Meanwhile, Alaina Craig (her real name), an 18-year-old Hagerville, MD bookkeeper who affects the visual trappings of goth, was exposed to the Mode by her father, also a fan, when he gave her a copy of Music for the Masses when she was 13. "I relate to the lyrics very much," she says, adding, "But I'm sure that if the lyrics were different, the songs would still have the same effect on me."

The gothic youth subculture that Alaina resonates to finds expression in hundreds of clubs across the country. For many darkwave fans and goth club lurkers, Mode functions as their own personal Elvis. In a perusal of links to 43 of the major "goth" clubs listed on the www.darklinks.com Web site, multiple Mode songs were firmly lodged in the playlists of all of them. Down New Orleans way, DJ St. Timex presides over a weekly French Quarter club event called Mausoleum. She confirms that "Mode is one of the few bands that is consistently requested." Of the predominantly late-teen-to-twenty-something crowd that favors The Mode, she notes that "they're usually the quieter members of the scene here, more introverted. Let's face it, most of DM's songs deal with the more painful interactions between people. Desire, betrayal, lust, loss, alienation. And you can dance to it."

And so Depeche Mode has caught friendly tailwinds from the zeitgeist of several generations. Hitting its musical/subtextural stride in the mid 1980s, when other carriers of the difference torch – most predominantly David Bowie – were busy adapting a Reagan-era mantle of mainstream normalcy, Depeche Mode was dressed in black and offering a new dress of alternate identity. DM has made emotionally informed artifice and an ever-shifting musical identity a virtue. They're also expert channelers of the usually gay-identified procedures of camp, most obviously in the usage of camp accoutrements – fetish fashions, sartorial dandyisms, overwrought melodramatics – to both focus on aspects of their own identity and to celebrate their intrinsic difference. Says Terri Senft, an instructor at NYU specializing in performance and gender studies, "Many straight guys who are DM fans can learn – even if by musical proxy – the importance of dealing with difference in our culture. And any boy who has had the shit kicked out of him for wearing a brooch cuz it's faggy knows how important it is to respect difference in other people."

Along with their main drawing card, simply sublime pop, Depeche Mode won't go away because they embody the core elements of rock 'n roll: The volcanic sexual agita of youth, and the concurrent need to locate a viable identity suit (which may involve leather). The band's gloomy, yet oddly inspiring oeuvre continues to serve as a heady conduit for the desire to escape into a fevered, unfettered alternate universe weekend world of what may be viewed as unfettered silliness, but actually functions as an essential release from the real-world-week's measured tedium. And, perhaps most importantly, it represents the grace to accept the sometimes incomprehensible and even bizarre ways others may choose to enact their rock 'n roll fantasies. And so, in its charmingly feckless way, Mode's "People Are People" wasn't just a hit, it was a manifesto.

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Lllustrations from Magnus Depeche Mode Page,
Judy Garland Database: Home Page
Photomodified by Oates