Depeche Mode: the podcast - Why Wasn’t In The End on Memento Mori? Answering Emails - Depeche Mode: The Podcast w/ Jon Justice

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, this is mort and Gold from Depeche Mode. All right,
this is digone from Depeche Mode, and you are listening
to my word bro. Yes, that's right, Depeche Mode the
podcast and I'm your host, John Justice, and welcome to
this listener feedback answering emails heavy episode of the show,

(00:31):
So a couple of items before we dive into your
emails this week. For those of you that listen via
the podcast and not on YouTube, I hope you enjoyed
the treat from earlier this week. For those that do
enjoy this on YouTube, I hope you will take the
time to go to the podcast because I was able

(00:53):
to track down the cleanest version of In the End,
taken from the Depeche Mode film m and its end credits,
and it is the complete song minus about ten seconds
at the beginning. So somebody, as I suspected would happen,

(01:16):
went and recorded live the new song from the momento
more Sessions in the End. I've played it before, but
a much rougher copy on a previous episode. They must
have done this at a subsequent screening during the Tribeca
Film Festival, but it's one of the cleanest versions of
the track that I've heard so far. The only problem

(01:37):
with the record was the first like I said, ten
or fifteen seconds was cut off. So what I did
was because I do have some mad editing skills. That's
what twenty nine years of radio will get you. I
can go and re edit songs. So I pulled a

(01:58):
portion of the track from the end and then put
it at the beginning and basically created my own intro
to make up for the lack of the beginning of
the song. So I have no idea if that's how
the song starts. Beef that as it may. My edit
is available via the podcast in its entirety on the

(02:20):
whatever podcast platform you use to listen to podcasts, and
it's a fairly clean version. I mean it's a bootleg version,
make no mistake, so it has a bit of that
echo to it. But I've been listening to it on
a daily basis, and I took the time to go
and beef up and try to clean up the audio
a bit. But it's it is just in the end,

(02:42):
there's nothing else added to it. There's a lot of
mixes that have been done based off of what people
have found in terms of the recordings that people did
during some of those festivals, but this was clearly the
cleanest version that I had heard so far. In serves
to fill in the stop gap until we actually get
the official release here in a couple of months, and

(03:02):
hopefully it comes along with those other three tracks that
we're waiting for, like two point zero, Loose Cannon, and
I always forget the name of the third one. I
want to take a moment though, and talk about the
song itself, because I heard somebody make a comment, and
I can't remember exactly where it was. It might have

(03:26):
been on the home forum the Depeche dash mode form,
but I heard somebody make a comment that maybe the
band left the track off the album because it shares
some similarities with Ghosts. Again, in terms of the lyrical content,
I can see that argument being made, but even then,

(03:46):
considering the theming of Memento Maury around death, that song
would have absolutely fit in with the context of the
rest of the album. I mean, as a matter of fact,
this is not a comment on the quality of the

(04:07):
songs that it will including a momento moriy, but just
with the theme and the title of the album alone,
that track fits in much better than say, always you
or people are good. Caroline's Monkey. Again, I'm not commenting

(04:28):
on well, maybe not Caroline's Monkey, but certainly always you
and people are good keeping with the theme of the album,
and it's a really strong song. I know it's subjective,
and I know a lot of people, especially when we've
gone through potential you know, set lists, right, dream set

(04:51):
lists varying nature in terms of how we put those together.
But I know that you know, there's a lot of
B sides out there that I don't particularly care for,
but I saw a consensus of you who appreciated those songs.
And so when it comes to a song like in
the End that to me almost seems singles worthy. It

(05:12):
has a vibe to it that reminds me of black
celebration and really interesting, not just instrumentation, but the way
that the lyrics are formed and how much of Martin
is included in the track, and how the vocals even

(05:33):
step on each other a little bit as it moves
through to the chorus, between Dave singing the song itself
and then Martin coming in with the chorus aspect of it,
and then Dave joining him on in the end. In
the chorus part of the song. I just feel it's
an incredibly strong track, and the more that I listened

(05:56):
to it, the more surprised I am that it wasn't
included on the album. So I'm adding this to the
list of songs that I or the the list of
questions that I will ask Martin or Dave when I
am given the opportunity, why didn't you include in the
end on the album? Because that is a really strong track,

(06:17):
So I'm curious to get your thoughts. I haven't received
a lot of feedback from releasing the entirety of the
song on the podcast. That being said, most of the time,
my feedback ends up coming from the YouTube channel people
that comment, and I did not put it up on
YouTube just because I didn't want to get hit with
a cease and desist. I saw that there were some
other versions of the song that had been yanked down

(06:39):
by the label. I can get away with that on
the podcast, I can't get away with doing that on
a YouTube, and I didn't want to see my channel
get dinged so talkshow nerd at gmail dot com. I
would love to hear from you, and speaking from hearing
from you, I got a lot of listener feedback that
I've into this week, so let's not waste any time.

(07:00):
First off, Jan writes in and says this, I really
enjoyed the fifties version of Violator. You probably know the
country cover of People Are People for VW that uses
a similar approach, So it wasn't a shock. This optimistic
or shiny makeover has no negative impact on the songs.

(07:21):
Just the contrast between the vibe of the music and
the meaning of clean that made me giggle a bit.
I like such unexpected covers. Take, for instance, Lillian by
Rotten Tomatoes. They took a mediocre song I agree with
you on that and turned it into a delightful blend
of punk's good, death metal and funk. Check it out

(07:44):
if you don't know it. I can imagine Martin laughing
loudly when they start playing the funky part. This cover,
together with Martin and Dave's take on the Final Countdown
and their hair massage in on The Big Ones with
Simon Amstell, are the most entertaining pieces of Depeche Mode

(08:05):
related media. I know what are yours? Oh? Interesting? Hmmm?
My favorite pieces entertaining pieces of Depeche Mode media, and
that's hard I mean, I love all the documentaries I can.
I constantly watch at least once a year, if not more,
all the documentaries that are attached to the remastered versions

(08:28):
of the of the albums. I am the interviews that
were done for the best of release, and unfortunately my
DVD doesn't work anymore and need to track those down.
But I thought that the the the documentary on that
was really really good, especially as they went from song

(08:49):
to song to song with interviews of the band intermixed
with the covers of each of the singles. I really
thought that that was that was done really well. The
docum entering on the singles release as well was are
really good documentaries. More recently, the interview that the band
did with Zach Lowe I thought was absolutely fantastic. Really

(09:11):
enjoyed that interview. So as always, thank you for the comment, Yah,
And let me make one more little comment on this,
adding to the questions of the that I would ask
the band if given the chance. It seems like earlier
going back to their peak, kind of starting with songs
of faith and devotion. But when you look at the
other the earlier albums and especially Violator only having nine tracks,

(09:35):
but nine really strong tracks. There are so many different
times when you look at all the releases that came
post Songs of Faith and Devotion, starting with Ultra and
then down the line, those albums could have been tightened
up so much. And I think specifically like Sounds of
the Universe and Playing the Angel and then the rest,

(09:59):
and I'll even go through you know, Spirit in Memento
Mori as well, that there's a lot of tracks on
those albums that I feel I could have been resigned
to B sides and made a much tighter album. Probably
the biggest example I would give is Sounds of the Universe.
I think that album had some really really strong tracks
on it, and unfortunately it was kind of spiked in

(10:21):
with a lot of mediocre ones. I just thought about
this because of Lillian in a track that was mediocre.
In my opinion, that if they had left off the album,
I feel I could have created a much tighter release
and could have been resigned to a B side. So
I'd be very curious to see why. It seems like
the band was open more so than they were in

(10:41):
the early years to adding more songs that I would
typically think they would save as B sides do you
have any thoughts on that, drop me an email, all right,
Glenn nineteen sixty five, right ten, and says regarding Dave
not recalling in the end, I think it was just
his humor and the fact that as a late edition

(11:03):
this song would have been recorded some two years plus previously.
That's a good point. So a lot of time and
no performance of this song. Since that makes sense interesting
that you should you should find the bonus addition pre
populated within the Apple catalog. Why would it be there.
Someone somewhere must have entered this. I hope this is right,

(11:25):
perhaps for release angside the film, So alongside the film.
All right. So friend of the show Jeff messaged me,
and I should have remembered this, and I didn't. I
don't think it was Depeche Mode related. I had completely
forgot that the band Flyleaf, of which I'm actually a fan,

(11:50):
had released an album several years back called Memento Maury,
and that album, Memento Maury by Flyleaf, also included a
bonus edition. So I think that while my discovery was true,
my speculation was wrong, and that it turns out that

(12:12):
that preloaded Memento Mary bonus edition was actually attached to
the fly Leaf album and not depeche Mode. So my
apologies for getting you excited if I did over the
course of the past week, but I wanted to let
you know what I had discovered. All right. Per Winding
writes this, Hey, John, you now have a new subscriber.

(12:35):
I'm fifty five years of age. I've been a fan
of Depeche Mode since I was eleven or twelve years old.
Very good content. Welcome, Glad to have you here, especially
someone of a similar age as I am fifty three.
We depeche Mode fans are getting up there. Speaking of
getting up there, happy birthday to Martin Gore, who turned
a sixty four this past week. All right. Michael Tennant

(12:58):
m Tenant Music writes this, I know this is going
to come across like I'm having a pity party, but
it drives me nuts how much attention AI generated music
gets when I'm putting out real music and only a
handful of listeners find it. I get the novelty, but
damn it's frustrating now. Pont Dohawk, responding to Michael Tennant,

(13:22):
writes this, I share your sentiment. It's fascinating AI can
create a decent song in a matter of seconds, where
it takes me almost a month for a non vocal
instrumental track. My optimistic take is that AI music will
eventually be banned from all major music streaming platforms, since

(13:43):
the assumption is that as an artist, you are using
these platforms to share your unique art and to get
recognized for your talent and skill. One AI generated music
is entirely void of this premise. No creative or technical
skill required to type in a prompt and to have

(14:05):
an app spit out a song. There is a fine line, however,
what if you use AI to generate a vocal or
a spoken word track in your song, or you use
AI to generate weird new samples. I think artists, labels,
and streaming platforms and AI creators seem to come together
and somehow figure out a fair solution. You know, you

(14:25):
create an interesting scenario. And I had a conversation with
I have a friend of mine used to be a
global threat to analyst, ran his own company, Valin's Global,
testified in Congress A Ton he's one of the foremost
experts on European terrorism, but he's left that field and

(14:47):
has now moved into AI generated gaming, and he runs
Valen's Games. I actually asked him this morning about the
possibility of streaming platforms banning AI, and he said that
probably wouldn't happen simply because AI generated music is going
to be so what's the word I'm looking for. The

(15:10):
proliferation of AI in music will be so abundant that
it would be near impossible to do so, meaning that
even traditional artists will begin at some point to be
utilizing AI in some way when working on their songs,
just in the production part of it. Of course, if
you take a stance and don't use it at all.
But when you consider how AI is infiltrating so many

(15:34):
facets of our lives, one can easily extrapolate that to
ban anything AI related outright may be just a complete
impossibility in the future. But I thought the comment and
the reply to Michael Tennant was rather interesting, given that
AI does present the possibility where an individual who was
really good at creating music and beats, but perhaps does

(15:59):
not have the vocal chop, maybe they're good at writing
lyrics as well, they could go and utilize AI to
provide the vocals for the for the music that they
are creating. I think there's a lot of there's a
lot of really good opportunities out there, and I am
confident that the consumers will be able to differentiate and

(16:19):
there will always be a place for your, for lack
of a better way to describe it, traditional musicians over
those that are focusing on AI. You know, it's funny,
we created we created an AI song for my show
and it's become incredibly popular. It's a really really good,
catchy song, but it's created by AI. Now I'm not
making any money off of it. I'm just using that

(16:41):
as a as an example. But I certainly can understand
and share the frustration that you know, musicians have over
songs getting attention over others and the novelty of it.
But just like anything, I mean, you go back to
Napster and how much, how many things changed in the
wake of file sharing services, and how you know, now

(17:07):
we figured out a new way in order to consume
music and purchase our music, for good or bad. I
think the same thing will ring true relating to AI
as well. All Right, lastly, let's get into Ron. Ron
wrote me last week, I just simply did not get
a chance to get to his emails so I'm gonna
share it with you this week, Sir Right's ron. I
think I agree with most of your take on this,

(17:28):
but why not reason it out. The natural line of
delineation between what I call classic depeche Mode and late
depeche Mode is to most Allen's departure. My delineation is
classic and twenty first century. The cutoff is the singles
eighty six to ninety eight. I can hear the screams

(17:51):
now about Ultra not being classic. I agree that's a dilemma.
I don't consider Ultra to be twenty first to say
century per se, not only since it spans ninety six
and ninety seven, but the very change in sound and
the composition from Ultra to Exciter is very distinct. The

(18:13):
dilemma appears to be because that also applies for the
change between Ultra and Songs of Faith and Devotion. Let
me stop here for just a moment. I actually agree
with you. I think that delineation and stopping at Ultra
is the is the proper if you're gonna make a
delineation within the band's timeline. I agree with you that

(18:33):
Ultra is the endpoint and then it restarts. Even though
Alan is out of the mix, and most people use
Alan as the delineation point. Ultra was still carrying on
even just I'll say, in spirit, even though Alan didn't die,
but even just in spirit was carrying on what Alan

(18:55):
had done. And Tim Simonon being brought on for Ultra
was absolutely the intent of him to fill the hole
for Allan, and in doing so he created very similar
landscape or soundscapes and that cinematic feel that Alan would

(19:16):
provide for the band. Would Ultra have sounded different if
it were that Allan had stayed, well, of course it would,
but a lot of things would have been different, I
mean in terms of Dave's recovery, the importance of the
band to Dave, Alan leaving, the impact that that had

(19:38):
on Dave and the rest of the band members as well.
I mean, there's a lot of what IF's involved there. Now,
getting back to Ron's post u, he says, the dilemma
appears to be because that also applies for the change
between Ultra and songs and faith and devotion. Ultralies in
this transition transitional zone. To me, exciter is the album

(20:00):
that really ushered in a mature post. Alan band completely agree,
even if they were still trying to find their new footing.
I feel that this ultimately did. They ultimately did that
with playing the Angel, everything hence up to Spirit all
fit a recognizable sound and anticipatory degree of theme and experimentation.

(20:20):
It flows the way the construction time again through Violator did.
It's an era Memento Maury broke that mold, in my opinion,
interesting and if the band had twenty more years left
in them, we would see a third era. Yeah, I
actually agree with that. I think you make a really
good point. Now back to Ultra and it's interesting too,

(20:41):
really quick. That dividing line with Mento Moury, I think
has a lot in common with the delineation going back
to Alan, leaving with the departure of Fletch Martin and
Dave going out of the loan using the same producer
as Spirit, but bringing on martis a longney. I think
all of those things play into a new era that
I hope at least last another album. Ultra has so

(21:06):
many hints and relics from the previous four albums. Some
commented back during its release that it sounded like the
natural progression from Violator. If Songs of Faith and Devotion
had never existed. I think the band actually said that
as well. I take some issue with that opinion, but
the elements are there. I bet the band thought so too.

(21:26):
Maybe sticking to a more familiar and comfortable sonic environment
to avoid the struggle that was Songs of Faith and
Devotions development the subsequent singles eighty six through ninety eight
was a necessary and strategic move to cap the millennium.
They were ready to tour and needed to release to promote. Yes,
Depeche Mode uses albums to promote tours, while everyone else

(21:48):
must do the opposite. This leaves Ultra at an awkward
spot of being such a damned beautiful collection of subtle
echoes from a bygone electronictte crescendos mixed with newborn size
signs of creative relief. Pulled in one direction by the
massive and overbearing songs of Faith and Devotion and another

(22:09):
by what only nearly only a nearly fatal series of
life events can inspire. Ultra will always have a special
place for me. It was the album that spanned my
university years, along with the singles eighty six through ninety eight,
and the first one where I had the opportunity to
buy and listen to it and its singles as they

(22:31):
were released. Finally, on the topic of a new singles collection,
the single zero one to twenty four sounds like an
adequate and satisfying capstone to the twenty first century depeche Mode.
I hope they continue the artwork theme from eighty six
to ninety eight, which was applied to the re release
of the eighty one to eighty five. As you all remember,

(22:54):
the neuro spicy side of me would very much appreciate
that consistency. The idea of releasing the final tracks from
a Mento Maria singles or B sides, it's reasonable, but
I think all of them will come out with m.
The new singles collection is the band's chance to give
something new, and I bet Martin's conjured up new material already.

(23:15):
All that said, the tour is almost perfunctory, and might
as well be one of the few to admit it.
I'd like it'd likely turn out to be a farewell tour.
If that's the case, then they'd obviously have to play
their entire collection, not just from two thousand and one
and on. Obviously expect all the singles, maybe one or

(23:35):
two surprise drops. Feel free to skip this part if
you choose my terror, if you share my ramble. But
I included a potential set list, so we'll go with
the set list. We like reading a good set list
here and my apologies. By the way, I know my
voice is a little scratchy and dry. It happens sometimes.
I did my show this morning and been talking a
lot this week. It's Thursday when I'm recording, so I'm

(23:56):
a little fried. Let's see. So Ron setlist goes as
follow world in my eyes, A question of time, it's
no good, precious walking into my shoes behind the wheel,
blasphemous rumors, nice ghosts again, a question of lust, Home
leave in silence, and then we get a new song,
new life updated, interesting, a pain that I'm used to,

(24:18):
stripped wrong, policy of truth, strange love, I Feel You,
another new song, enjoyed, the silence, personal, Jesus, everything counts.
Just can't get enough, never let me down again? Thanks
as always, Ron, No, Ron, thank you all right. I'm

(24:39):
gonna rest my voice because I have one more show
to do tomorrow, but thank you so much for checking
out this week's episode. I always appreciate it. Listen If
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out my science fiction's face opera series. It's called The Embark.
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(25:01):
follow pilots Taft, Keitha along with their crew on a
journey of survival across the galaxy as they fight for
humanity's future. It is a fun, fast paced, and action
packed science fiction adventure with a lot of eighties through
two thousands nostalgia attached, and a lot of depeche mode
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(25:25):
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Pick up and bark. Book one Today, written for adults,
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(25:48):
Joen Justice. Thank you so much for hanging out with
me again this week. I hope wherever you are you're happy,
you're healthy, and you're safe. God blessed to all the devotees,
and I will talk to you again next week. Bach.
Hello is Martin got by slots to Pechemo podcast

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Depeche Mode: the podcast - Why Wasn’t In The End on Memento Mori? Answering Emails

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