Day 2: Before there was WIMS, there was Speak & Spell

Day two of the  30-day Depeche Mode challenge – The first song you remember hearing: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

Two teens spending their summer Saturdays streaming videos and swapping mp3s… what could possibly go wrong? Nothing much actually, unless you’re the RIAA, ’cause we were just some adorkable geeks. If loving music is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

I used to spend every weekend I could with my best friend, drawing, watching anime and listening to music (I owe my exposure to cool music back then to her). She fell hard for DM, and was eager to share the love. I can’t remember the exact first song I heard – I’m pretty sure she played a few songs for me the first time, as a sample in WinAmp. In that mix, I distinctly remember her playing random Speak & Spell tracks.. “Tora! Tora! Tora!” stands out, and still gives me the feeling of those carefree days… maybe because I listened to it repeatedly on short playlists while teaching myself HTML in Adobe Pagemill.

That’s right, folks – it was c. 1998* and Speak and Spell is what hooked me onto the Mode. After I was suitably engaged, we subsequently spent hours (days?) on DM.com watching videos, expanding my palette. This was back before YouTube was even thought of, and most of us were still on dialup, so DM.com pretty much blew our minds (and modems). Oh, sweet nostalgia!*

See previous 30-day Depeche Mode challenge posts.

*My head frequently merges these two years into one when it comes to Mode memories. No idea why. The first year was a blur!