RE-INVENTION TOUR - PRESS REVIEWS tour intro page - fan reports press reviews: US west coast - US east coast - US mid-west - Europe

On this page you'll find the press reviews for the concerts at the US East coast. Also check the press reviews from the West coast, mid-West and Europe. Sunrise - 28 July - Madonna's fans get a sugar-coated spectacle of fun OK, we give. U-u-uncllle! We're entertained! We're entertained! Madonna, you're the bomb. Now, what the heck was that all about? We've seen theatrical concerts before -- from awesome (the Rolling Stones and Cher) to awful (Britney Spears) -- but Madonna, on the Re-Invention Tour, seems determined to top them all in sheer spectacle even if the 105-minute extravaganza doesn't cohere into a clear theme. The 45-year-old pop icon even sang live (quite well, too) while on the move. Please note that these are two simultaneous actions that, sadly, don't go hand-in-hand these days among younger pop stars. The tour -- boasting 21 songs, from 1982's Burning Up, reimagined as a new wave rocker, to 2003's sublime ballad Nothing Fails -- is one of the few moneymakers in a sorry summer season, and it opened in South Florida Wednesday night at Sunrise's Office Depot Center. She has three shows to go -- tonight in Sunrise and Sunday and Monday at Miami's American Airlines Arena. It's a feat of technical derring-do. Madonna managed to fill her ample stage with a skateboarder, a tap dancer, a trapeze troupe and sermons on Kabbalah and the Iraq war (Bush is bad, we get it.) Want more? Try military drills with Madonna clad as a Patty Hearst-like figure in camouflage fatigues for Express Yourself. Videos flashing images of war and a goofy President Bush look-alike cuddling with a Saddam Hussein character; and gorgeous video screens masquerading as art installations. Broadway and Cirque du Soleil? Consider yourselves beaten into submission. Like Madonna's embarrassing rap in American Life, none of it makes much sense. But like a massive ice-cream sundae with whipped cream, nuts, chocolate and caramel sauces, and a cherry atop, the Re-Invention Tour is the ultimate guilty pleasure but it's also a load of empty calories. Fun? You bet, most of the time. Madonna has an enviable body of pop hits spread over 20 years, and, for a change, she performed a good number of them as opposed to 2001's pretentious Drowned World Tour. But she obviously didn't think fans who paid $300 for a top ticket would be happy just to hear oldies like Material Girl -- smartly reinvented with a rock guitar edge -- Vogue or Like A Prayer unless they got a show. As pop music, this was great stuff. Unfortunately, Madonna, the dominatrix of reinvention, has always been suspect when she gets into a groove about her cause du jour. The Kabbalah imagery was overbearing. Madonna don't preach! Her anti-war clips also trivialized the issue and felt about a year too late. At the time of the Iraq invasion, Madonna pulled her anti-Bush American Life video after seeing what happened to the Dixie Chicks who found their records yanked off the air after the country trio's lead singer criticized the commander in chief. Now that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a box-office smash and support for the war is wavering, Madonna goes whole-hog political on stage. Madonna, a mother of two, is no longer Madonna the brave. (source: Miami Herald) ~ Check out more Sunrise pictures from the Miami Herald Sunrise - 28 July - Madonna rocks the crowd in Sunrise Madonna has spent the past 20 years looking at herself for a living. That she still likes what she sees, professionally speaking, is remarkable, since few among us don't occasionally tire of the face staring back in the mirror. Narcissism has been very good to Madonna, and she to it. The Re-Invention Tour that brought her to a sold-out Office Depot Center on Wednesday night offered clues as to how Madonna stays fascinated and in the process keeps the rest of us entranced. The trick appears to be to keep everything changing, everything in constant motion. The Re-Invention stage production did exactly that, balancing and juggling numerous visual and acoustical elements, as Madonna rolled out a battery of selves. "I've had so many lives," she sang on the dance-floor track Nobody Knows Me, her voice a filtered, robotic ripple. She would spend the 90-minute, 24-song set revisiting several of those lives. With a band and multiple dancers, Madonna posed and juxtaposed her way through history -- hers. After a fully re-mixed version of her old stand-by, Vogue, and a less-altered take on the graceful ballad Frozen, she expanded on the anti-war chic of her recent single and video, American Life. Pvt. Madonna stepped out in Army fatigues with a chorus of dancers dressed as troops, a sheik, a nun, an Afghan woman in a racy mini-burka. Footage of wartime death and wounding flashed across the screen in a way that made the line between principled opposition and showbiz exploitation hard to divine. That number handed off to the more durable single, Express Yourself, which became one of the show's most witty and entertaining collisions of multiple Madonnas. She stayed in the fatigues, doing rifle drills, while the band gave the song a compressed, techno workout, and the war footage turned to military cartoon graphics. It could almost have passed for a U.S.O. routine, except for not-so-veiled dig at war as self-expression. Vocally, Madonna was in fine, flexible form, able to summon the excitement in Burning Up, the vampy humor of Hanky Panky -- a Bette Midler moment if ever Madonna had one -- and the pleading affection of Like A Prayer. Her interaction with the production was never anything less than confident and assured -- although the Moulin-Rouge-dressing-room getup in which she opened the show looked a bit scruffy against a sharp, sleek video tableau. The choreography, both of dancers and of projected visuals, was energizing and erotic in a playfully grown-up way that would never occur to Britney Spears. If Madonna, reinvented, has also evolved, it would be from a champion of sex to an advocate for love. Songs from the newer albums Ray Of Light, Music and American Life speak often of love's saving power, and to the extent they deal in sex it's as an expression of love. As if to herald this progress, Madonna covered John Lennon's Imagine near the end of the evening. No doubt she is already imagining the next version of herself. (source: Sun-Sentinel) ~ Check out more Sunrise pictures from the Sun-Sentinel Sunrise - 28 July - Madonna: 1 show, 20 years Nobody knows me, Madonna sings on her latest CD, the second song she'll perform during her four-night stop in South Florida on her successful Re-Invention Tour. Nobody Knows Me. And she's puzzled by this? It's amazing even Madonna can keep track of all the personas she has inhabited. Eighties Material Girl in thrift-shop couture. A lipstick lesbian named Dita. Evita. Mama Madonna. Faux English aristocrat. Suburban Jewish mother named... Esther. It's not an official she's-got-it-on-her-driver's-license name, naturally. But, as an outspoken follower of the Jewish mystical teachings known as Kabbalah, Madonna reportedly identifies with Esther, the biblical woman who saved the Jews from annihilation. Madonna may be Esther to her fellow Kabbalists, but she's not foolish enough to risk career annihilation by changing the brand name you'll see at tonight and Thursday's two-hour career retrospective concerts at Sunrise's Office Depot Center, or the two AmericanAirlines Arena shows Sunday and Monday nights in Miami. The stub reads "Madonna", and the show celebrates what that iconic name has meant for 20 years by dusting off many of Madonna's greatest hits. Since Madonna is in the mood to look back, we can't resist doing the same. Spoiler alert: We're going to reveal which hits from each period Madonna plans to perform this week. • The Material Girl. Teased dirty blond hair, Boy Toy belt buckle, midriff-baring top revealing a soft-bellied, pre-yoga Madonna, exposed bra straps. The image that cemented her arrival was that white wedding dress she wore while writhing on the stage and chirping Like A Virgin on MTV's inaugural Video Music Awards program in 1984. Songs you'll hear: Burning Up, Holiday, Material Girl, Crazy For You, Into The Groove. • Platinum blond. Madonna as Marilyn Monroe. When she ditched husband Sean Penn, she even took up with John F. Kennedy Jr. for a brief fling. Song: Papa Don't Preach. • The brunet artiste. For 1989's Like A Prayer, a dark-haired Madonna went deeper, focusing on family, her failed marriage, social issues and the loss of her mother. Songs: Like A Prayer, Express Yourself. • The provocateur. Remember the Sex coffee-table book filled with naked pictures of Madonna cavorting as Dita, a lusty ambisexual on the prowl? Songs: Vogue, Hanky Panky, Deeper And Deeper. • Saint Evita. Following Sex, Madonna finally landed the movie role she was born to play: Evita Peron. She was hiding a secret, however. Madonna was pregnant with her first child during filming. The birth would have Madonna in mommy mode, claiming she was more spiritual and less selfish. So how does this explain those $300 concert tickets? Songs: Lament (from Evita), Frozen. • Country girl. The cover of her 2000 technopop CD, Music, featured Madonna in a designer cowboy hat. On the Drowned World Tour, she rode a mechanical bull. When not in cowgirl clothes, she was donning geisha outfits. Songs: Music, Don't Tell Me. • Military Girl. Madonna as an antiwar, anti-Bush activist in army fatigues. Songs: Die Another Day, American Life, Hollywood, Nobody Knows Me, John Lennon's Imagine. (source: Miami Herald) Sunrise - 28 July - Madonna gives new sound to old faves Quicker than you can say Kaballah, it is clear: Seeing Madonna is a religious experience. From the "Madonna is my homegirl" T-shirts on sale (it better be religious to charge $40 for a T-shirt) to the Hebrew letters emblazoned on the giant screens, Madonna turned 20 years of musical milestones into a 2004 coming-of-age show that held true to its bill as The Re-Invention Tour Wednesday night at the Office Depot Center. She showed up with 18 semi trailers of equipment, a record for the center, and will return to the stage there tonight before heading to American Airlines Arena Sunday and Monday. To answer the ever-present question also available on a T-shirt: "What would Madonna Do?" The answer is this: She sang ballads with a voice she didn't have when the songs were first released and danced at the same time. Let me repeat that: Madonna can sing. Plus, she did a back-bend. She played electric and acoustic guitar and she wasn't half-bad. Before singing Material Girl, she announced, "OK people. We're gonna take a trip down memory lane." But she wasn't exactly right. The old songs took on a new sound that seemed more fitting to the more mature Madonna. She turned Frozen into a surprisingly beautiful ballad. She sang John Lennon's Imagine with clarity. She dropped some of the cold demeanor she's known for and actually smiled during Don't Tell Me. And she even went so far as to thank her fans before heading into a slow-dance inducing Crazy For You. "This song is dedicated to all of you who stuck with me the past 20 years," she said. If the question is "What would Madonna wear?" it is a "Kabbalists do it better" T-shirt that she threw into the audience. And if the question is "What has Madonna worn?" check the audience. There were women in veils reminiscent of Like A Virgin (she didn't play it). There were people in studded belts and lace skirts and purple gloves and cowboy hats and more. The opening line of the $30 program for the tour intones, "There is nothing new under the sun." For as many times as Madonna has resurfaced anew, is that really true? After a dancing Arab and skateboarders zooming around a half-pipe and $300 tickets, we have to ask: What's next? Perhaps it's in the closing message to the audience: Reinvent yourself. (source: Palm Beach Post) Atlanta - 25 July - Madonna connects with her adoring audience Re-Invention Tour could cost you up to $300 — one of the priciest tickets this summer for a star with fading record sales. But then you see Madonna alone on stage confidently strutting along the moving sidewalk during Nobody Knows Me, or playing the guitar exceptionally well during Burning Up, and it is hard not to marvel at the force she is all by herself. From the moment the 45-year-old appeared on stage at Philips Arena in Victorian costume and ageless shape, until the confetti came down two hours later during Holiday, Madonna's 'Reinvention' commanded the senses. Sometimes it was the jarring, jittery images flashed on the ever-changing screens of her backdrop. Even the brief interludes packed with trapeze artists, a skateboarder, a tap dancer, a bagpipe player and a drum corps deserved ovations. But Madonna simply, finally, appealing to her ravenous audience by doing her ever-catchy hits — Vogue, Express Yourself, Material Girl, after Into The Groove and all — was without question the biggest pleaser. The last time she performed in Atlanta, three years ago during the Drowned World Tour, her focus was current-album heavy and there was little to no attempt to connect with the audience. This time around there were holes on the side of the stage, MTV Awards-show style, so that fans could dance right along — though just below her. And there were plenty of opportunities. In fact, even thuds like 'American Skin (LIFE)' and that awful rapping the still-capable vocalist does during Mother And Father became somehow slightly more tolerable reimagined for the live audience. 'Don't ever tell me,' Madonna sang three-fourths into the concert, almost as if she was testifying. 'I saaaiiid don't ever tell me. Don't you ever, ever, ever, ever tell meeee. Toooo stoooop.' Yeah right Madonna, like you would listen. Or more importantly, after performances like this, like someone would actually suggest such a thing. CONCERT REVIEW: Madonna Saturday night and tonight at Philips Arena. The Verdict: Even more seamless than one of the most well-choreographed careers in pop music. (source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Madonna.com) Washington DC - 13/14 June - Our love is justified Madonna finally delivers the goods with the Re-Invention Tour — classic hits, cool sets and stunning choreography. We have all suffered for Madonna's art. From her pretentious study of the Kabbalah to an implausible series of children’s books to the dud American Life album, she has tested her fans’ allegiance in recent years. But now, after years of infusing her song lyrics and videos with religious symbolism, Madonna has performed her own Act of Contrition and delivers fans The Re-Invention Tour, the concert they were expecting last time around. Gone are the dark and mystifying themes of 2001's Drowned World Tour. No more profanity-laced tirades. And nary a cone bra in sight. Instead, fans July 24-25 will be treated to a two-hour tour de force — if her performance at Washington, D.C.’s MCI Center in June is any indication. The tour is an unapologetic celebration of the reason we have tolerated her missteps: those unforgettable ‘80s dance hits. Fans who want to be surprised at the Atlanta shows should stop reading here. But if you can’t resist a good spoiler, read on. The energetic show itself should still be awe-inspiring. Since the tour began, Madonna has delivered the goods to packed, sweaty houses with many of her most memorable songs. With such a vast catalog of hits, she could easily afford to open the D.C. show with Vogue, which followed a striking video presentation of The Beast Within, a creepy recitation of passages from the Book of Revelations. There was a rocking, guitar-fueled version of Material Girl, which she implored the audience to sing along with her. Her performance of Express Yourself featured a troupe of rifle-twirling dancers, which seemed inconsistent given the decidedly anti-war message of the American Life video. Burning Up was a terrific surprise for old-school Madge fans and a bathroom break opportunity for the under-30 crowd. On Don’t Tell Me, Madonna and Company traded their 10-gallon hats for berets and danced in front of an arresting Parisian cityscape image. Missy Elliott joined via video screen for a raucous Into The Groove, and Madonna got flirty on Hanky Panky before delivering a beautifully reworked and slowed-down Deeper And Deeper. It’s difficult to choose a single highlight from the show, but Like A Prayer comes closest. After warning the audience that she didn’t want to see anyone sitting down, Madonna launched into a powerful rendition of the classic hit song, backed by video images of a choir. The crowd went crazy, the gay men doffed their shirts and the entire audience shouted the lyrics. Note to straight men: We don’t sit down during a Madonna show. Unfortunately, Madonna couldn’t resist making a few clumsy political points. The American Life performance was an all-out assault on the senses, featuring dancers inexplicably clad in burqas and mini-skirts, culminating with an image of President Bush coddling Saddam Hussein. The set is in constant motion. From the opening video montage, which features multiple large screens moving across the stage, to a V-shaped catwalk that is lowered from the ceiling to the dazzling lighted setting for Music, the set design became an integral, gasp-inducing part of the show. But the most effective element of this production has to be the video montages that accompany most numbers. Elaborately and creatively conceived, the videos are not a rehash of her MTV clips. Rather, they reflect a grown-up, thoughtful artist with an undying knack for challenging her fans’ tastes and sensibilities. At 45, Madonna can’t perform handsprings and hoedowns much longer, so this may be the last chance to see her striking such a convincing pose. The Re-Invention Tour is an expensive ticket and worth every cent. (source: Southern Voice Online) Philadelphia - 05 July - Madonna's theatrics wow Philly fans Let me start off by saying that what I shared with the 20,000 members of the Madonna Nation Monday night at the Wachovia Center was not a concert. No, my friends, it doesn’t take much to figure out why the pop diva dubbed this the Re-Invention Tour. It’s not because she reinvented herself, although she is a much more tame performer now as a 45-year-old mother than she was in her days as a provocative sex symbol, but instead because she has forever changed the concert experience. What we were treated to was a full-tilt, non-stop, three-ring circus extravaganza that had your mouth agape, your heart pumping, and your eyes fighting with themselves as to where to look next. My first observation in recollecting the evening’s festivities is that I learned three things as fact. 1. Despite criticisms to the contrary, Madonna can sing, and sing with verve, with passion, and with a deft talent that never misses a note, even while she maintains pinpoint accuracy on all the dance numbers. 2. Not only can she sing and dance, but she can play the guitar as well, as was evidenced in several numbers when she played the instrument that she taught herself to play a mere four years ago. 3. The choreography of the entire show was perfect. And I mean perfect. So perfect that I was stunned at its precision. As a veteran theater-goer who has seen hundreds of musicals and dance routines, I can honestly say that what I saw on the stage this past weekend was better than all the rest combined. There was so much to see that I can’t describe it all here, but what stood out was the brilliant white tuxedoed-tap dancer; the red-top hat-wearing breakdancer, who windmilled around the stage doing things that didn’t seem physically possible; the mohawk-wearing skate boarder who careened up and down a half-pipe; the Scottish bagpiper, who danced with Madonna as he flawlessly played away on his instrument; and the three trapeze artists who undulated in perfect synchronicity while dangerously flying out over the audience. The costumes of the Maddonistas were equally eye-popping, ranging from army fatigues to Scottish kilts (and the audience did see what they were wearing underneath), to a flapper-esque ’20s show girl look, to an anti-war eclectic ensemble that saw a nun, a few Middle Easterners, a few soldiers, a Confucius look-alike, and a bishop all being disrobed by some men with guns. As for the music, the fans couldn’t have had a better treat. After years of blowing off her older music, Madonna reverted to her ’80s roots and gave the fans great renditions of her classics. She opened with a stylized yet fun rendition of Vogue and finished with a confetti-laden, party atmosphere with Holiday. In between she wowed the crowd with a remastered Material Girl and classics like Into The Groove, Papa Don’t Preach and Express Yourself. She sneaked in a couple of songs from her latest album, Nobody Knows Me, and American Life. She made her anti-Bush commentary, begging the crowd to register to vote and not let the president lead the country astray. She immediately followed that statement with a wistful, and fun rendition of John Lennon's Imagine which inspired older fans in the crowd to unleash the cigarette lighters. But perhaps her two best songs of the night were the dance-heavy (and I mean the crowd, including yours truly) Music and the showstopping Like A Prayer. The one disappointment was the lack of an encore - which I know is a Madonna staple, but hey, when you charge folks $300 a ducat, I think you owe them at least one return trip to the stage. Nevertheless, that was only one small blip on a huge radar screen that announces to the world that the original pop diva has plenty left in the tank, and remains the greatest entertainer on the planet. (source: The Delaware County Times) Boston - 27 June - Madonna, remade These days, you can call her Esther or maybe even Madge. You can marvel at her newfound political values, her quest for spiritual understanding and commitment, her astonishingly taut, yoga-sculpted, body-as-temple. And this Sunday and Monday at the Wachovia Center, you also can bask in Madonna's seemingly endless array of new showbiz shtick - from a technically awesome stage setup to a sparkling dance troupe introducing the hottest confrontational street moves (a style dubbed "krump"). Why, there'll even be something for the "youngsters" in the crowd - a Mohawk-sporting skateboarder working stunts to the X-treme. (What is this, Cirque du Soleil?) Yeah, Lady Madonna is hardly resting on her laurels. Always wary of the Andy Warhol prophecy that everybody gets a mere 15 minutes of fame, she's still striving to show us something new, to raise the bar of controversy, stagecraft and circus stunts. Remember past identities? The trashy street urchin. The Marilyn Monroe reincarnate. The futuristic sex temptress in bullet-bra. The elegant English housewife and mother, nicknamed Madge in British tabloids, with a high-falutin' accent to match. So it's really rather redundant (and obvious) that the artiste has opted to call her latest concert extravaganza The Re-Invention Tour. This pop chameleon might just as well have dubbed it "The Madonna Madonna Show." But there is one genuine switcheroo this time. Madonna is mixing in some defensive as well offensive moves. Why? Because many of her recent career decisions have failed to set the world on fire, challenging her past rep for near-infallible vision and market savvy. Take (please), her remake of the dark Italian film comedy Swept Away, directed by hubby Guy Ritchie, which stiffed at the box office in 2002. Then last year's American Life album was critically panned and, by Madonna standards, a commercial disaster. It took three months for the album to achieve platinum (million-sales) status. And the set produced only one charted single, the title track, which peaked on the Billboard chart at a piddling No. 37. As for her girl-on-girl smooching with singers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at last year's MTV Video Music Awards, this major photo op seemed as much an act of desperation as it did a "passing of the baton" (or better, saliva) from one generation of pop tart to the next. And while the singer/dancer is certainly moving a lot of tickets on the new tour, her first in three years, this Madonna extravaganza has not been selling out instantly or everywhere, as in days of yore. Just last week, local concert promoters released a new batch of tickets to both shows at the Wachovia Center, ostensibly after determining how to most efficiently fit the big production set into the arena. The first show had previously been declared a sellout, but the second one never has been. And if you go online to sites like eBay, you'll find offers of seats to the Philadelphia shows marked down to as little as one-third of face value. So as an act of contrition to old-line fans, Madonna is doing what was previously an "unthinkable" in her book: She's revisiting early hits she swore she'd never perform live again. Choreographer Jamie King takes credit (or blame) for talking the singer into doing the frothy Material Girl, which Madonna now ends with "I am a material girl - but not really." (So how come she's demanding as much as $302 a ticket?) For Into The Groove, she's donning a kilt and jamming with a Highland bagpiper and drummers. Like, really. Also presented in "re-invented" form are oldies-but-goodies Vogue, Express Yourself, Like A Prayer (with the artist strumming on acoustic guitar), Crazy For You, Holiday and Papa Don't Preach. The latter now spotlights Madonna and backup dancers/singers in T-shirts that proclaim "Kabbalists do it better." That's a nod, as is the Hebrew lettering that flashes on the video screens, to Madonna's current passion for Kabbala, a mystical branch of Judaism that's become quite the cult phenomenon in La-La Land. She's taken "Esther" as her Jewish name, and we hear that the assistant rabbi at the shul where she studies/worships is on the tour bus and blessing the stage before every performance. (To keep the spirit with you, be sure to pick up an official Madonna Kabbalah cut-n-sew sleeveless shirt, just $75, on your way out of the show.) For shock value, literally, Madonna gets strapped into an electric chair to sing Lament (from Evita), though no one pulls the switch. Ban the death penalty, while there's still time! Bush-bashing is also part of the grand, dramatic scheme. A fatigues-and-beret-clad Madonna and her army of camouflaged, dancing soldiers (the Madonnistas?) crawl through battlefields in American Life. This was a concept judged too hot for MTV (and blowhard, right-wing commentators) to handle last year in music video form, but these days it's proving more socially acceptable. Warming the song's end, the soldiers all hug as on-screen imagery shows Bush and Saddam Hussein look-alikes getting cozy. John Lennon's peace-craving anthem Imagine has also been embraced by Madonna - and illustrated with bleak images of war orphans and bombed-out villages. Missing in action, though, are a Madonna "given" of virtually every past show - a dramatic vignette or two with the artist writhing about the stage or co-joined with dancers in the heat of (mock) sexual pleasure. Does this 45-year-old mother of two and children's book author find such conduct unseemly? Fear not, thrill seekers. Plenty of naked bodies can be glimpsed wiggling about on the video screens in gritty, jump-cut, art-film fashion. (source: Philadelphia Daily News) Boston - 27 June - The tale of a small-time photographer, big-time Madonna fan Having never seen Madonna in concert, and being an avid photographer, I was determined to combine my two passions and go shoot Madonna at her concert at the Worcester Centrum for the Sentinel & Enterprise. Obtaining a press pass was no easy task, but after many faxed, e-mailed and requests by phone -- some might call it stalking at this point -- I somehow managed to penetrate the behemoth ClearChannel, and get photo credentials. At the show on Sunday night, I waited downstairs with the other photogs, and tried to control my lens envy as I gazed longingly at their three and four-foot zoom lenses. Finally, we were shepherded upstairs, through the VIP seating on the floor, and to a cage behind the soundbooth. Madonna was late, the crowd was crazed, and screamed with anticipation every time a song on the canned music ended. This went on for almost an hour. Finally the lights dimmed. After droning incantations and barking like a wolf on enormous moving videoscreens, Madonna emerged on the stage in a puff of white smoke, eliciting manic screams from the audience. She launched into Vogue, as I snapped away, pausing to fumble for film as the AP photogs kept their gigantor digital lenses trained on Madonna's pores. My dinky lens, on the other hand, afforded me a shot of the entire stage with a minuscule Madonna doll in the middle. We were only allowed to shoot for three songs and then I was going to head into the crowd and find some locals to talk to for an article. I admit, I was also tremendously excited to see the Material Girl -- in person -- for the very first time. Just Like a Virgin. After our three songs were up -- Vogue, Nobody Knows Me, and Frozen -- we were escorted off the floor. "Are you leaving?" asked the Worcester Centrum representative who was leading us through the crowds. "Can I stay?" Why did my voice sound so small? Mistake No. 1. Don't ask. Tell. "Oh, I'm sorry, you can't stay without a ticket," said Mr. Centrum man. "A ticket? But I have a press pass," I thought. "Press pass trumps ticket." Usually yes, but apparently not at the Madonna concert at the Worcester Centrum Centre. Even though there were a truckload of extra tickets for all four of the Worcester shows going for peanuts all over the Internet, my presence at the concert for the rest of the show was going to upset the delicate balance. Since I was supposed to cover the concert and write a review, "This may pose a problem," I thought. I tried to appeal to Mr. Centrum Man, who was very nice and remained very firm on the subject as he led me further and further from Express Yourself and the gamboling dancers on stage. All of a sudden, I found myself outside the Centrum, while Madonna played on inside. I could just barely hear the music as I sat on the steps of the Centrum. All the ticket-vendors who were peddling $10 and $20 tickets earlier were now nowhere to be seen. I fingered my useless press pass, and gazed morosely into the glass doors. I was very very very disappointed. Still, I got to go. I got to shoot it. The three songs I saw were absolutely awesome. Oh, well. I'm more of a Phish fan anyway. Oh, wait....they're breaking up. (source: Sentinel & Enterprise) Washington DC - 13/14 June - Madonna re-invents herself Madonna's Re-Invention Tour '04 is the road trip the trailblazing pop mega-star's fans have craved for years. "She did all her hits, she's never done that before," said a still-jazzed Rosie Young, 54, of Washington, D.C., moments after Madonna's recent concert at that city's MCI Center. "She was thanking all of us - her early fans." Indeed, those going to the Wachovia Center on Sunday and/or Monday will hear a jukebox full of signatures by the Artist Currently Known As Esther. Among the numbers included in the two-hour, no-intermission rave-up are Vogue (the show's curtain-raiser), Like A Prayer, Into The Groove, Hanky Panky, Material Girl and Holiday. This is in stark contrast to past tours, which emphasized her newest material and gave short shrift to her catalog. Another departure is the tone of the Re-Invention program. The show forgoes the kind of in-your-face sexual imagery and acting out that have long been mainstays of Madonna's repertoire. Missing are blatant simulations of sexual acts, references to lesbian S&M practices and the like. Nor is there much in the way of using Catholic iconograpy in a less-than-respectful manner - a staple of some past tours. This isn't to suggest Madonna has gone totally soft. But she has turned her attention from sex to other issues, specifically the current geopolitical state of affairs. On several occasions, songs are accompanied by either military-themed choreography or video clips of wounded soldiers and "collateral damage" (maimed children, demolished non-military buildings, etc.). Some of the images are particularly graphic and may be disturbing to younger, or more squeamish, audience members. Madonna also plays up her ongoing fascination with Kabbalah, a strain of Judaism based on ancient mysticism. One mystery, incidentally, is why she sometimes fills the video screens with untranslated Hebrew words. Wouldn't she want the audience - most of which, it can be assumed, doesn't read Hebrew - to understand her enthusiasm for this rather obscure philosophy? Despite the tour's name and its departures from previous productions, at least one thing hasn't changed: Madonna continues to put an impressive amount of thought, effort and, most of all, money on stage. The Re-Invention show is chock-full of state-of-the-art, eye-popping visual effects and astonishingly athletic dance routines. And speaking of which, it's downright amazing how a 45-year-old mother of two is able to perform such maneuvers with few between-song breaks. All of the above combined to create a spectacle that had folks at the MCI Center promiscuously tossing about superlatives. "She was phenomenal, although this was very tame compared to the old shows," said Debbie Levy, a 37-year-old saleswoman from Washington. "It was amazing," enthused Brianna Rossi, a 24-year-old waitress from Baltimore. "She played a great mix (of songs). And it's not just a concert. It's like a theatrical presentation. You were fully involved with the songs." Similarly, there was no doubting where Baltimore's Maria Dinglas, 21, stood on the subject. "It was awesome, the best Madonna concert ever," she said. Dinglas, who works with disabled children, was one of several fans interviewed impressed with Madonna's physical condition as well as her performance. "She still looks good," she said. "I want to look that good when I'm 45!" (source: Courier Post online) New York City - 16 June - Oops, I Forgot the Words to 'Imagine' After seeing Madonna's Re-Invention Tour on both coasts — New York and L.A. — I'm looking for ways to re-invent my job so FOX News will fly me to other locales along "Esther's" tour route. (I mean, is a quick hop across the pond for a Paris show really too much to ask?) Whatever your feelings about Madonna (given name), Madge (nickname) or Esther (kooky Kabbalah name) — and let's face it, all three can be irritating — Re-Invention is simply one of the best stadium shows I've ever seen. It works on every level: 20-odd years of hit songs (some with terrific new arrangements), innovative choreography (not the same tired moves you see from Britney, Janet, etc.), creative costuming (from Scottish kilts to flapper girl skivvies), cutting-edge videography and perfect pacing. There was only one difference between the New York and L.A. shows I saw — in the land of fair-haired hotties, Madonna made like a blonde and forgot the words to John Lennon's Imagine. Oh, the musical sacrilege! What made it especially amusing was that she mentioned before she started the song that the lyrics are wonderful, important, timely — blah blah blah — so much so that she wished she had written it — and then, mid-song, she drew a blank! To be fair, she had been ill, and had canceled the previous show. But let me tell you, the face value on my ticket was $300, and if I'd had actually paid for that ticket (rather than shamelessly accepting a complimentary one), I would have wanted every darn word of every song. (I did pay in New York, where my ticket price was a "cheap" $105.) It's funny, only Madonna could put together a show in which one minute she's singing, "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can" (words she actually remembered) and in the next she's belting out the virtues of being a Material Girl! (source: Fox News) Boston - 27 June - Madonna's show overwhelms, exhausts Madonna's Re-Invention Tour rolled into the Worcester Centrum for the first of four performances last night, and while there were new touches on several songs, the set-list emphasis was still on dance-floor thumpers, mostly from her last album, American Life. And the visual element was at least a co-star of the show. The sheer scope was exhausting - costume changes after every few songs, a troupe of 10 backup dancers, a five-piece band, two backup singers, and four giant video screens showing different projections (as well as two more trained on the star of the show). Heck, some of the interludes that covered Madonna's costume changes were more opulent than many bands' tours. Some were borderline offensive, as when beefy background dancers made war look like a particularly strenuous dance number, while the video screens showed graphic war footage, all to cover Madonna's change into faux Che-gear for American Life. The next interlude, with a belly dancer, break dancer, tap dancer, skateboarder and guitar soloist, on the other hand, made interesting connections between seemingly unrelated disciplines. The near-sensory overload veered between moments of interesting juxtaposition and semiotic incoherence. The Weimar-style black-and-white 'set' for the acoustic guitar-driven Don't Tell Me was lovely, but what American Life was trying to say is anyone's guess. It's rare when an artist onstage gives an upturned middle finger, and you're not sure whom it's directed at. (The song also incorporated some of the video footage that was excised from the song's video.) Similarly, Express Yourself followed American Life, with the martially-dressed Madonna doing rifle tricks while singing 'Don't settle for second-best/ Put your love to the test.' Huh? And so it went: The sequence of a gently swinging Hanky Panky and a hushed Deeper And Deeper gave something to hang onto, but then there were images of x-rays and the elderly on the too-slight Die Another Day, Hebrew letters and stigmata on Mother And Father (which featured some of Madonna's best singing of the night). Many of the songs worked as individual production numbers, but after a while the images became gimmicky - There she is with an electric guitar! There she is in an electric chair! - and detracted from each other. Madonna's voice has never been the world's strongest (as she has said herself), but it was as strong as ever last night. There was some lip-synching, particularly on the first couple of songs. As has been widely noted, Into The Groove began with an interlude of bagpipes and martial drums, and broke down to bagpipes on the bridge, but the effect was inconsequential - indeed, by the end of the show, nothing was a shock. There's something about the widely varied looks and images that works in aradio or video context - it's a shot of variety and the unexpected, and in small doses it's invigorating. In a live setting, with the condensed, cascading effect of so many numbers in a row, it's easy to appreciate, even be wowed by, the sheer scope and the energy being expended. But to what end? As a collection of dance-floor thumpers, the show had more than its share of moments - Nobody Knows Me, Vogue, the early Burning Up. But if the gaudy show business was intended to make a deeper point, it's not immediately clear what it was. The tour continues with shows tonight, Wednesday and Thursday. (source: Providence Journal, via Madonna.com) Boston - 27 June - Madonna excels at the unexpected Even before the mohawked skateboarder began riding the half-pipe during Hollywood, interest in the thin red string circling Madonna's left wrist had vanished. As well it should have. With a two-hour show this gorgeous and this artful, Madonna hardly needed to rely on a spiritual stunt to generate the sort of excitement that, 20 years into her iconic pop career, she's still capable of conceiving brilliantly and executing it masterfully. That said, she takes pleasure in keeping us guessing. Or maybe she's just an equal-opportunity disciple, happy to give props to Hebrew script and Jesus on the cross, which were both featured prominently on video screens. More to the point - this is a concert, not a celebrity inquest - in the era of over-the-top arena spectacles, Madonna has taken the concept to a new level. Without a unifying thread and in defiance of every aesthetic law known to man, she wove elements of burlesque, extreme sports, rock concerts, Cirque du Soleil, military drills, art installations, dance theater, yoga, and antiwar rallies into a whole. And seamlessness was merely the icing. The Re-Invention Tour, which sounded so desperately self-referential on paper, turns out to be impossibly accurate. Madonna manages to reinvent her reinventions. She gilded Vogue with a French court twist, delivered an irony-free Material Girl, deepened Into The Groove with bagpipes and kilts, and redefined Express Yourself as a drummer boy's march into battle. The latter tune featured the fatigues and rifles from the proceeding number American Life, but the jarring image neatly summed up what Madonna's career has been about: Mindful confrontation, artful provocation, and the use of every part of her body and mind to spark her own little culture wars. She's never sounded better. The treated chirp of her early years, which morphed into the dreadful earnestness of the Evita era, has matured into a strong, clear singing voice. A few years ago the idea of Madonna standing alone at a microphone singing Frozen would have been a dubious one. Last night she commanded her spectacle and her music with equal clarity. Describing the breath of the pageantry during American Life, her most blatant political statements, images of firestorms, screaming helicopters, and wounded children flashed on video screens while dancers dressed in religious frocks (this being a Madonna show, the habits and burkas were minis) traversed a massive V-shaped catwalk above the audience. Sure it was preachy. Timely, too. She's traded in her bullet bra for spangled hot pants, disco beats for finger popping, and transformed Hanky Panky and Deeper And Deeper into noir numbers. Likewise, the abstract ballroom choreography of Die Another Day was an elegant antidote to the rote gyrations favored by the next generation of pop stars. A blipping, bloated take on John Lennon's Imagine was the evening's one misstep. But her heart was in the right place. And for the first time in a long time, so were all the artistic pieces. (source: Boston Globe, via Madonna.com) Boston - 27 June - Madonna to fans: I'm Crazy for You Near the end of her show last night at the Worcester Centrum, Madonna dedicated the prom-night oldie, Crazy For You, to all those people "who stuck by me for the last 20 years." It was a sweet moment in what was a truly spectacular show. Yet, the entire joyously breathless affair had the feel of that dedication to the fans. The hits-laden, 105-minute visual feast was like a mash note to everyone who's followed the twists and turns and avant garde detours on her trip from "boy toy" to Esther. A stylish tip of the cap to the people who ponied up the ridiculously high price of $300 for last night's top ticket, to those who defended her notorious "Sex" book, went to see her movies and who have loved her in all her brash glory as well as her self-indulgent missteps. It was firmly the former on display last night as Madonna kicked off her four-night stand with style and grace, giving good face and even better voice. In fact, Mrs. Guy Ritchie, the first to admit that she's not the best singer, has never sounded more solid and self-assured even as she was in constant motion on moving catwalks, sliding conveyor belts and hoofing it alongside her cadre of precision dancers. If she denied fans the hits last time out, The Re-Invention Tour is virtually nothing but, from the sleekly choreographed opener Vogue to a singalong of the enduringly cheeky Material Girl to the unbound closer Holiday. And in a neat trick that only Madonna could pull off, the 45-year-old singer gave the people what they wanted while reworking a few to suit her tastes. That meant a little more electric guitar fire during Burning Up, a more organic, acoustic take on the rapturous Like A Prayer and a burlesque reworking of Deeper And Deeper. An almost constant barrage of images accompanied the music and dancing on mammoth video screens on and surrounding the stage. They ranged from photos of children in wartorn and poverty-stricken nations as she sang John Lennon's Imagine to Hebrew symbols during a rapturous Like A Prayer. (source: Boston Herald) New York City - 16 June - Madonna pours on the juice Bagpipers and skateboarders. Yoga poses and a T-shirt reading "Kabbalists do it better." Rap and country music. Angry political statements and giddy party anthems. Madonna's Wednesday night show at Madison Square Garden had all of the above, and more. A Madonna tour is, by definition, a spectacle. But she has never presented anything quite as dizzying and dazzling as her current Re-Invention Tour, which has four more dates at the Garden, as well as two at the Continental Airlines Arena. Dancers turned into acrobats, spinning on swings high above the stage. They also breakdanced and tap-danced as images of Tarot cards flashed behind them. At two points in the show, a V-shaped ramp descended from the rafters and Madonna and the dancers ran out to the middle of the arena floor. Without an album of new material to draw from, Madonna added new twists to some of her old songs. Material Girl and Burning Up took on a new-wave rock feel, and Deeper And Deeper became a jazzy ballad. Bagpipes and a filmed Missy Elliott rap were added to Into The Groove, while Don't Tell Me had a strange country-techno interlude. Madonna sang Lament, from the rock opera Evita, from an electric chair and added video footage of a gospel choir to Like A Prayer. Artful film of entwined, slow-moving, near-naked bodies enhanced the yearning sentiment of the ballad Frozen. In general, though, sexual content was kept to a minimum. Madonna seems more interested these days in spirituality and the state of the world. One of the show's low points came during Express Yourself. Dancers dressed in military uniforms marched and twirled rifles with projections of tanks and planes behind them. Madonna herself held a rifle above her head as she sang the line, "What you need is a big strong hand to lift you to your higher ground." One imagines she was making an anti-war statement, but the theatrics didn't make much sense accompanying a song about personal empowerment. Better to be inscrutable, though, than heavy-handed. American Life was accompanied by a video that showed, among other things, footage of a President Bush lookalike kissing a Saddam Hussein lookalike, and lovingly laying his head on the dictator's shoulder. Shots of children suffering from malnutrition or violence were projected behind Madonna during her earnest cover of John Lennon's Imagine. Toward the end of the song, though, happy children were shown, and a Jewish boy and an Arab boy walked off together, arm in arm. Madonna made her longest speech of the night before this number, encouraging fans to see Michael Moore's upcoming documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which explores links between the families of President Bush and Osama bin Laden. "I don't think I ever cried so hard at a movie in my life," she said before thanking Moore, who was in the audience. Later, she offered a more conventional thank-you, dedicating Crazy For You to the fans who have stuck by her through her entire career. She then sang a warm, relaxed version of the song. This was the concert's calmest moment, by far. Then it was back to business as usual, with a manic Music, featuring hip-hop record scratching, dancers gliding around the stage on conveyor belts, and the word F-R-E-E-D-O-M spelled out on the dancers' butts. The show ended with Holiday, a celebratory dance-pop tune with prancing on the V-ramp, a blast of confetti, and a final video message: "Reinvent Yourself." (source: The Star-Ledger) New York City - 16 June - Madonna/Esther rocks NY She may have adopted the new name Esther, but it was the same old Madonna electrifying Madison Square Garden last night. In a barrage of video imagery, campy dance routines and hit songs, last night's opening concert of Madonna's six-show Garden series was more artistic regurgitation than reinvention - despite the title of this tour. That isn't saying the tightly wrapped Re-Invention extravaganza wasn't fun eyeball candy. But in most ways, this show seemed to be the old Madonna in a new bustier. While the lightning bolt of musical greatness didn't strike the stage during the nearly two-hour concert, Madonna razzle-dazzled her way into the hearts of the devoted audience with an entertaining theatrical revue that was elaborately staged, costumed and cast with a full dance troupe that included acrobats and even a Mohawked skateboard boy. The 45-year-old pop legend sang well and looked great. And when it came to her dance-oriented pieces, she was certainly at her most compelling. Yet, she was at her best when she performed her bare-bones strum 'n' hum Like A Prayer. Madonna accompanied herself on acoustic guitar, and it was the one song where a feeling of soul came across. An unfortunate cover of John Lennon's Imagine, the low point of the night, followed that. She complicated it by playing it beneath images of desperately ill and dying children. Imagine, one of Lennon's best tunes, was such a downer, it felt as if Madonna pulled the plug on the show. With all that's been made of her new-found Kabbalist leanings - which inspired her new name - and shadowy spiritualism, it was surprising how little of that made its way into this concert. She took a lesson from her own song Papa Don't Preach and didn't gab about finding higher ground. Yes, video images of Hebrew letters and pictures of the Sacred Heart Jesus popped up, but the projections were more graphic design than evangelism. In fact, that was one of the biggest problems with this concert. The songs and the staging often had little to do with one another. There was an anti-Republican undercurrent here, but Madonna smartly voiced no criticism of the president or his foreign policy in words. Instead, she let videos featuring the ravages of war convey her why-can't-we-just-get-along message. As for the notion that Madonna couldn't sell out the Garden anymore, the reports of the demise of her career were greatly exaggerated. There wasn't an empty seat in sight. (source: NY Post) New York City -16 June - Madonna not ready to quit For Madonna, necessity is the mother of "Re-Invention." Super-savvy culture vulture that she is, the Material Mom knows that if she doesn't re-assert her relevance soon, she could quickly become a fringe best known for writing children's books and being Britney's gal-pal. On the heels of disappointing sales for her American Life album and a hostile reception to her last movie, Swept Away, the 45-year-old entertainer has her back against the wall for the first time in her career. The Re-Invention Tour is her way of proving she is not ready to retire to the London mansion with hubby Guy Ritchie and the kids just yet. At Madison Square Garden last night, the first of eight sold-out shows in New York in the next two weeks, she definitely made that point. Many sing better. Others write better songs. But no one performs better than Madonna — especially when she has something to prove. In the nearly two-hour set, Madonna takes the audience on a whirlwind tour through her 20-year career. Some songs get shaken up — the disco jam Deeper And Deeper gets jazzy, Like A Prayer gets an electro-country twang and Material Girl becomes a pop-punk rave-up. But what is even more impressive is how her elaborate performance art pieces enhance many of the songs. The athletic swinging of her dancers during Bedtime Story provides the song a grace that it never would have seen in a straight performance. The intricate moves of her 16-member dance troupe turned Into The Groove into a powerful dance piece instead of simply a dance-pop trifle. Papa Don't Preach was filled with playfulness and innocence, even including a ring-around-the-rosie dance. This is a side of Madonna that she hasn't shown very often — the one that has fun, the one that enjoys the roar of the crowd. She offered genuine appreciation for the cheers — much like her decision to bring back songs from her past that she has tired of. Making peace with her past doesn't mean she's ready to give up on the interests of her present. Kabbalah is present in the Hebrew letters that swirl on the big screens behind her and she even sports a t-shirt that says "Kabbalists Do It Better." Her anti-war, anti-Bush beliefs are clearly on display during American Life, as well as her overwhelming endorsement of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which she said had her in tears. With this tour, Madonna can give the song her full support — unlike last year, when she yanked the video to avoid controversy about complaining about Middle East policies in the middle of the Iraqi war. She was rightfully worried about getting Dixie-Chicked if she proceeded, but as it turned out, her album was basically blacklisted anyway. If anyone could have waged a successful media campaign to get her anti-war, pro-troops point across, it would be Team Madonna. The Material Mom, however, plays things a little safer — which is also evident on The Re-Invention Tour. When Madonna dedicated her ballad Crazy For You to all her fans who have "stuck with me through thick and thin for the past 20 years," she short-circuited all the critiques of her 2001 Drowned World Tour, which was high on drama and production but low on fun and any sort of crowd interaction. Madonna's latest reinvention may be her best one yet. She has not only become a champion of the underdogs but somehow an underdog herself. And as long as she offers amazing performances like this one, she will have an army of fans backing her up. (source: Newsday) Washington DC - 13/14 June - In a show that's more circus than concert, the 45-year-old ringmaster reigns By the time the skateboarder began riding a half-pipe ramp set up in the middle of the stage, there was no choice but surrender. The guy was soaring to the right, then to the left, just like they do in the X Games, and at that point anyone who wasn't already entertained into submission had to wave the white flag. Still to come was a troupe of bagpipers, a tap dancer in white tails and a trapeze trio that swayed and contorted in unison. An hour into the Madonna concert at MCI Center on Sunday night, the realization dawned: Our Material Girl was never going to run out of material. Certainly not until she had wheezed new meaning into the word "concert." It's unclear what a night at the Re-Invention Tour should be labeled, but the words currently available won't suffice. Madonna has created a new performance hybrid, one that lifts and blends elements of Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, Rock the Vote rallies, art installations, extreme sporting events, church sermons, disco dances and gun-spinning military drills. For a few songs, it even looked like a rock concert. Here's the weird part: It's not a mess. It's actually kind of amazing. Pretentious and annoyingly preachy at moments, yes. Strangely devoid of titillation and almost tame by the standards of her naughty-naughty phase, sure. But measured in verve, nerve and technical wizardry, it's hard to leave this epic extravaganza feeling anything less than awe. Just the seamlessness of it all is impressive. What's here -- and what was repeated for a second evening last night -- is a series of elaborate set pieces and costume dramas without a unifying thread, aside from Madonna's recording career. You imagine that a horde of roadies, miles of wire and a bank of iMacs were needed to make the gears of this machine whir correctly, yet the whole thing unfolds, wheels into place and lights up without a hint of effort. Even Madonna doesn't seem to be sweating much, which is a miracle, and not just because the air conditioning at MCI Center was turned off for much of the show. (Safe bet that was the star's idea; she hates air conditioning.) She's onstage every minute except the time it takes to switch outfits. The difference between this show and the last, the Drowned World Tour of 2001, was striking. That show seems standoffish compared with this one, in part because Madonna has finally worked through whatever issues prevented her from performing her earliest hits. "We're going to take a trip down memory lane," she said in one of the few asides to the audience. And we did. Papa Don't Preach, [...] and Into The Groove were revived, and Madonna treated those tunes like former friends with whom she wanted to party again. As surprising, Madonna managed to sell a few songs from her latest album, American Life, an absolute stinker that vanished shortly after its release last year. For the title track, she ran down a lengthy V-shaped catwalk that descended from the ceiling and allowed her to dance about 20 feet over the heads of fans near the middle of MCI. She ended that number by flipping the crowd the British equivalent of the bird. (It's the peace sign, only with the back of the hand to the recipient, if you're interested.) Either nobody realized it, or nobody minded. Nobody seemed bothered by the antiwar, anti-Bush politics of the show, either. Every few songs, including a wistful take on John Lennon's Imagine, there were photo montages of war-ravaged children, bombed-out villages and heavy artillery. At one point, a video showed a Dubya look-alike lovingly resting his head on the shoulder of a Saddam Hussein look-alike, as though the pair were waiting for a marriage license. Gutsy? Not at this point, now that it's safe to stand against the administration and safe to rant about Iraq. Madonna would earn points for courage if last year, at the time of the U.S. invasion, she hadn't yanked the video for American Life, which ridiculed Bush as a warmongering nincompoop. No doubt Madonna was worried she'd get Dixie Chicked -- that country threesome paid dearly for criticizing the president during a show last year -- and maybe that fear was legitimate. But her finger-wagging Sunday night felt like catch-up, and it was turned into a "Miss Saigon"-style dance number that trivialized its own point of view. With the sound of a chopper thump-thumping in the background, her backup dancers, dressed as soldiers, crawled on their bellies as though in the middle of battle, then hugged each other as if saying goodbye. Then the fellas danced around Madonna, now in her Patty Hearst get-up -- camouflage pants, an olive army jacket, black beret. "Stop all wars," Madonna commanded, before she and the Madonnistas left the stage for a costume change. Will do, babe. Now play some of your hits, okay? Sillier still, Madonna kept pushing Kabala, a Jewish form of mysticism that's become the rage with celebrities in search of spiritual feeding. Hebrew letters, without translation, flashed time and again, and Madonna sang the last several numbers, including Crazy For You, wearing a T-shirt that read "Kabalists Do It Better." A veteran button-pusher, Madonna has apparently given up on the one button she pushed better than any other: sex. It makes sense that a mom of 45 would give up her bullet bra and skip the bedroom bump and grind that was a staple of her early arena shows. But Re-Invention is filled with creepy screen images of naked bodies, all of them quivering and distressed through an editing technique that will be familiar to anyone who's seen a Marilyn Manson video. It's supposed to be arty, and at moments it is. It's also grim, especially if you're expecting a glimpse of the Madonna who made that porno picture book long ago. She's gone, and in her place is P.T. Barnum with a microphone and a glittering, age-appropriate corset. For a few tunes, Madonna even played guitar in front of her otherwise low-profile band, looking a lot like Sheryl Crow and strumming the bejesus out of the instrument. Thanks to such interludes, the occasional darkness of "Reinvention" is overwhelmed by the dazzle of its expertly synchronized parts, not to mention Madonna's willingness to at least pretend to enjoy her audience again. She didn't come back for an encore, but she closed with Holiday, amid cannon shots of confetti and a building filled with fans screaming so loud they seemed to forget the price of their tickets. And the best seats, for the record, sold for $303. (source: Washington Post) Washington DC - 13 June - Madonna serves up dull inventions The mother of reinvention seems more like a master of recycling these days. Madonna, the erstwhile Material Girl-turned-Britney-Spears-mentor, dropped by the MCI Center Sunday night for the first of two District stops on her Re-Invention Tour '04. Unlike her last tour, Madonna obliged with a healthy dose of fan favorites, from Like A Prayer to Into The Groove. What stood out for those who have tracked her career through its many phases — virgin, less than virgin, bad actress and children's book author — is that today's Madonna isn't exactly sure who she is. The show trots out the singer's hit parade of shocks, from political swipes to erotica unhinged, but each came out as if sanitized by time or (gasp) good taste. She no longer wants to titillate us, and her polemics always fall short of genuine insight. Madonna, now 45, is one of several '80s icons, including The Cure and Prince, hitting the road again this summer. But while Prince's tour finds the multi-talented musician winning fans anew with his craft, Madonna dazzles with pyrotechnics. The best she can muster musically is to strum an acoustic guitar while a crush of musicians perform behind her, mostly on the periphery of the stage, without a ray of light to illuminate them. Flanked by massive video screens for much of the affair, Madonna entered from a rising platform to Vogue. Never mind her occasional British accent, which she should have left behind in her hotel suite. The singer's voice, an able instrument but hardly her calling card, remained hale throughout the night. Burning Up, a nugget better left buried, somehow made the oldies cut, while Material Girl got an irony-free treatment. She brought a jazzy touch to Deeper And Deeper, which showed vocal nuances we didn't know she had. The best blend of music and the concert's visuals came with Like A Prayer, which she sang before a backdrop of black churchgoers streaming on the video screens. The protest singer in her blanketed the night with morose good intentions. Helicopter sounds and footage of wounded children made it abundantly clear Madonna is against war, but it's equally obvious she isn't interested in mocking our troops. She probably realized she looked smashing in a military beret and olive green shades and took it from there. Later, she sang an uninspiring version of John Lennon's Imagine that was saved only by reverberating guitar chords. She then segued to Scottish bagpipes and drums, which begat Into The Groove. One could think for days and not come up with a more incongruous match between music and theme. The night concluded with a big sign that read "Reinvent Yourself." One day it might occur to her to actually be herself, and see what happens. It could be the only reinvention she hasn't tried yet. (source: Washington Times)