MADONNA/REBEL HEART and More — Page 47

My friend and I just kept wondering what she does the whole time? Like is she backstage stretching? Doing vocal warmups? I just can't picture what she's waiting so long for.

So I bought tickets for the Atlanta show in January.  Got a lower level seat for $108 with fees.  Big difference from my $400 plus ticket.  Anyway, Ticketmaster sent me an email for the free digital download of the cd.  I have no use for it since I own the physical copy.  Nobody I know wants it.  So anybody reading this who wants it, pm me your email address and i will forward the email.  To be fair, first person gets it.

LOL.  Actually, Haterobics got it.  I have one more download still available.

Looks like she is gonna keep changing up the set list. Frozen went in last night.

Once this tour left the NYC area, it sort of became over to me, heh... 

Jordan Catalano said: "Did she dress as Elsa when she sang it, to appeal to the kids?

ok that made me giggle, and no she was dressed as a gypsy of course

and Haterobics, well you should probably stop posting in here then, believe it or not some people live outside of NY, even outside of ( wait for it) AMERICA, so the tour is still very much something some of us are excited about, and judging by the raves and press from City to City many others are still excited.

And to you my darling Namo....... 

"

All I said was "Oh, honey."

You, honey. 

Calm yourself Namo, I put nothing because you gave me nothing. Plus the knock off you on here is stealing your thunder

It seems to be that way, Ghosttown and Frozen so far. Would be great to get some that ain't ever had an outing yet like I'll Remember, Bad Girl etc

I just wonder how changing up the song list works with the technical elements? Is it just in a certain portion of the show? Obviously she's not gong to forgo some big production number for Frozen. 

ArtMan said: "I believe it is in the part of the show where she does an acoustic number, so no big production."

That's typically where any setlist changes happen with bigger shows...

ArtMan said: "Not sure what you are saying.  Take the current Bette Midler tour, which is a big show.  The show I saw back in May is not the same show she was doing in Europe.  She made many changes to her setlist.  Of course at any Bruce or Dave Mathews Band shows the setlists differ greatly night from night."

Those are tours without sophisticated productional elements, though. Bette may change costumes and have some shtick here and there, but once she is onstage in a new costume, there isn't a ton of lighting, video effects, and choreography tuned to every song. There are many points were if she sang song A, song B, or song C, it doesn't have anything to do with what she is wearing, what song came before it, or anything else.

Dave Matthews is a bunch of guys onstage just playing songs. They can do whatever they want in any order and it's fine, same with any rock/jam band with low-end production values.

But when you get to a point of a Madonna, where she has a team of dancers who have learned specific choreography for a majority of her songs, where the order of songs is often dictated by their ability to do costume changes, where sometimes they even try and have some narrative to the show, then the majority of the song becomes frozen and not something they will mess with that much. On no night of the tour will the dancers not have to do every song they have rehearsed. Even for Madonna, she probably liked doing the order nearly the same every night because she rehearsed them as a block in a specific order, and is accustomed to maintaining her energy against that setlist.

Even the recent U2 tour had a narrative that split the night into two segments, where a lot of the show elements had to be the same every night in the same order, out of necessity. Even the theme of the show had them sort of standoffish and sullen a bit for the first half, but more redemptive and engaged with the crowd for the second. And they, too, had huge production elements where they had to crawl up into huge video walls for certain songs against certain videos, etc., etc. Where they could typically only change songs in about three places each night, including how the show ended. If it went one way, they were all on the main stage and taking bows at the end, if it went the other direction, they exited down a long catwalk one at a time, until no one was left.

I typically call what U2 and Madonna do "shows," and a bunch of blokes playing on a stage with lights and not as much production value "concerts." When done well, I always prefer shows better. But a lot of people at shows wish (and think) they are at concerts, but they're not.

Updated On: 10/4/15 at 10:14 AM