madonna show review :: oakland, september 2001

i’m not sure terms like “amazing” or phrases like “she puts on an awesome show” would suffice.  nor am i sure that that i can even begin to express them here for there was so much to process.  we were 20 rows up from floor on extreme stage-right.  so extreme that we could at times clearly see thru the stage into the direction & wardrobe changes.  but the stage/set itself wasnt so large as it was tall.  odd platforms here, solitary handles way up there.  soon, all surfaces of the set would be crawling with these cut, lanky, androgenous beauties.  those handles, once far out of the reach of any platform *we* could see, were now being used as purchase for creatures part Wild Boys (duran duran), part Fame, & part Sid Vicious.  The british/scottish punk element permeated quite literally only 1 song off anything *other* then either Ray of Light or Music, and that was Holiday.  some would say she was obligated to play that one given the town we live in, to say nothing of the 100’s of queens packing the front of the stage 12 deep.  so the songs were all late-model, fully exercising the William Orbit vein.  video screens like nothing i have ever seen.  they were not “monitors” in the projection or tube-screen sense of the word.  rather – and kevin you may have seen these – they were blocks of what looked like 1000’s of tightly packed lightbulbs, giving any image shown on them a clarity out of this world.  smaller 2ft x 2ft blocks of these, spread all across the rigging & musician “pods”, displayed random sqaures of what the larger monitors displayed rather then miniature versions of the same.  these massive monitors, in true madonna-style, would raise up to become the elevated dancefloor lit-from below.  every other performer was either hanging from wires or flying around the set swinging from them.  with mic in-hand, madonna too would be flying 30 miles per hours, 50 feet up, only to land squarely in mid-verse.  she never let up.  songs blended together as they spanned a heavily intricate & dramatic stage-show.  and thats just it: last night was only *part* rock concert.  it was dozens of runway models sprinting around a fashion shoot, meets the matrix, meets a country-western ho-down.  but *all* gautier.this was the first show i’ve ever really been to where i didnt have that life-force longing to be behind either soundboard.  and it *wasnt* my proximity away from them.  it was my proximity *to* other elements.  i was thouroughly entertained.  i should have expected this.  the people-watching was tops, better then a tombstone saloon yet costumes just as familiar.  I saw the thing on HBO and that simply didn’t touch this.  It only hinted at themes & perhaps a setlist.  Nothing but being there could approach it.

Perhaps maybe, the unashamed fantasies of being one of her dancers on the stage with her.  THAT’S what it meant.