The Spark That Lit the Flame

People Are People / Depeche Mode (released as single 1984)
This is the release that took a little suburban girl and changed her forever. When I was little I liked to listen to music, but nothing ever made me insane for music, I was quite young. I remember listening to this song when it came out on my Barbie radio that I got as a Christmas gift from my grandparents and they played this on 77AM which was most famous for the Don Imus and Howard Stern talk show....but because it was a very forward liberal based station, it played a decent array of music now and then for AM radio.
I remember hearing this on the radio and it seemed like the coolest thing with those metal dropping sounds at the beginning, this was definitely not Billy Joel or Carly Simon. The voice was so strange to me, everything was so strange to me, but it was so damn cool. In all its treble splendor playing out on the hand-held Barbie radio....

It was also at this time that the girl I was really good friends with, had an older sister that was really into all this new wave anglo-fronted music, and owned the album. I remember listening to it in the car when her mom would take her to a friends house, and my friend and I would accompany them, as we were too young to stay at home, at the age of 7/8. Her sister was totally cool, and we idolized her, so whatever she thought was cool, so did we.

It was strange to be a seven-year old who was obsessing over Depeche Mode and knew the words to songs that didn't make sense, but sounded, once again, so damn cool. My favorite from this album back then was Pipeline and Told You So...I thought Everything Counts was a bit sad because of the severity of the elements and objects that people were confined too...in retrospect, I think I have always had a sympathetic nature towards oppressive elements in our society, even though I would have by no means referred to it as that...mostly imagery in my head and black and white music videos.

This single pretty much saturated my head and upon owning the album on tape, I began falling further into my anglophile ways, and wanting to be british, sound british and live in all of the videos on MTV that were made in Britain. Little did I know that had it not been for America, most of the New Wave culture and music that I was freaking out over, would have failed to exist. Granted Kraftwerk helped just a little, but the stylized crafter decadence and lack of that I saw, was the hook...and much of that was because of us yanks! And a big gulp of jealousy and idolization by one Malcom MacLaren, but I digress.

This was the single most influential song/album of my life, because it was the one that sparked the flame and wanting to own more of this type of music, which is completely responsible for all the music I listen to today and how I became a music dork/obsessor who when they hear something really neat and different must own it. Perhaps, I should send them a bill for this! haa haa

I thank these 4, for even though I got to them not at the beginning of their career, I got there early enough to ride out a pretty fantastic wave of music, and that of many years to be devoted to this band...not to mention my insane school girl crush that I had for some 20 years for Martin Gore...because it was just great too that my initials wouldn't have to change. DORK!

Because it was the song specifically that hit me so, I am attaching the single, and not the album, but please play in the nostalgia...it isn't so great as all songs of their discography go, but it is reminiscent of time and place, and we can all appreciate that, no? download here

some great reward, indeed!