a shopping center.
The organizers recommended that those coming to the concert from other cities with bags or backpacks leave them in storage lockers. Because you can't bring more than A4 format (210x297 mm) to the concert.
But from my conversation with the security, it turned out that there are no storage lockers. When I started making fun of this topic, they seriously told me that I needed to go to the Gulliver shopping center and check in there. I understood that I needed to lock my things in the lockers at the entrance to the Silpo supermarket, which is on the ground floor. :)
If you need to pee, then go to McDonald's, if you need to check in your things, then go to Gulliver.
Love knows no age.
Many people came from all over Ukraine and beyond to get to the concert. From young fans to old fans like me, with 25 years of experience. Some heads in the crowd were completely gray. And the thought that my first time at a Depeche Mode concert was 20 years ago frankly alarms me. )
Early entry.
Unexpectedly, "good organization" began.
The security guards began to divide the people into early entry and everyone else. All the rest, and this was the bulk of the people who had already gathered, began to be driven back through the first gate.
That's right. Into the sun and the roadway. The police were quietly "keeping an eye" on everyone there.
The ticket cost me $90. I bought it in advance, but there was no “early entry”. So, I took the second coolest one: “Platinum Fan”. Fan zone in front of the stage in the second line.
And so, watching this whole expulsion of sinners from heaven to hell, I understood that after the “early entry” went through the second gate, the concert organizers would let everyone else in. So I played the fool and stayed where I was, not migrating with the whole crowd to the warmer climes beyond the first gate. Remaining in the shadow of the high-rise building that covered the entire area near the second gate.
17:00
I asked the security what time they would start letting in. They answered me in pure Surzhik that the concert would start at 19:45. And the “Early Entrance” would start letting in at 17:30. Everything is precise and according to plan with them.
Excellent. I admire your punctuality. Well done.
The people behind the first gate kept coming and coming. The cars on the roadway began to honk more often. The line began to line up along the building and go somewhere far around the corner.
18:30
Finally, they started to launch “early entry”. Slowly. The admiration of the punctuality of the organizers was left at 17:00.
19:00
“Early entry” has passed.
They let the crowd through from the first gate to the second.
I stood first. Stood for a long time. It is not clear why, but everyone was held and not allowed in.
In the end, they let me through the turnstile. They checked the tickets, searched with a metal detector, took away the remaining water. Ok, and thank you for that.
And then a surprise. Of course, the third gate!
The third ticket check. Why?
After 2 meters, the fourth check. Now with the help of scanning the barcode from the ticket to the phone. Of course, nothing was scanned or read. All the super-booper technology, the coolness and pathos of the event stumbled on the Samsung phone.
Heat, nerves, stupidity, delay of the process. Everyone was nervous and arguing with the organizers.
My ticket was counted on the tenth try.
They put on a fabric bracelet with ... drum roll ... of course with a QR code. High technology, let's not forget. And the lagging Samsung at the forefront of progress. :)
Later it turned out that there weren't enough bracelets for everyone, which would allow people to enter their fan zones. Somehow this didn't surprise me. But this was only the beginning of a huge scandal.
Finally they let me go my own way and I was like a lion released from a cage into the vastness of the savannah. I jumped out, but I didn't know what to do with my freedom.
There are no signs. It is not clear where to go.
There are toilets. It's the right thing to do before a concert.
And a sign on a pole near the toilet. Wise people designed everything here, it's immediately clear what they were thinking.
This yellow one is a tent with paraphernalia. There were two of them!
T-shirts for 350 UAH. There are no sizes anymore. How come? Only people from the "early entry" got through. How many of these T-shirts did you have? Okay, it flew by. No time. After all, that's not what I came for.
I found the organizers' representatives huddled together. Some students. They didn't dare to scatter all over the square in front of the stadium. The policemen were huddled together on the street as usual.
I found out where my sector was. I rushed there like a pig.
The stadium has clearly changed for the better. This is my first time there since the reconstruction. It's beautiful.
Ambulance. After two hours of straining to stand in one place, squeezed on all sides by a crowd of people, someone may well get sick. I hope the fate of Minsk will pass us by and Dave will not need this ambulance.
I walked up to the crowd in front of the stage.
The floor in front of the stage is covered with plastic tiles. Finally, you can sit down for a while. Especially since it looks like the concert will start soon.
People were slowly arriving and pressing everyone closer to the stage. I had to stand up.
Time 20:00
At first they played background music.
Der Boden vor der Bühne ist mit Kunststoffplatten ausgekleidet. Endlich ist es möglich, sich eine Weile hinzusetzen. Der Beginn des Konzerts schien eine lange Wartezeit zu sein.
Die Leute kamen langsam an und drängten alle näher an die Bühne. Ich musste aufstehen.
Es war 20:00 Uhr.
Zuerst lief die Hintergrundmusik.
Then the English DJ Maya Jane Coles came out to warm up. It seemed like the sound engineers were tuning the sound for the main concert. The sound was strangely floating. Sometimes the subs pressed the chest to the spine, and sometimes the tweeters just ate away at the brain. And her sets are boring for me.
When I got tired of this house lady, I put my in-ear headphones in my ears and began to perceive the sound more with my body than with my ears. I still have 2 hours to enjoy the Depeche Mode concert that I came here for. I don’t need to be warmed up, I was ready at 5 pm.
The proximity to the stage made itself felt. The subwoofers were playing really loud.
Meanwhile, invisible to everyone, massage therapists were on duty behind the stage.
A couple of days ago in Minsk, a Depeche Mode concert was cancelled an hour and a half before it started. Dave Gahan was taken to the hospital. He stayed there for a day or two.
According to the instructions of the Minsk doctors, the band’s personal chef developed a special diet menu for Gahan and brought food for the soloist directly to his dressing room. Where he warmed up and tuned in alone before going on stage.
Maya played her boom-boom, bowed and left. The staff came out on stage and started to take the covers off all the stage equipment. I pulled the headphones out of my ears. Everyone froze in anticipation.
The anticipation lasted a long time.
Background music again.
The beginning was clearly dragging on.
The people were having fun as best they could. Depeche Mode was being chanted from different sides, "Shame" could be heard, an ironic reproach to the organizers of the concert "Europe".
Graphic legs appeared on the stage screen. This meant that the beginning was about to begin. Everyone was on edge. The temperature was heating up.
21:00. The beginning!!!
As soon as there was a hint of Depeche Mode appearing on stage, the stadium went crazy. Surprisingly, the discontent, irritation and fatigue of four hours of standing immediately passed.
The band members came out on stage and then it all began! :)
The audience exploded.
Video.
Gahan looked cheerful for his age, sometimes even to the point of indecency. The musicians gave themselves to the audience completely, and the audience, in turn, did not remain in debt. In a single impulse, they sang (shouted) in unison all the songs that sounded from the stage. And it did not matter whether these were new compositions from the latest album Spirit, or old hits. The stadium became a single organism and Dave successfully led it from the stage.
Keiner weiß das, aber Dave hatte Textprompter auf der Bühne. Unter seinen Füßen waren auf großen Monitoren die Texte der Lieder zu sehen, die er sang.
Haben Sie die Nobody knows this, but Dave had text prompters on stage. Down below, under his feet, on large monitors, the lyrics to the songs he sang were playing.
Did he start to forget the words?
Meanwhile, behind the stadium...
I had already been enjoying the Depeche Mode concert for half an hour, and chaos and confusion reigned on the approaches to the Olympic Stadium and beyond.
About 3,000 people out of 30,000 were still hanging around outside the stadium gates. The line to get in was about 2 kilometers long. Can you imagine how disappointed they were, standing in a long line to hear that Depeche Mode had already started their performance without you? And all these people had tickets!
But the stadium is designed for a quick entry and exit of a large number of people and has several entrances. Which were closed.
But the organizers forgot that this is Ukraine. Almost halfway through the concert, to the song “Where is the revolution,” people’s nerves gave out and they tore down the barriers to get into their sectors. I think any comments are unnecessary here.
Let’s get back to the concert
In addition to songs from the new album, tracks from previous albums were played: Stripped, the legendary Enjoy the Silence, Personal Jesus, I Feel You. A good light show and the work of the entire group allowed all the fans who came to this bright music show to have a blast and feel the fullness of real music.
Video.
All this frenzy lasted a little over two hours.
After playing, the band left, but they were not going to be let off the stage. The audience called the band back. Old fans know that until Dave says the phrase: “See you next time!”, the concert is not over and they will come out for an encore. And so it happened.
The musicians came out for an encore to perform several hits, including the legendary Personal Jesus, to the roar of the stadium.
Video.
And also at the end of the concert Depeche performed a song unknown to me, which made me very happy. I'll have to look up what it is. If anyone knows the name of the song, please write in the comments, I'll be very grateful.
After the concert was over, many people still didn't leave and waited another 20 minutes for their favorites to return. The technical staff began to remove the equipment from the stage and from everywhere you could hear "Depeche Mode - Depeche Mode!" But the cherished "See you next time!" was pronounced.
I left the stadium.
At the ticket office I met Lesha and Olya who had flown in from Moscow. I already wrote about Lesha in the article about Chord Mojo. We went for a walk together.
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Good friends are like good music. Always happy and there is never too much.
That's how my Depeche Mode concert in Kyiv ended.
Still, thanks to the organizers, despite everything - it was great!
