June 22nd 1990, 1993, and 1995, Depeche Mode, New Model Army, and Catherine Wheel

As I've been looking back through my concert tickets for shows to write about, every so often I find there are days with multiple shows from different years, and today is one of those days. I've seen Depeche Mode, New Model Army, and Catherine Wheel on various iterations of June 22nd over the years, and now that I think about it that actually sounds like a pretty good festival line up...

The Depeche Mode show in 1990 was the Toronto date for the World Violation Tour in support of the "Violator" album, and it was a pretty glorious gig at the CNE Grandstand with Nitzer Ebb and the Jesus and Mary Chain opening. My friend Dave H. and I had fairly decent tickets on the floor, but it was pouring rain so we got totally soaked and it was pretty cold and miserable weather wise, but that didn't change the fact that it was an awesome show. Depeche Mode were in excellent form that night, playing a set of classic and soon to be classic material including Enjoy the Silence and Personal Jesus, and they encored with a live mashup of Behind the Wheel and Route 66 that was exceptionally awesome. I saw the tour again a few months later, and I'll write that up a little more for an entry in November. 

New Model Army were awesome live, I had seen them a couple of years earlier at Finsbury Park in London with The Mission and they were really great, but seeing them up close at Lee's Palace was a particular highlight. The energy and intensity were really high that night, and the band ran through a great set list including a handful of tracks like White Coats and 51st State from "The Ghost of Cain" and other songs from "The Love of Hopeless Causes". Good times.

Catherine Wheel always put on a great show, and this gig at the Opera House stands out as one of my favorite times seeing them. My friend Bevin and I went and we sat in the balcony to get a little bit more space. The floor was packed and it was crazy hot that night, but sitting up in the back seats by the rafters made it a little more bearable. I wouldn't exactly call Catherine Wheel a Shoegaze band, but they were definitely Shoe-y adjacent, and that evening they were playing a highly effected set, a veritable Wall of Flange that wrapped around the audience like a cocoon of aural bliss that peaked during a version of Black Metallic that went on for over twenty minutes. I still get chills thinking about it now...

Great shows all of them, and it would suggest to me that astrologically speaking June 22nd is a very fortuitous day for shows. I look forward to a lot more June 22nd gigs in the years to come...