No Milk Please

last tuesday (oct 28), patrick, peter, anne and i went to see madonna's Drowned World concert. it was awesome and lots of fun. there were a lot of people who dressed up in themes (if not outright drag) of the various madonna personae. i myself, decided to wear a cowboy shirt and some ratty old levis to the concert. i have never been to a madonna concert, this was my first time.

i would say that of all the concerts i have attended, madonna has been different from the rest. i would liken the concert to a broadway musical with 4 different "acts". not content to do mere costume changes as janet or cher might do, she has reworked some of her songs to fit the "acts" and stages the performances in a narrative where the songs are almost dialogues. the themes of these "acts" were: punk, geisha, cowboy and ghetto.

another departure is that she plays guitar in many of her songs, which created a different feel for this concert from her other concerts. they felt more intimate because you can see how gamely she plays, even though you can clearly sense that she's an amateur. the intimacy comes from seeing how vulnerable she looks playing the guitar.

my favorite song from the show is "Gone" from the album "Music." before the concert, i had felt that this song was like "Human Nature" redux where she is defiant in the face of her critics. during her performance, i realized this song is much more introspective than that; that she is speaking her pain and fear of rejection even as she is being defiant. it touched me.

"Selling out
Is not my thing
Walk away
I won't be broken again
I won't
I won't fall apart

Turn to stone
Lose my faith
I'll be gone
Before it happens"