DAVE GAHAN CROAKS

The advantage of having bands hooked on smack is at least they either turn up, or they don't. When they're fit and clean again, they just turn up and piss you about.

Last week's Depeche Mode gig in Kansas City, for example. It was all going so well, until, six songs in, Dave Gahan wandered off stage. Martin Gore did a couple more songs, but after fifty minutes, that was that.

Tickets cost seventy-five bucks, by the way.

Oddly, nobody seems quite sure what happened, either:

Gahan suffered "a severe stomach infection," collapsed backstage and was taken to a hospital. However, Mitch Schneider, president of MSO, the band's public relations firm, told the Kansas City Star late Thursday afternoon that Gahan had laryngitis, and that the band canceled Thursday [11th] night's show in Chicago.

Gahan "saw a doctor, who advised him to rest his voice," Schneider said.

Many of the audience report Gahan seemed out of sorts - the songs he managed included two false starts - and there's a sneaking suspiscion that Gore sang just enough to push the concert past a point where refunds were no longer required.

music dave gahan martin gore depeche mode