1988-06-18 Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, USA

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Depeche Mode's famous 101st and final concert of the 1987-1988 Music For The Masses Tour at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. A documentary and double live album, 101, was released of the concert.

A first-generation audience recording of the first half of the set (up to and including Things You Said) recorded by dmlive2k (Emmett C.) is currently circulating, but any FLAC version you currently find is a transcode of a 112kbps MP3 version of the recording. The second tape containing the rest of the recording is unfortunately missing. Any audience recording of Depeche Mode from this date cannot be shared on this wiki or DIME since it is an alternative recording of officially released content. 90 second samples of Emmett's audience recording were once provided here, but have been taken down to help avoid any legal issues after recommendation by the official site's webmaster.

The Orange County Register reported the day before: "The idea for the Rose Bowl concert was first kicked around in 1986 when the brass at Avalon Attractions and KROQ came up with the idea for a "new music" stadium show. In addition to Depeche Mode, they wanted the Cure, another British post-punk band very popular in Southern California, but plans fell through. The LA-based band Oingo Boingo was mentioned as a possible headliner, but the group planned to headline its own shows at the Greek Theater."

There was some unexpected rain during Depeche Mode's set. During the first chorus of Sacred, the taper Emmett shouts "it's starting to rain, fuck!". Emmett mentions shouting "makes it better" about one minute in to Something To Do - his comment is referring to the rain which cooled everyone off on the blazing hot day, thus "making it better". Another moment later in the song, during the refrain "I can't stand another drink ...", lightning strikes and very loud crowd uproar drowns out the music on the recording. You can even hear the crowd uproar on the official '101' releases - I had always wondered what that was! Emmett mentioned separately that the rain was dying down by the time Blasphemous Rumours was playing and lightning did not occur during the song.

Here are direct quotes from Emmett regarding the rain and lightning:

By the way, historical note – at 21:06 when I shout “makes it better” – that’s when it started raining which was a freak tropical storm. The whole day had been clear skies and super hot. The event started at 3 PM with a band called Wire, then a few others like Thomas Dolby and others. Clouds mysteriously came in once Depeche took the stage, and it started raining on us around that 21 minute mark, then lightning lit up the sky at 22:06 “I can’t stand another drink”… crowd goes NUTS from the lightning. Richard Blade incorrectly recalls the show as it raining during Blasphemous Rumours. It stopped raining within a minute or two of the lightning. Very crazy!


for sure it started raining during Sacred. It was a freak tropical storm that just rolled through. Lasted about 15-20 minutes. The lightning happened ONLY during Something To Do, NOT Blasphemous Rumours. Richard Blade is the culprit (and the band) for saying that it was during Blasphemous Rumours. There's a massive crowd roar during Something To Do right during the refrain "I can't stand another drink... (lightning)" - all of us were like oh shit!! I think the rain starting dying down by the time Blasphemous Rumours was on - but the lightning was most definitely during Something To Do :)

I think I yelled "makes it better" because it was a blazing hot day being out there in the sun from something like 2 PM through the evening. The rain cooled everyone off!

Additionally, Twitter user @epsquid recalls the same events as Emmett in this Twitter conversation. He also mentioned that there was an "epic trash wave" comprised of cardboard trays that made its way around the stadium at one point. He says: "[they] were being thrown like freebies all at the same time and it looked like a tornado was making its way thru the Rose Bowl". Furthermore, Depeche Mode waited until it got dark to go on so the Rose Bowl sat in darkness for a while; people began to chant "Lights, lights, lights, yeah!" as a play on the Thompson Twins' song "Lies, Lies, Lies". He also remembers that at one point, half the stadium began to yell "Tastes great!" and then the other half would yell "Less filling!" based on a Miller Lite beer commercial which used that phrase; this went on for a few moments.

Andy McCluskey from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark recalled in 2009:

"There was four acts. There was ourselves and Depeche (who had been on the entire tour) and then there was Thomas Dolby and Wire. I remember being terrified: so frightened that my stage fright manifested itself in, I guess a form of narcolepsy. I just fell asleep. They had to wake me up five minutes before we went on stage because my body had just shut down. I was like, "I can't face this, this is scary. I remember it being a great gig. After we had gone through 'Enola Gay' - because we went on stage [and] started the drum machine to 'Enola Gay' - the audience went nuts. I counted it, "In one, two, three, four..." and just as we came in with the whole band for the main melody, there was a power spike in the generators. Everything went off on stage for a split second, and when it came back on, it was just me and the drums. The keyboards had gone off. They are computer keyboards, and two keyboard players were thrashing dead keyboards which was just reading back to them: "disk read error: this will take a while..." [laughs] And so we did this dub version of 'Enola Gay' for about a minute, whilst the fucking keyboards reloaded, [of] which the audience probably thought it was some particular dub trick we had thrown in to amuse them for a minute. Then it came back together again. The gig was amazing, but it was an inauspicious start to a massive concert. But it was an amazing day."

Thomas Dolby also recalled:

[The Rose Bowl gig] represented sort of the zenith of the conquest of California and increasingly the rest of North America by Depeche Mode. Their sound, and the tour that they did for Music For The Masses, basically followed the infection of the KROQ factor across America to all of the different radio formats and different radio stations. And I think they fed off each other. I think each new city that they got to had just sort of got the bug of the KROQ format, had hit different cities, and so it was very clear that by the time that they got to the Rose Bowl, which is the biggest gig that they had ever done and really the biggest electronic music gig that had ever happened, it was gonna be a big celebration, it was gonna be a sort of Woodstock for that kind of KROQ, electronic sound."

Actress Khrystyne Haje, The Edge from U2, and Slim Jim Phantom attended this gig. Actor Wil Wheaton also attended the gig, you can read his report here.

Related content

Set list

Ticket photo provided by Miguel Angel Valbuena (Twitter user @epsquid).
  1. Pimpf
  2. Behind The Wheel
  3. Strangelove
  4. Sacred
  5. Something To Do
  6. Blasphemous Rumours
  7. Stripped
  8. Somebody (*)
  9. Things You Said (*)
  10. Black Celebration
  11. Shake The Disease
  12. Nothing
  13. Pleasure, Little Treasure
  14. People Are People
  15. A Question Of Time
  16. Never Let Me Down Again
  17. A Question Of Lust (*)
  18. Master And Servant
  19. Just Can't Get Enough
  20. Everything Counts