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Madonna
Bercy Omnisports Arena Paris
4/09/04
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A Wax Music gig normally consists of us having a few drinks in Camden or
somewhere and then going into a sweaty basement gig for half an hour of
indie pop. Well don’t worry we are not turning into Smash Hits
just yet but the chance to see Madonna in Paris was too good to miss.
When I was a young lad in the days when alcohol tasted of booze and not
soft drinks, Big Brother was part of a novel and mobile phones were the
size of bricks, I loved Madonna. I haven’t really followed much of
her career since the early nineties but I was still looking forward to
this gig.
So after a brief sight seeing tour of Paris in which I went to the Eiffel
Tower and checked out the Mona Lisa it was time to go the Bercy Arena.
From the outside the arena looked like the place where the Teletubbies
live and just a stone throw from the Seine it was definitely more fun than
being at Wembley. Judging by the crowd Madonna is no longer
appealing to the Kids, with the average age being in the late twenties
upwards. Most were here for nostalgia and were determined to enjoy
themselves.
Any gig which opens up with Vogue is fine with me, Frozen shows that when
she wants to Madonna has a great voice, American Life featured some of the
worst rapping since John Barnes and New Order teamed up. Not too
sure about the Che Guevara outfit for Express Yourself but Girls Aloud
would kill for a pop tune as good as this. Madonna then sported a
guitar for a punky version of Material Girl which is surprisingly good.
It all gets a bit cabaret with Hanky Panky but the gig is then saved with
Deeper and Deeper, this version is far superior to the recorded version
and is transformed into a sultry torch song. We then get into a bit
of a mid-set lull, with a boring song from Evita, a dull new track and
another mid-nineties stinker. Don’t Tell Me wakes everyone
up and Like A Prayer provided me with one of the surrealist sights of my
life, French footballing genius Zinadane Zidane clapping, dancing
and singing along to Madonna. (In the crowd, not on stage but still
very weird)
Not only has John Lennon been murdered once before, Madonna than managed
to Murder Imagine. Lots of French people held lighters in the air,
the only thing that could save this gig was the encore and it was truly
poptastic. For some reason Into The Groove featured a Bagpipe intro
and lots of dancers in kilts, (It was still great though) Then Papa
Don’t Preach (for which Madonna wore a Kabbalahist Do It Better T-Shirt
) Crazy For You turned the arena into the worlds biggest School Disco,
then Music proved that not all the tunes stopped in the 80s. Then
last song of the night was a House-tastic version of Holiday, Confetti
then fell from the ceiling covering the whole of the venue, which is
something I’ve never seen at the Bull & Gate. This was Pop
music at its finest a really enjoyable evening.
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