Depeche Mode “Black Celebration” released on this date, March 17th, 1986 on Mute Records. It’s a perfectly dark gothy synth pop soundtrack for days like these, especially tracks like “Fly on the Windscreen – Final” – perfection in its death-march pace, rolling romantically in pain with the lyrics “Death is everywhere, there are flies on the windscreen for a start, reminding us we could be torn apart tonight…Come here, kiss me. Now,”  the urgent fear of violence and domination in “A Question of Time” and of course the title track “Black Celebration:”

Let’s have a black celebration
Black celebration
Tonight

To celebrate the fact

That we’ve seen the back
Of another black day

I look to you
How you carry on
When all hope is gone
Can’t you see?
Your optimistic eyes
Seem like paradise
To someone like
Me

Black Celebration was Depeche Mode’s fifth studio LP. It went to #4 in the UK and #90 in the US. DM released three singles off the record: “Stripped” (#15 UK and one of the darkest, rawest love songs I’ve ever heard), “A Question of Lust” (sung by Martin Gore, #28 UK) and “A Question of Time” (#17 UK). I bought this copy very soon after its release in ‘86; I had most of the lyrics memorized by that May – I remember writing the lyrics to “New Dress” on the sidewalk in Houdini Plaza that month for a peace rally a bunch of us local teen punks held while we skipped school that day:

You can’t change the world
But you can change the facts
When you change the facts
You change points of view
When you change points of view

You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

My friend Carrie and I saw Depeche Mode while they were on tour for Black Celebration on June 22nd of ‘86 outside of Chicago at the Poplar Creek Music Theater. My dad and grandpa drove us there from Wisconsin in my grandpa’s motorhome and they hung out in the parking lot while Carrie and I went to the show (Book of Love opened). We bought a concert program as well as DM and Book of Love t-shirts, my Depeche Mode t-shirt taken by some boy or other later that summer.