In The Time Tunnel w/ Madonna

Through a generous gift via my wife’s company, we ended up in the primo seats for Sunday night’s Madonna concert in Boston. I was a little ambivalent. My Madonna era pretty much stretched from “Borderline” to “True Blue” and I knew the tour concentrated on the new album which I don’t love. And sometimes I get all idealistic about her appropriating little bits of underground culture to commercialize them.

I had also read the reviews about the video walls that were sometimes disjointed or not continuous with the songs and performers.

Lucky for me, I sat at an angle that I could ignore the video walls if I wanted and further just not think about commercial intent or Kaballah or reinvention and just enjoy the show, people watch, and marvel at the technical side of the production.

Before the show I was thinking about the audience and who goes to see a Madonna show in 2006. The audience skewed a little older –not many teens – and was very white. I did notice the people on the elevator were speaking English in a French accent, and I was in line for fried shrimp (not bad since I hadn’t eaten) were talking about a recent Diana Ross show in British accent. Lots of gay couples, too -- and no, my marriage wasn’t “under attack” because of it, thank you.

So maybe you had a mixed audience in those ways, and I would dare say a number of people from NYC who could get tickets for a Boston show. (I understand Madge herself flew in and out of New York for shows.)

There were a lot of women in their mid to late thirties and I could easily imagine them dressed just like Herself at a show twenty or more years past, or at least dancing to the MTV videos they were watching while living at home. (Yes, my wife was one of them.)

I did watch the video walls more closely during the bit about AIDS. Any of us who are of a certain age would. And if it was “preachy?” Well if you don’t preach, how is anyone going to hear?

I thought about Jean-Michel Basquiat telling people in 1982 to pay attention to Madonna, that she was going to be “huge.”

The time tunnel became a theme for me through the evening as I watched roller skaters and break dancers and a nice tribute to Donna Summer at the beginning of the show. After all, if it weren’t for “I Feel Love” none of us may have been there last night, including Madonna.

Nostalgia and Survival. That was the mix that played in my head along with “Music” “Disco Inferno” and “Freakazoid” thumping onstage late in the show.

I was reliving all we’ve been through since 1982 with Madonna songs inevitably playing somewhere nearby. And there she was, still fit enough to shake her ass and get us to do the same. Telling us in her way, “I’ve lived through it and so have you. Now shut up and dance.”

Madonna photo from BBC