Day 13 of the Rather Inaccurately Dubbed 10 Day Album Explanatorium: Depeche Mode "Violator"

It was the summer after HS ended. I was sitting in my girlfriend's VW beetle somewhere in Walnut Creek. "Enjoy the Silence" came on and I was electrified -- a song I loved but didn't know. Not for the first time, it was an almost out-of-body experience of music that I felt in my kishkes even though I couldn't name the band or the song.

Depeche Mode became the soundtrack of my first few years of college, distant-and-yet-constant commiserators in the struggle of not feeling smart enough, articulate-enough, or good-looking enough. Listen to enough DM lyrics, and you see a clear pattern: they're regular guys doing their best as flawed humans, trying to bear the burden of society's and their own expectations for themselves. And joy should be found wherever one can find it.

That’s why I covered “Shake the Disease” at my second album release concert. Because while it doesn’t speak to me in the same way it used to, I resonate with the feeling of a certain inarticulateness in the heat of the moment.