Random babblings from an underproductive mind.

I don't know what the temperature is here; it was 25 degrees (does any-one know where the special characters hang out in Opera?) when I got here, and I don't think that it's gotten cooler. I went walk-about yesterday, completely failing to find my workmates who were also here for the Depeche Mode concert. And then I walked to Parken, the football stadium where the concert was being held; it was a bit further away than I had planned for. I shocked myself be finding it with the aid of a map. This does not happen in my universe. Maps are a secret and arcane science. Anyway. By the time D.M. got started, I had been on my feet in very warm weather for several hours, and was probably a bit dehydrated to boot, and got a bit dizzy. I can now therefore tell you with some authority that getting dizzy when near the top of a very high, very steep football stadium is not a good idea. I nearly fell a couple of times. If I had, a position would have opened for a blogger at my.opera.com/garlingmatthews.

The concert itself was strange, and not just because of my altered state. I had my trepidations. Dave Gahan is a consummate performer, but I don't think that most of D.M.s' music really lends itself to the stadium milieu, especially their later work, it's too intimate. And so it was. The concert warmed up towards the end, which concentrated on hits from earlier albums, but it took a while; and there were a couple of songs in the middle where Martin Gore was left alone on stage with a couple of songs, and he is not a consummate performer. He has a haunting voice, but no stage presence.

All in all, we got a synth band playing rock gods, a few years after their peak. But still, it did sound great, and the presence of a very loud live drummer filled out the sound nicely; and Dave Gahan is a rock god.

Isn't a little funny that all of the music (after the first album) of one the world's two biggest synth bands (Pet Shop Boys) is written by their bass guitarist?

I stayed in my room for most of today to recover, so it must have been a great concert, right?

I can also tell you, to my great discomfort, that there is a lot of open prostitution right in the middle of Copenhagen. On every street corner between the Tivoli and my hotel, in fact.