Word: madonna
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...pays these prices? Old people with money - also known as baby boomers. A few weeks ago I went to Madonna and Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden (they were barnstorming through within days of each other). Springsteen's ticket price is considerably less than Madonna's, and the album he's touring on is a Country Bear Jamboree for progressives. Still: I'm 33 and I was the youngest person in sight by a good 15 years. It looked like a Ft. Lauderdale Sizzler at 5 p.m.l in there. Madonna isn't the teen draw she used...
...actually surprised that the Madonna audience was as young as it was - mostly people in their 20s and 30s. And I wouldn't call the concert laid-back. Programmed within an inch of its life, is more like it. The choreography, the elaborate video presentations, even Madonna's patter - there's almost no sense any more of an artist interacting spontaneously with the audience. Even the way the concert ends - her big hit "Hung Up," blackout, lights go up, goodbye! Not even an encore. Sure, encores have gotten to be as programmed as anything else, but at least there...
...guess, to return to the price thing, a three-figure ticket is a declaration that you're not interested in new listeners. Madonna, Springsteen, the Stones, they all know that they have lifelong fans in every American city who will pay any price to see them. But no one besides the zealots is going to risk that kind of cash. The result is a concert hall full of people willing themselves to love the show, which is hardly a recipe for spontaneity...
...course, Madonna has to pace herself. She's holding up pretty well, but those beefy backup dancers are doing most of the work. Also - and maybe this is only a surprise to someone who doesn't go to rock concerts that often - the show is about theater as much as music. And attitude. I was happy to see, at least, that the attitude was less off-putting than the last time I saw Madonna (in her concert tour before last, I think), when she basically walked out and said, 'F--- you, New York!" Now she's doing video montages...
...digress about the fitness thing. Our seats happened to be positioned by one of the side stage annexes, and Madonna performed two songs about 20 feet away. The woman is in the kind of shape that makes you wonder when she DOESN'T work out. She had muscles in her legs that anatomists have not previously diagrammed. True, after singing and dancing for 20 minutes she needed to towel off backstage, and in her absence we were left with abstract modern dance pieces that made Shanghai Surprise look like a cogent piece of storytelling. But for 47? Good lord...