`Reach out, touch space'

Clive Leviev-Sawyer

It has been some time since I have been to a live concert.

Perched far back up in the stands at Sofia's Lokomotiv Stadium at the height of the Depeche Mode concert, I was puzzled to see thousands of tiny illuminated rectangles. Perhaps, I thought, this is some form of high-tech successor to the cigarette lighter held aloft in emotional solidarity with the performer. I was wrong. What I was seeing were the glowing screens of mobile phones recording little excerpts from the concert. So much for intellectual property rights.

Depeche Mode are great artists, and I must admire a lead performer who, at the same age as myself, can strut his stuff so energetically for such a long time. Were I to try to emulate him, something I cannot imagine anyone paying to see, various joints and muscles would ache for a long time. Shortcomings of the concert: the long interval between the sole support act (why only one, pray tell?) and the main attraction taking the stage. Wholly inadequate provision for beer sales. And, as to the band themselves, an almost complete lack of engagement with the wider audience. Little more than a "hello Sofia".

Between the 1980s and now, there have probably been about four Depeche Mode hits that I have really liked. Yes, they played Personal Jesus, which was at very least the song we all came to hear, especially given its enormous cult status in Bulgaria. I suspect there is a secret protocol in the constitution that it should be played at every party in this country. But my abiding impression is of a great musical performance, a nice AV light show, but of a lack of emotional engagement between audience and band. There was a lot of reaching out, but when it happened, there was nothing more than space to touch.

Polina Slavcheva

Depeche's sound wasn't strong enough and the music wasn't drunk enough, and I didn't know the lyrics, and I wanted The Doors, and I nevertheless converted: to alienism and them. "Angels with sileeent wiiiings, need special tendering" (of course wrong lyrics), "Oh my god what have we done to youuuuuu" - divinely alien.... And I hated Depeche when I was 10 (cause they took my sister away and then she didn't like Michael Jackson), and I only loved them on June 21.

Seven aaaangels, with seveeeen truuumpets send them home on the moorning train... they are demonic saints.

Before: my eyes on a 10-metre ocean of people ahead of me. After: 10 kilometres of walking back home, emotion run out, stupid taxis. The following day: talked to people about Dave's skin, Dave's white back. I fell in love with Dave's white back: how Dave let light and sweat slide down his skin and how he let pagan fire swim on him, and how I wanted and wanted and wanted (I wanted!) to shout out "Reach out, touch Dave! (and I never liked Dave).

Before the concert: silence interrupted by a Serbian "pichku materinu", a purple explosion of noise - and then so many people dancing to songs, phones shining, mystery Kosovars jumping shouting at the sky, mystery aliens on purple demonic mystery stage, mystery locked in giant flat video walls crashing images in thousands and letting them appear entrapped like lyrics instead of dark and precious, and the cross hanging down from the camera, looming strangely huge - and that's how I converted to alienism; 10 years back I hated them. PS:  I didn't even pay for the concert, I got it free, but it was even more beautiful and strange like that.