1981-07-25 Zuiderpark, The Hague, The Netherlands

Notes

This concert had the same "metallic" intro that was played at 1981-08-02 Jenkinsons, Brighton, England, UK (which has a complete recording available to streaming & download). The intro sounds like a slowed down version of Shout.

In the documentary on the DVD in the 'Sounds Of The Universe' boxset, Martin Gore stumbles upon a poster of this gig, and he and Daniel Miller have the following exchange:

Daniel: That was the first gig outside of the UK, wasn't it? Where I was told that it was gonna be 30,000 [people] or something?

Martin: Yeah. Daniel was telling us, "it's 30,000 people, we gotta get all the way to Holland."

Daniel: It was a festival.

Martin: Yeah. And it was like, 300 people. And half of them had come with us, because they thought they'd come to some huge festival in Holland!

Swie Tio had interviewed the band in 1981 for Dutch magazine in 'OOR'. In 2007, he remembered a nice anecdote (translated):

Question: Do you have any funny anecdotes from your career?

Swie: Depeche Mode were a long time ago [in 1981], when they were not so big, playing at Zuiderpark in The Hague. There was this open-air theatre in the middle of the park, with a little lake in front of it and and behind that, the public can stand/sit. Clearly this is a super nice location. Before Depeche Mode started playing I did an interview with two of the band members. After a while they were getting a little fidgety and they suggested to go walking in Zuiderpark. We then did the the interview while walking. It was such an animated conversation that we totally did not pay attention to where we were walking and, you guessed it, we became totally lost. This was not so great since Depeche Mode had to go and perform. There were no passers-by to be seen. The only people we met were people who had no idea where the theatre was located. Eventually we arrived too late and the band members had to run to go on stage on time."

Set list

1. Intro
2. Television Set
3. Boys Say Go!
4. New Life
5. Puppets
6. Ice Machine
7. Tora! Tora! Tora!
8. Ice Machine
9. Big Muff
10. Just Can't Get Enough
11. What's Your Name?
12. The Price Of Love

Sources

• Source 1 is a good audience recording.