Subscribe
Cardiff Concert in Review 
Tue, Aug 26
Madonna: Sticky & Sweet Tour *****
Author: Jason Jones
Heard
any news about Madonna lately? Anything at all? No. Really? Are you
sure? OK. So, nothing about the supposed Titantic-sinking state of her
marriage? Not a word about the many words written by her Judas big
brother in his backstabbing biography? What about all the columnar
coverage of her clocking up her half-century? Or her seemingly
superhuman gym lust? Or her apparent intention to adopt another child
from Malawi? Or her alleged new face care of the surgeon's scalpel? If
you haven't caught any of the hearsay and faction, then you've either
been cavedwelling or in a coma because with Madonna the 'ors' could go
on for infinity such is the deluge of attention gifted the perma Queen
Of Pop. Even if you haven't got one iota of interest in Our Madgesty
and if not, why not?) you're aware of her life and its myriad dramas
and detours. It's as if her life trajectory has become the noisy
soundtrack to our own. And that's exactly what
Madonna wants because say what you like about her – and most people do
– she's a dab hand at buzz generation. You can bet your bottom dollar a
fair portion of the stories circulated these past few months have been
planted by her 'people' or even Madonna herself – there were
vigorously denied) accusations she actually ghost-wrote her bruv's
book Diana: Her True Story-style –
in order to capture maximum publicity pollen and create hype. Why?
Because Madonna is a brand and in order to maintain a brand and push it
forward the cogs of the mighty machine must ever turn to buoy the
public/shareholders' interest. Which leads us neatly to her latest
brand ambition venture, the Sticky & Sweet Tour. Forget the release of her 11th studio album, Hard Candy.
Forget signing a new lucre-laundering deal with industry leviathan Live
Nation. Forget making a much-plauditted directorial feature film debut
with Filth & Wisdom.
Forget even reaching the big 5-0. No, the main event of this year by
far is this 50-date, 17-country concert trek around the major stadia of
the pop-picking world and it all starts right here, right now at
Cardiff's suitably majestic Millennium Stadium. Laydeez and Genlemen, I
give you Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour 2008: The Premiere. Straight
out the gate, it's obvious the trademark shoulder-to-the-wheel work
ethic has been at play and we're in for a typically slick-as-oil show.
Mind you, after an estimated 650+ hours of rigorous rehearsal you'd
expect a military-drilled performance. But whereas in the past Madonna
finessed all of the feeling out of her live canon, here you can
immediately see this isn't simply an exercise in controlled, robotic
mark-hitting and note-reaching. And so to the
show. Dancers teem onto the stage, suited and top-hatted, the lighting
darts around like a kid with ADD, bouncing off the vast dual stage, and
out of the ether rises Lady Madonna defiant on a gilt-edged throne,
dominatrix cane in hand, as if to say " I am Queen! Depose me if you
dare!" Fittingly, 'Candy Shop', Hard Candy's
opener and the track that gave the tour its title by way of an
underlaid repeated refrain, crash-bang-wallops everything off. Live it
sounds more forceful and precise as opposed to tinny and wishy-washy
when pressed down for iPoding. And we're off… Like 2006's Confessions Tour –
incidentally the highest-grossing live outing by a female artist in
history, so no pressure this time round then – the show is spliced into
four separate sections; Pimp, Old School, Gypsy and Rave. In Confessions the theming seemed wilfully pretentious, but for Sticky & Sweet it makes more sense, packaging up her sprawling career in cohesive bite-size chunks.
The
running order rips through her back catalogue like Ali through a field
of featherweights, unusually for Madge taking in the early days,
including 'Borderline' and 'Into The Groove', which Madonna said she
would only ever sing again if she were drugged although she's perfectly
happy to belt out choons from her latest album that are about as catchy
as someone stamping on a seagull. Like so many old-skool artists who
have cramponed the fame-fortune heights she automatically believes
later work is of more artistic relevance and importance, when usually
the early career is probably the most creatively fertile and, in
reality, it's what the fans have rocked up to sing-along to. Predictably
the shine-out stars of the night are when Madonna plays to her metier,
namely when she celebrates the sticky sweetness of the dancefloor.
Like A Prayer', 'Ray Of Light' and 'Hung Up', the triumvirate of
stalwarts that prelude the Pharrell Williams-co-penned and -produced
finale 'Give It 2 Me'. This is Madonna's meat and drink –
swirled-around, sweaty dance remixes that get the adrenaline throbbing
and the legs moving, pop songs that showcase the sheer,
chuck-your-head-back joy of simply throwing some shapes. A
few gripes, though. Please desist, Madge, with the guitar-playing. It's
not big, it's not clever and Slash you ain't. More pertinently, your
music doesn't lend itself to strumming, so why do it? Self-indulgence,
that's why and it's a problem that blights many a seasoned artist. But
you're there for the fans not to circle-jerk over your ego so STOP.
Also, turn in the video-walling of Obama, Al Gore, Ghandi et al because
sharing houseroom with those people on your stage means you're either
aligning yourself with them, in which case remember this is a pop
concert not a political convention, or you laughably believe you have
the same powerful reach. (By the by, didn't you openly mock Oprah,
another video-wall buddy, when you were going through your brattish,
fuck-the-world phase?) As for the folk group fiddling in the Gypsy
section, all I can say is that this the best point in the concert for a
toilet/bar break. Oh, and a touch more audience interaction wouldn't go
amiss, either, if anyone's asking. It
almost goes without saying the actual look of the show is sublime, a
consummate display of technical and theatrical flair, but then with Her
Madgesty that's what you pay for, sleek showmanship. Madonna has
received a hefty amount of flak for the 75 quid minimum to see her
live, not least from me. No matter which way you slice or dice your
baloney, hiking the ticket bar so high does put her out of the reach of
some of her fans and does make her live performances less democratic
and inclusive and more corporate and elitist as a result. If Madonna
wants to commune with all her congregation then she needs to lower the
entrance fee. I don't mind paying top dollar to see her – I've seen the
last three tours and never had gratis press passes so have paid a fair
whack of her kids' school fees – but at the same time I have the money
to do it. Not everybody does. That's my point. Having
said all that, does the concert justify the lofty price-tag? Without
one single scintilla of doubt, it does. Madonna's shows are a triumph
of effort, energy and excitement that leave her rivals blinking in the
roadside dust. She's not so much the Queen Of Pop as the Queen Of
Concerts, making her shows go-before-you-pop-your-clogs must-sees no
matter how much wallet-denting is involved. Ultimately,
judging by tonight's performance, Madonna is still at the top of her
game, reaching for higher and higher standards, standing alone as pop's
last great non-perishable. So when she morphs into a seemingly
straitjacketed Britney in the video backdrop for 'Human Nature' we get
the self-nodding reference that she has survived and thrived while
others have fallen by the wayside into meltdown. She's done it by
constantly keeping herself interested, by embracing the new,
remoulding, remaking, re-imagining her world. Like a chronic
narcoleptic, she perpetually moves on to stay awake, to keep her
interest and our own. And she's far from finished
with her journey, far from finished with us. At the start of 'Vogue'
Madonna asks "What are you looking at?" and after more than 25-plus
years at the pop coalface she's still asking the same question and
we're still looking back at her. Because with Madonna, mistress of
metamorphosis, you never know what you're going to get. Madonna's
only other UK date on the Sticky & Sweet Tour is at Wembley Stadium
on 11 September. The world tour continues until 18 December. For
further details visit www.livenationinternational.com This is a direct link to the article on Gaydarnation.com: http://gaydarnation.com/UserPortal/Article/Detail.aspx?ID=22227&sid=24 or check the Music Section on the website.
Jason has his own blog, check it out here. www.reviewseteria.com
www.madonnasworld.com
RSS Feed for Madonna
Loading...