Do You Like My Acid Rock?

Music! Makes the people! Come together! YEAH!

Yes, Jeremy and I saw Madonna last night. Jeremy bought the tickets for my birthday way back in May, back when we still had money in the bank, back when the stock market was still over ten thousand, remember those days? Anyway, now that we are flat broke we tried to sell our tickets but apparently everyone else in Boston (in the country?) is flat broke, too, so like ALL of the tickets to last night's show were for sale on craigslist. When we realized we would be lucky to get half the price we paid for them, we decided to go. Okay, jeez, I guess we'll go ahead and go to a major concert, in the city, without our children...if you insist. *sigh*

The show was overwhelming. I've only seen a couple of concerts of that caliber in my life. I'm not a huge Madonna fan, didn't even recognize some of her newer songs, but she puts on quite a show. The songs I recognized were Vogue, Get into the Groove, Borderline, Music, La Isla Bonita, You Must Love Me, Four Minutes, Like a Prayer, Ray of Light, and Hung Up.

Get into the Groove was the most fun: her back-up dancers were dressed like Fanny Pak, the video screens behind them were full of Keith Haring-style images, and Madonna did double-dutch during the song while the audience sang.

The strangest song was La Isla Bonita. It can only be described as a flamenco hoedown. All the dancers were dressed in Spanish-style costumes, but the song was accompanied by... an electric fiddle? And then it morphed into a gypsy sequence where... a guy playing electric accordion came out? Then they were doing what can only be described as the Hava Nagila??? Very bizarre.

The people-watching was pretty brilliant. There were lots of leggings: leggings under skirts, leopard-print leggings, and (two seats away from us!) shiny black spandex leggings, yipes! Also a handful of wanna-bes, particularly of the Like a Virgin vintage. And the gays! My god, the gays! I mean, this is Massachusetts, and we are a very gay-friendly state but I guess I didn't realize that Madonna was the new Cher. Very nice.

We had a friendly, hip, young gay couple on one side of us who knew every word of every song and on the other side a friendly, older straight couple whose teenage kids had bought them tickets. At one point, the show featured a video urging political action and McCain's picture flashed on the screen amid horrors like famine, genocide, and fascism while Obama appeared in another montage including the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, and Oprah (Really, Madonna? Oprah?). The large majority of the crowd went WILD for this, including the young couple to our left. The older couple, however? NOT AMUSED.

Madonna commented that she'd been warned not to say anything more about Sarah Palin and she even made a dramatic gesture of zipping her lips and throwing away the key. Then she asked, "Are all of you fuckers registered to vote?" And then told us to vote for Obama before continuing with her song.

There were a few mysteries: at one point, Madge raised her arm up over her head and flipped the bird at the wall behind her. Who was she pissed at back there? Also, she started the show with a wavy hair-do, parted down the middle and later changed into a wig that was the EXACT same hair-do... with bangs. Why, why? And the final mystery: what song did she close the show with? We left early because our free baby-sitting (thanks, Tracy!) was turning into a pumpkin at midnight.

So despite today's ringing ears, over-tired children, and empty bank account it was a great night. And I'll probably spend the rest of the week randomly saying, "Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock."
---