Dancing Queen!!!

"Please extinguish your cigarettes. For the next two hours, I am the only thing on fire!" - Madonna



Well, I'm back from my excursion to Sin City to view my idol, Madonna, live on stage for her "Confessions Tour". And except for consistent issues with my stomach where I constantly felt nauseous and full, even on an empty stomach, I had soooo much fun!

My sister and I saw Madonna on both Saturday, the 27th, and Sunday, the 28th. Of the two shows, it seemed like the crowd was more into the show for the Sunday outing. Madonna (who infamously blasted Vegas audiences being filled with "suit" types with free comp tickets (i.e., a bad crowd) even commented on the Sunday audience being on fire.

So I'm glad that she sang all the songs from her new Confessions on a Dance Floor album that I really liked, and that she scattered in a few surprises in the show. I think the highlight of the show for me was the new, revamped version of "Erotica" that she performed, because it was interspliced with an earlier version of the song, known as "You Thrill Me" to the hardcore Madonna fans. I think I was the only one that was able to sing along to this new version in my section. Madonna also likes the new version so much that she is planning on re-releasing "Erotica/You Thrill Me" as a single. Hopefully this will come to pass, though knowing Madonna's past release plans, I really shouldn't hold my breath (I'm still waiting for an official DVD of the "Blond Ambition Tour", and the "Re-Invention Tour").

Of the three different tours I saw of Madonna, I think I like her Re-Invention Tour the best. She seemed to blend her older songs with newer ones more seamlessly, and the show flowed together more nicely. Her Drowned World Tour was good, but a little too "artsy" for many, and didn't seem to have enough past hits.

This newest tour chose some surprising older numbers (I never really thought that she would sing "Lucky Star" live again), and a good chunk of her newer stuff. The tour did seem to drag a little in places (singing "Drowned World (Substitute for Love)" and "Paradise (Not for Me)" back to back was a little too much of a cool down, and I didn't really like the transitional build up to "Live to Tell"), but there were some very excellent sequences ("Music Inferno" where she mixes her song "Music" with "Disco Inferno" in a John Travolta Saturday Night Fever wet dream, "Erotica/You Thrill Me", and the new mix of "Sorry" with a background video of G.W. bush intermixed with the KKK was sooo cool!)

Anyway, if you have the chance to catch this tour, be sure to not miss it. And I would really recommend splurging on the $375 seats to get a better close up. How many times in life are you going to be in the same building with Madonna anyway?

P.S. Thanks to my sister who hosts the site Rock247Music for uploading a few clips of the Sunday, May 28 show on YouTube that you see here.