1982-03-30 Rainbow Club, Oberkorn, Luxembourg
Excerpt from the November 1982 issue of British 'Zig Zag' magazine:
Martin Gore: "We rarely bother to look at our schedules and so naturally thought we'd be playing Brussels. But instead we found ourselves pulling into a tiny place called Oberkorn. It was a curious kind of village with a population that would hardly fill the first few rows of any ordinary theatre so it was quite a fascination for us to find out what was going to happen. Instead of our gig being a handful of people, the place was packed as the audience came from all around and even from across the borders. But there was an interesting twist to this concert. When we got back to our hotel our record company told us that whilst the 'A' side of our single was all set, they need a title rapidly for the 'B' side. Like I said, we're never all that good on names and the first thing that sprang to mind was the name of this village. Oberkorn. So that's the title we used!"
Andy Fletcher in 2011 for Time Out Dubai:
"We played one gig really early in our career, where half the PA was in one room and the other half was in another. It was two different stages, so we had to have half the band on one half of this stage set-up and the other half on the other. It was in Luxembourg, and I remember it distinctly because our bus broke down, and we were in this small town for about four days. We actually wrote a song about it, called ‘Oberkorn (It’s a Small Town)’."
In October 1982, Dave Gahan told Flexipop magazine that this was the "worst gig" so far, because of the club being "so small that half the PA was in one room and the other half in another."
Luxembourgian newspaper L'essentiel recollected in 2009 (translated):
"When the group arrived, it was total chaos", remembers André Depienne who had organised the concert, together with Roland Nilles, both proprietors of the club. The small venue which is good for about 250 people exceeds the expectations of the Brits. "Fifteen technicians, the members of the group and the manager were stressed out', tells Depienne. After hours of tinkering, there was finally the soundcheck. RTL set off to record the concert. "In the moment of connecting the cameras, the fuses fried and so did the programming of the electronic band. After the second try, Depeche Mode wanted to cancel the concert, says Depienne. But once the electronic problems settled down, the concert continued. Since the stage is low and RTL had put their cameras in the back of the venue, the crowd had to sit on the floor. "But when the group started playing, a woman stood up and started to dance. I have heard later on that she was the singer's girlfriend", tells Nilles. As the crowd remained standing, the situation degenerated and the group had to interrupt the concert in order to alleviate the mood", says Nilles today. "I knew that the group was successful, but did not know that they would one day fill a stadium."
Their experience in Oberkorn has really been unforgettable for Depeche Mode. The group had given the title "Oberkorn (It's A Small Town) to an instrumental song released on the B-side of the single "The Meaning Of Love" (1982). Legend has it that that producer had asked Martin Gore to give a title for the track during the moment when they were in Luxemburg. He had spontaneously replied: "Oberkorn". "It's A Small Town" was inspired by a remark by the waiter of the hotel that the group was staying in. To Gore's question of if they could have an egg for breakfast, the waiter replied that this was not possible because they were in the countryside: "It's a small town!"
Roland Nilles also recounted in 2015:
"When I brought Depeche Mode for the show Chewing Rock, broadcast on RTL, we shot it at a disco. [TV show host] Georges Lang had asked me to keep the audience sitting but a girl got up and danced. Security came in, there was an exchange of slaps, and all of a sudden the singer threw the microphone to come and fight with the bouncers. It was his girlfriend!"
On December 6, 2020, RTL Today published an article about this concert along with 2 minutes and 14 seconds of concert footage; the footage is of Just Can't Get Enough, New Life, and See You, in that order. It is presumed that the filming and recording of this concert was successful, despite the immense technical issues described above, and hopefully the entire recording has been digitally preserved. Note that the video in the article has at least two glitches; hopefully these are issues with the video as-uploaded to the news site and not an issue present on the original recorded tapes.
