Jim Harrington is a reporter with the Bay Area News Group and caught Depeche Mode at the SAP Center in San Jose on March 25 ahead of the tour stop at Kia Forum in Inglewood on Tuesday, March 28. The second leg of the tour hits Chase Center in San Francisco on Dec. 3; Pechanga Arena in San Diego on Dec. 6 and 8; Kia Forum Dec. 10 and 12; and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles Dec. 15 and 17.
It had been more than five years since Depeche Mode last performed in the Bay Area.
And judging by the sizable pre-show buzz going on inside the SAP Center in San Jose on Saturday (March 25), fans may just have been counting down the days since the English electronic act had rolled through the same venue — as well as Oakland Arena — with its blockbuster Global Spirit Tour in October 2017.
Fans were absolutely buzzing with excitement — like they weren’t just about to see a regular ol’ concert, but rather a “true event” — as they stood in long lines for band merchandise and joyfully greeted old high school and college friends in the concourse while they waited, for just a few moments more, to see Depeche Mode finally take the stage on its epic Memento Mori Tour.
The sold-out San Jose date was just the second stop on the band’s 19th concert tour, which opened two days earlier at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, and the group used the occasion to nicely showcase 23 cuts from 10 of its 15 studio albums in just around two hours of stage time.
With more than 40 years in the game, and all of its best-selling albums having been released decades prior, the band — which now consists of vocalist Dave Gahan and the multi-talented Martin Gore — certainly qualifies as a legacy act. Yet, don’t try and tell that to Depeche Mode, which operates in very un-legacy-like fashion by showcasing new material in concert instead of focusing primarily on the hits.
Gahan and Gore opened the darkly mesmerizing evening of music with two relatively subdued cuts — “My Cosmos Is Mine”…
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