Just wanted to write about something I’ve wanted since I was 19 that came to pass last night. I FINALLY got to see Madonna in concert! It was her first time ever in Vancouver!
I bought a single ticket for myself back in May the morning the tix went on sale. I didn’t care if not a single person I knew was going – I wanted to make sure I got to go! Funny part is I ended up meeting up with several people I knew (Nadine, Susan and her friend Alex) there and after the show (even tho I my seat wasn’t near any of them).
I met Nadine at the SkyTrain and we stood in line for 45 minutes, packed liked sardines against a mob of strangers (ewh!), to buy tshirts – a must for me when going to a show! By the time we got out of the merchandise line, we were nearly suffocated and all sweaty – ewh!
I ended up sitting next to an older couple, which I thought was cool since the fact that they were even there at all surprised me, and also a daughter who bought her mom tickets for her birthday/Mother’s Day. Very cool to see them there and having fun together!
The show opened with these neat digital screens that came apart and they were projecting images onto the. Then, Madonna came on and, naturally, the place went nuts.
She did several songs where she was playing guitar (I suspect as a tactic to catch her breath between songs where she was dancing and running around a lot), including a rocked-out version of Borderline, which I didn’t really care for.
The screens they used and all the imagery was a feast for the eyes, for sure! Probably the coolest visual part of the show was when she was inside a cylinder-shaped screen thing that, when the images were shown on it, made the screen opaque, but when they didn’t show anything on it, you could see her behind it. She was doing a song called Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You and they were showing images of water drops and stuff like that, which was a really cool effect. It’s hard to explain, but one of the clips I put up on YouTube shows it.
At one point, she did a song called "She’s Not Me" and there were several of her dancers dressed up as several past versions of Madonna – one of them dressed like her from the Material Girl video (pink prom-like dress a la MarilynMonroe) and one from Like a Virgin with the wedding dress on. It was a pretty neat pairing with the song itself.
Towards the end of the show, she asked the crowd, "Have you had enough?" and everyone screamed, "NOOOO!" and then she said, "But, it’s 11:02, isn’t it time to go home?" and everyone, again, screamed "NOOOO!!!". Then she said, "Yeah, there’s a clock over there and it’s been staring me in the face all fucking night!" It was a digital clock that’s at the top of the stadium just below the roof and she could see it from the stage. haha
She said, "Ok, well, since I’m up here, I might as well sing a song, right?" and then she asked the audience what they wanted to hear and they said Like a Virgin. So, she sang a line and then the crowd sang a line (someone in the audience got a good clip of this which is also up on YouTube if you search Like a Virgin sing along Vancouver or something).
When she did the song 4 Minutes, which Justin Timberlake also sings in, they did something really cool where they had one of the screens in a tall narrow shape and they had images of Justin Timberlake dancing and singing his part of the song on the screen and Madonna would walk up to it and dance in front of it. I thought it was a neat way to have the other person "there" when they weren’t really there. Very well thought-out, the whole thing!
There was one point where they were doing costume changes so they were playing a video interlude and they were showing various images of political stuff and when they showed Obama several times, each time the crowd roared! hahaha They were also selling shirts at the merchandise table that said "Express Yourself. Vote Obama 2008" which I thought was interesting.
The show closed with Give It To Me (one of my faves from the newest album) which started with typical video game images "Player One – Press Start" and when she walked off-stage, the video screens showed "Game Over".
All in all, a great experience. The energy was unbelievable. The show was over around 11:20 or so and I wasn’t remotely tired until about 4:00am this morning.
YouTube video clip playlist (in order they occurred during the show)
http://www.youtube.com/vie
Pictures (lots blurry cuz there was so much movement and it was mostly dark, but in some cases, the blur adds a neat effect)
http://picasaweb.google.co