Madonna in Vancouver!

Tuomo writes: As they say, "beggars can’t be choosers" and a lot of aspects in life can be best called "sour grapes," so I advise people to read my review of Madonna’s concert in Vancouver through these clichés.

For one, I hadn’t realized how big BC Place Arena is. I mean, not big – HUGE! An estimate of 30,000 people was there that night, and I think that is a fairly accurate estimate. Come to think of it, 30,000 is like 10% of all Iceland :-) Mind you, BC Place Arena will also be the venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony, so that should give my out-of-Vancouver readers some perspective of the scale I'm talking about. The three of us were sitting on the fourth level in the nose-bleed, and from there the stage felt like it was at least ten blocks away. Flanked by two huge letters M in pink, the stage had three screens and two others to the side, to the left and right of the huge Ms. While the show was on, the outermost jumbo-tron screens followed what was going on on the stage while the three on-stage screens functioned as back-drops to each number performed.

As a result, Madonna appeared to be 5 millimetres tall; I hadn't realised she'd be so much smaller in person! :-) Without the two jumbo-trons, it would have been next to impossible to see what was going on on the stage. At times, when Madonna and her dancers were performing close to the back-drop screens, it was in fact impossible to see what they were doing, so a lot of the show was lost on me. In the end, if you wanted to enjoy the show, you had to keep your eyes peeled on the jumbo-trons. Consequently, the thought of purchasing the tour DVD might have been a better choice :-)

As for the numbers, Madonna performed quite a selection of her songs from along her career, focusing not so surprisingly primarily on her latest album. Some of the arrangements were interesting, to say the least, others unfortunately weren't. For example, Borderline made me think of this; had I paid to see a goth performance, I would have accepted it as is without questions, but now I’m not so sure. I didn't like the way Human Nature had been arranged either; for one, I don't care that much for this song, and two, it just didn't work for me. Others fortunately, like La Isla Bonita was arranged and mixed so that it sounded in Dave’s words like what Moldova would be submitting as their Eurovision entry for 2009, i.e. he didn’t like it, but I sure did!

In my mind, She’s Not Me and Far Away, which were new to me because I haven’t purchased the album yet, which hopefully doesn’t mean my gay card will be revoked, were arranged beautifully and the stage performance was at its best, mostly but not only thanks to the imagery on the screens. A propos, during She’s Not Me, Madonna depicted a lighter side of herself when she fended off earlier iconic stages of herself as the stage act, which I think shows that she can have a sense of humour, too. Finally, Like a Prayer and some of her earlier "standards" performed more towards the end did leave an up-lifting "party" feel in my mouth – also due to the fact that I didn’t have to peer any longer at the stage from behind the queen standing and partying in front of me when I didn’t feel yet like doing so :-)

That said, I’ll give the whole experience a B+. Once again, for $100 you can’t really expect to be within spitting distance from a major pop star, now can you? However, the fact that I was so often better off watching her perform on the big screens or I would have totally missed the pleasure of the stage action did leave bit of a - pardon the pun - sour candy taste in my mouth. But considering how much I love sour patch kids, I did enjoy the show for the most.

Two lessons to be learned. One, buy Hard Candy. Immediately! Two, for future reference, be prepared to fork out the bucks when planning to attend an event in BC Place Arena! :-)