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 mid-West & Canada. Also check the press reviews from the West coast, East coast and Europe. Chicago - 11 July - Meet mid life Madonna After 20 years of tireless invention, Madonna is not only still at the top but has emerged as a happily married yoga enthusiast and mother of two - a disappointment for critics who feel that by now she should have been punished for her sins. On the eve of her UK tour, we celebrate the First Lady of Pop. The scene is the United Centre in Chicago, where Madonna is about to begin the latest leg of her Re-Invention Tour. From my seat at the side of the stage I can see her preparing backstage, hoisting herself up into the crab position that had reviewers of previous shows both gasping at her suppleness ('At 45!')... and pointing out her support bandages ('She is, after all, 45'). I can't see any support bandages this time as Madonna rises up through the stage floor, still in the crab position, then stands on her head. Her dancers start coming down from the ceiling on swings, dressed in a way that suggests they have escaped en masse from a casting for Les Miserables. Madonna looks sensational, though her spangled corset and thigh boots are so high camp they border on space camp. Watching her frolicking with her dancers, I'm reminded that Boy George once said she was a gay man trapped inside a woman's body. Right now, in the nicest possible sense, it looks as if the gay man has escaped. As the set unfolds (old songs: Frozen, Papa Don't Preach, Holiday; new songs: Nothing Fails, American Life, Hollywood; horrible songs: Hanky Panky, Die Another Day; and unexpected songs: Imagine) the dry ice swirls, and it is as if Madonna has been joined onstage by the fog of truths and lies, preconceptions and misconceptions, that have dogged her over the years. Suddenly she runs along the moving pathway at the front of the stage and up into a superstructure which takes her high above the crowd. And there she stands for a moment or two, bathed in adulation, wrapping her legs around the bars: Watching us, watching her... At the start of Vogue, Madonna asks: 'What are you looking at?' It's a question it seems pertinent to answer right now. Her 46th birthday is coming up and she's done more than 20 years of hard time at the top. This year also sees the 20th anniversary of Like A Virgin, not her first hit but arguably the one that first set her apart from the common pop herd, the pretty hot-eyed ingenue displaying a moxie beyond her years as she flounced around in her wedding dress, announcing to the world that her latest love made her feel 'shiny and new'. This was no virgin - anyone could see that - but even then Madonna ladled on the irony and the metaphor just as much as the eyeliner. Just now, she's not looking so shiny or new. There are reports that tickets for her tour are moving slowly and sales of her current album, American Life, have been the worst of her entire career. Unlike 1992's Erotica, another poor seller, released alongside the notorious Sex book, this time the content seems to be to blame rather than any attendant controversy. For me, a longtime Madonna fan, American Life seems too heavy on the Kabbalah homilies (Love each other; Don't be meanies) and too light on the fun. That was a disappointment after her previous two albums: Ray Of Light, an introspective masterpiece produced by William Orbit and documenting Madonna's personal and creative resurgence; and Music, produced by Mirwais, a near-psychic explosion of rhinestones, sparse electro and nimble social commentary. More alarm bells rang as Madonna seemed to lose her nerve, withdrawing the military-themed video for the American Life single as the Iraq conflict broke out. At the Chicago show she spent a great deal of time writhing about in combats and brandishing a gun, so perhaps she has had a change of heart - but at the time she deemed the images of helicopters, explosions and a Dubya doppelganger lighting a cigar from a hand grenade 'inappropriate'. Around this time, Madonna appeared on the Jonathan Ross show. The last time Ross interviewed her it was like watching a small boy being mauled by a man-eating tiger. This time Madonna looked subdued and unconfident, constantly twisting her fingers and fidgeting in her chair. She talked about hating the way she looked and she sounded like she meant it. Ross even managed to slip it in that her new music wasn't for him and Madonna - Madonna! - meekly let him get away with it. By the end I was watching in thoughtful silence. I've met Madonna, interviewing her in 1995 at her New York apartment, and she was such a bright, cheeky, 'Fuck you!' woman, speaking fearlessly and articulately about everything from art and fellatio to God, rape, misogyny ('It's an aura - a black cloud they carry around with them') and everything in between. When she told me about being sexually assaulted as a newcomer to New York - the first time she'd ever talked about it - I commented that even something like this might end up being dismissed as a cynical publicity stunt. She laughed dryly: 'Some people think everything I do is a publicity stunt. They think when I go to the bathroom it's a publicity stunt.' Did she feel she had been dehumanised, turned into a 'thing'? 'Yes (mischievous) - but then most icons are.' There's no doubt about it: the woman I met that day would have eaten Ross for breakfast and used Michael Parkinson to mop the plate. This Madonna, this latest Madonna, wasn't coming across like that at all. It made you wonder what was going on: Where is Madonna placed now? What do we make of her? What does she make of herself, come to think of it? Over the years there have been quite a few Madonnas to choose from. Born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone into a large middle class Italian-American family in Bay City, Michigan in 1958, she seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the world's biggest stars and consummate shape changers. Much of her personal history has now passed into legend: her mother dying when she was seven, the subsequent rebellions, the running away to New York to 'make it', the career change from dance to music, the early stardom, the crucifixes and the attitude ('I lost my virginity as a career move'). Soon Madonna wasn't just 'making it' she was inventing it - or to be more precise, reinventing it. From that point, the Madonnas came thick and fast: Boy Toy, Dirty Bitch, Catholic screw up, Mrs (Poison) Penn, Disco Dolly, Tomboy, Whore, Clown, Evita, Earth Mother, Calculating Businesswoman in Corsets. And along with it came the seemingly endless parade of vile, diminishing boyfriends. Apart from Carlos Leon, Lourdes's father, Madonna's men were mainly distinguished by their predilection for slagging her off afterwards. 'If she were a painting she'd have to be an abstract by Picasso because she has so many faces,' said Vanilla Ice. 'She was so tight, she squeaked,' said Jimmy Albright. And, of course, Warren Beatty in the famous In Bed With Madonna clip: 'She doesn't want to live off camera, never mind talk.' (Pot, kettle, black?) The music was flowing all this time, too, but Madonna's life has always been much more vigorously reviewed than her art. Today things have quietened down considerably. Madonna is no longer jogging through our parks surrounded by bodyguards as she did in the Eighties. She's no longer spraying profanities on chat shows or feeling up lesbian friends to wind up the media. Since she dumped Catholicism for Kabbalah, the church has had scant excuse to feel affronted as it did when she kissed a black Christ in her Like A Prayer video or pretended to masturbate onstage during her Blond Ambition Tour. And it's 12 years since Madonna scandalised the world by producing Sex, an erotic photo essay that had Norman Mailer grumbling it wasn't dirty enough ('no beaver shots') but saw the rest of the world buying it just to make absolutely sure they felt disgusted. Recently it's been about yoga, macrobiotic diets, another bad film (Swept Away) to add to her chequered movie CV, an iffy album, a Gap advert with Missy Eliot and a Kabbalah-inspired series of children's books that are a million literary galaxies away from Sex. The Kabbalah thing remains both amusing and bemusing to outsiders, but if renaming herself Esther and wearing a red braided bracelet makes her feel good about her life, then who are we to judge? That said, following a branch of Jewish mysticism that seeks to annihilate the ego must be darned hard work for a woman who once declared she wouldn't be happy until she was 'bigger than God'. Madonna is clear about her affection for Britain - the country that produced her husband, film director Guy Ritchie, and son, Rocco - sometimes flattering us quite shamelessly: 'Even the stupidest people in Britain are more intelligent than Americans.' And yet there still seems to be a love-hate relationship with Madonna: breathless magazine articles about how so and so boutique is now hip because 'style icon' Madonna happened to pass by its windows... followed by more pages on her arrogance, her daughter's Eve Lom facials, her nastiness to ramblers who want to roam across her country pile. And of course the perennial headline which has cropped up regularly since 1986: is Madonna a goner? Maybe all this ragging can be put down to Madonna's bizarre take on 'down to earth' English living (fish and chips, pints of Guinness and hanging out with Gwyneth Paltrow). Or maybe it goes deeper than that. Is it just me, or do some people resent the way in which big, bad, ambitious Madonna has managed to dodge some kind of 'karmic punishment', some designated lonely fate, by finding family happiness in her forties? Of course, some people just can't stomach all that 'We're a partnership / cleaning the car together / doing Kabbalah together / strumming Scottish folk songs on matching guitars together' stuff that keeps leaking from the Ciccone-Ritchie homestead (and I haven't even got to the bit where Ritchie is supposed to be in the habit of calling Madonna 'Mum'). One woman told me she couldn't work out whether she was simply suspicious of the 'Guy effect', or just plain sick of Madonna banging on about her perfect personal life. Married Madonna she could take; smug Married Madonna, no way. Others seem to suspect that this is a parody of domestic bliss, just the latest Madonna disguise. I'm not so sure. It seems to me that a woman who lost her own mother as a young child might be a key candidate to embrace family stability. But it's about more than even that - it's about mega-celebrity and how to survive it. Arguably, Madonna has transcended pop stardom to become the first great reality show (Big Sister? Big Mother?). She is somebody who rubbed out the boundaries between life and art and managed to survive. Indeed, if Madonna were a fictional character, one could only retain public sympathy for her by having her 'pay the price' for her unnatural behaviour. By rights, she should be living alone in a dusty Hollywood mansion by now - childless, embittered, staggering Norma Desmond-style down a Gone with the Wind staircase, a hideous bony claw shaking her diamonds at the world ('It's time for my close-up'). Instead she's happily married with two lovely kids, everything's worked out great for her - and some people just seem to find that gutting. It is also extraordinary how, all these years on, some people, usually men, still can't give it up for the idea of Madonna, the talented and relevant musician, songwriter and performer. Where some are concerned she will always be dismissed as a chancer, a media manipulator, who built her entire career, spanning decades and continents, on a succession of good hair days. Never mind the innumerable No1 singles, the hit albums, the constant creative evolution, the provocation and the daring, the 20-odd years at the top of one of the most cut-throat industries ever. Cherish, Like A Prayer, You'll See, Frozen, Mer Girl, Gone, Impressive Instant - where did all these songs, and more, come from? The 'hit single' fairy? Part of the urban myth surrounding Madonna is that the songs she says she wrote were collaborations, and the songs she says were collaborations were nothing to do with her. Even today you'll get idiots at parties solemnly declaring that Madonna has no real talent: 'She's just a great businesswoman who knows how to market herself.' And people wonder why Madonna is always banging on about sexism in the music industry (for a pop girl she always did have a big dirty rock mouth). It seems the older Madonna gets, the more she is encouraged to shut up, put up and cover up, befitting a woman of her extreme years (one whole year older than Morrissey). But with her looks and fitness levels, why should she? It says something that she can perform excruciating yoga exercises onstage nightly on her world tour and be written off as 'past it', while David Bowie can collapse on his stage with heart problems and nobody suggests he give anything up. This is not to say that Madonna has made no mistakes. Most recently, the three-way snog with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the MTV awards was a miscalculation, if only because it flagged up how gender infiltrates everything - even mega-celebrity, even Madonna. Put bluntly, this was a painfully feminine way to grab attention or pass on a 'baton' that just wouldn't enter an equivalent male musical icon's head. The idea of someone like Paul McCartney grabbing Noel Gallagher for a brisk tongueing is only bearable because you know it would never happen. The 'guys' would be too busy 'duetting' (though we could argue all day about what all that pointing at each other with guitars is all about). While we're on the subject of men, it seems increasingly clear that most of them just don't 'get' Madonna in the same way women do. I am not referring to her fabulously loyal gay fan base, or even to her love life (though before Ritchie and motherhood she seemed to be on a one-woman crusade to give heterosexuality a bad name). I am referring to where the true Madonna heartland lies; namely the sprawling mid-twenties to late-forties female demographic, which should by rights be given its own Madonna-based name (Vogue Nation? True Blues?). One of Madonna's greatest unsung achievements must surely be that for more than 20 years she has been an inspirational global totem for the women who have grown up with her. While it is universally acknowledged that Madonna inspired the first generation of 'wannabes', nobody ever seems to ask where they are now, and what happened to them, or, more to the point, what didn't happen to them. It would appear to be the case that Madonna has become more and more important to these fans as the years have gone by (and most of us quite frankly have become Not Gonna Bes). A book I own, I Dream of Madonna, a collection of women's dreams about La Ciccone, beautifully captures how she has invaded women's sub-consciousness over the years. But it's not always a case of dreaming about Madonna or even for that matter thinking about her. Grown women have busy lives, and no one has time to sit around obsessing about multi-millionairess pop stars, but the fact remains that for many it is a strange mixture of comforting and exciting just to feel that Madonna's still around, doing her thing, putting out great records, loving her children, digging her man, practising her dance routines, kicking against the pricks. One woman I know celebrated her 37th birthday with a toast to Madonna, an ironic gesture but one which is probably more common than you think. Unlike most men, who have spent over 20 years debating whether Madonna was too slutty (or not slutty enough) for their tastes, it was always more about friendship than sex for us. I was thinking about this when I went to see Madonna perform at her Chicago show. It wasn't the best-ever Madonna gig I'd seen - not as brazen as Blond Ambition or as soulful as Drowned World - but it was instructive to see her perform in America, the place that made her. America is just so vast, you feel yourself being swallowed alive, rendered irrelevant and anonymous, the moment you step out of the airport. It makes you feel fresh respect for the young motherless Madonna Ciccone, the little-woman-who-could (and did), one of the first to stare celebrity straight in the eye and beat it at its own game. The crowd were a disparate bunch: families, gay men, large groups of men drinking beer in a gruff heterosexual manner, even what appeared to be a Kabbalah convert, waving a 'Queen Esther' banner in the crowd. And, of course, there were the gangs of women out for the night on their own, all types, all ages, all jostling together, buying their posters and $30 programmes as souvenirs, and boogying with a disgraceful sense of abandon to the encore, Holiday. I overheard a group of them huddled over a programme: 'Oh, I like that look, and that one, and I like her there.' It was like Madonna's career itself: big cultural pick'n'mix, something for pretty much everybody. So that's what we're looking at. While Madonna might not be inspiring young girls any more (at least not in the gargantuan numbers she did in the Eighties), she's definitely inspiring a lot of 'older girls' (and boys) just by being alive, and that alone makes her madly important. Add to that the music, the style, the humour and the sanity (see Prince and Michael Jackson for what could have happened) and not for the first time Madonna, circa 2004, starts looking positively indispensable. (source: The Observer) Chicago - 11 July - Do you believe in Madonna? As Madonna glides through Frozen at the United Center in Chicago, she hypnotically croons "Give yourself to me," her toned arms outstretched toward the enamored audience. She's got us in the palm of her formerly hennaed hands. Witnessing one of the most famous women in the world perform live for the first time is just like a dream to me, except for the tone-deaf moron seated beside me singing everything in my ear. And he doesn't limit himself to lyrics. You know in Like A Prayer when Madonna lets the choir sing and they go "whoah, whoah whoah"? He does that too. I didn't shell out nearly a hundred bucks to hear this blowhard belt out Madonna's hits, but something, maybe the show's spiritual vibe, stops me from smacking him. Eventually, I tune him out. Something's coming over me. Madonna is here. She had us at Holiday, and 20 years later, a red Kabbalah bracelet encircles her wrist, and fans are still wrapped around her finger. Her phases don't faze them. The souvenir stands reflect her current obsessions. "The 72 Names of God" and other books about Kabbalah, the mystical offshoot of Judaism she's studying, sit alongside her successful Kabbalah-based kiddie books, including "Mr. Peabody's Apples." A Hebrew transliteration of "Madonna" tops one of her concert T's. Her Re-Invention Tour, which mixes in forever favorites, including Crazy For You and Into The Groove, is the ultimate fix for longtime fans — sort of like listening to the original soundtrack of your life live. If the world has had enough of Madonna, with her Britney-befriending, Kabbalahmania, faux English-ness and more, you wouldn't know it by talking to these followers. "She could burp onstage and I would enjoy it," said Jared Rodriguez, a 23-year-old from Austin, Texas. He's wearing a glittery T with an amateurish image of Madonna in her cowboy Music mode. He and Candice Ramirez, 30, also from Austin, aren't put off by her new strain of spirituality. "It's a part of her life right now. We're OK with it," Ramirez said. "She could do anything. It doesn't mean we're going to do it." The concertgoers are not just long-in-the-tooth former teenyboppers. There are young men with frosted mohawks, little girls with rhinestone art on their arms, and one man who has fashioned his own "Krazy for Kabbalah" T-shirt. Then there are the old-school Madonna fans, decked out in corsets, pearls and lace. Sandra Schabowski and Julie Remedi, both 21, are in full Madonna wannabe wardrobes. Their Maddie masquerading paid off. Schabowski, from Berwynm, Ill., and Remedi, from Darien, Ill., came to the concert with third-level tickets. But when a United Center employee spotted them outside during a smoke break, he presented them with front-row tickets. "I'm still in shock," Schabowski says. Remedi also may need resuscitation. "We ought to do this more often." The concert may have been mobbed by Madonna moonies, but at ear X-tacy on Bardstown Road, music-lovers are hardly burning up with admiration for her. It's human nature for people to have different takes on America's Evita, but for a Madonna maniac, it might be hard to take. "Madonna probably needs to give it a rest," said Kara Gossom, 20, from Sellersburg, Ind. "She was good for her time." Others don't buy into the trendy religion trip, evident since her Ray Of Light spiritual awakening. "It really is a contradiction. (Kabbalah) is this mystic, spiritual thing, and she's so rich. She's the Material Girl," said Nicole Stevenson, 24, a massage therapist visiting from Boulder, Colo. "Whatever floats your boat. Their (celebrities') worlds are so out of the normal context of reality, they go a little nuts." Stevenson is also wary of Madonna's connections with the chesty chart-toppers she inspired. "This alliance with Britney is very strange to me." Britney and Madonna's show-stopping, same-sex snog at last year's MTV Video Music Awards didn't endear Madonna to the teen and tween set. Madonna is not part of the music vocabulary of Marty Hagler and Jean Henry, both 14. "I remember one song called Music," said Jean, a Louisville resident who prefers Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Marty, who is visiting from New York City and gets her music kicks from Green Day and Good Charlotte, is equally uninterested. "I've seen some videos," she said indifferently. Dennis Stein, 21, is proud to admit he knows "excessively little" about Madonna. "I know she's married to Guy Ritchie, because I like Guy Ritchie," he said. He would much rather listen to a certain Icelandic icon. "I'm a Bjork obsessive. Bjork just blows her (Madonna) out of the water in every way imaginable," the Louisville resident said. Although they're not taken with Madonna's talent, they don't think she's a total waste. Some of her harshest critics still applaud her business sense, longevity and fearlessness. "I think (Madonna) is cool, I respect what she does," Stein said. Stevenson also praised her power. "She's not afraid to do things other people wouldn't dare." At the show, even the most ardent of admirers may have been a little irked by their idol. Halfway through the show, she covered Imagine. Behind her, the screens reflected the goals of her pet project, the Kabbalah program "Spirituality for Kids." The images included an especially naïve one of an Israeli and Arab boy walking peacefully down a path, arms around each other's shoulders. My mind momentarily wandered from the spectacle as I contemplated the contradiction her new religion presents. For starters, her name is Madonna. Madonna as in "mother of Jesus Christ." Mrs. Ritchie may have recently changed her name to "Esther," but she can never change her status as Catholicism's uber-rebel. As a Jew, I sometimes feel a hint of hypocrisy in this. Still, she's become so ubiquitous that in the future, it may be impossible to tell if children named Madonna are a tribute to the mother of Jesus or the mother of Lourdes and Rocco. Then it occurs to me that the first and only time I've ever worn a cross was when I dressed as Borderline-era Madge at a costume party a few years back. I've even considered naming my own daughter, should I ever have one, Madonna. Madonna Ikenberg. It's only a little more bizarre than Cher Horowitz, Alicia Silverstone's character in "Clueless." Humbled by the repressed memory, I decide not to take the issue so seriously and quickly get back in the groove. Under a shower of glitter, dancing above the audience on a huge catwalk reaching halfway through the venue, Madonna closes the show with a darker, yet still bouncy, version of Holiday. The lights immediately go down and it's clear the ever-morphing butterfly won't be re-emerging from her backstage cocoon for an encore, which is kind of un-spiritual, in my opinion. Despite the abrupt exit, concertgoers are still riding an immaculate high. "I'm coming down from feeling really ecstatic," said Sara Dean, 28, from Spring Grove, Ill. "It was awesome." Aside from that, nothing really matters. (source: Courier-Journal) Toronto - 19 July - Madonna does Madonna, again You can call her old. You can call her a tramp (or a more profane version of one). But don't call her over. "And one more thing," the queen of pop said Monday night in Toronto. "You don't have to call me Esther." The one and only Madonna, who in the middle of her sold-out Re-Invention Tour, which kicked off a three-show run Sunday night in the Air Canada Centre that concludes tonight, was referring, of course, to the Biblical name she's adopted since taking to that mystical sect of religion known as Kabbalah. Since adopting the ancient philosophy as the guiding light in her home and professional lives (around the time she had her first child, daughter Lourdes, 7), Madonna - Madge, M, Esther, whatever suits your fancy - has implemented a holy grail of so-called "re-inventions." She no longer drinks normal water, she downs Rabbi-annointed Kabbalah water (at $2.65 a liter). She also doesn't perform on Friday nights anymore - you know, the sabbath. But there's no re-invention more startling, more illustrious, than the one that has been her career. Since Day One, more than 20 years ago, everything within success' reach has been imbued with alteration, satirization and, in true Madonna fashion, stylization. When she first entered the scene with 1982's Everybody, she was playing herself: A rough, fishnet-wearing New York dancer with no where to go but up. Over the years, she transformed herself into a cross-bearing virgin (not that anyone believed her), a sexually overt feminist (those dark "Sex" book years), a Japanese geisha, and most recently, happily wedded mother of two. Every step of the way, her music and its visual representations have transformed from one packaged product to the next, helping to keep her afloat in a vastly changing pop music industry. But its her '80s hits that keep fans happy, and it looks like she's been paying attention. All of the megahits from her first decade are including in her current show - Vogue, Express Yourself, Into The Groove, Papa Don't Preach, even Material Girl. And so is much of her latest release, 2003's American Life, an album not nearly as incoherent and disconnected as critics wanted it to be. But new material is not the same as old material recycled. Relatively little of her career-spanning set list is altered in any way, which makes the re-invention premise a little silly. There are no more new arrangements in The Re-Invention Tour than there were on her previous tours. Deeper And Deeper, a disco dance hit from 1992's Erotica, and 1985's Into The Groove, get the biggest shakeups. The former is transformed into a silky jazz-land swing number, while the latter gets a workout on the bagpipes. A perennial tour favorite, Holiday is now a tribal drum dance, Material Girl is loaded with heavy electric guitar, and Express Yourself, packaged alongside American Life in a military-themed segment, is a gun-toting march. Some work, some don't. Do we really need to sit through a rehashed studio version of Frozen, which already got a thrilling interpretation on her last tour, 2001's Drowned World Tour? Nope. There's a "but" coming, can you tell? But... Madonna's Re-Invention is still the best performance of any rock, pop, metal or other hybrid artist that's out there. As much as she thinks her career and music need retooling, it isn't the Madonna of yesterday - or even today - that need revisiting. We know her history; we know it well. It's the Madonna of tomorrow that she should be concerned with, that we should all be panting with bated breath for. It's time to start inventing the wheel again, like we know she can. I have faith in her. We know she does. (source: Buffalo News) Toronto - 18 July - Into the Groove After an 11-year absence, Madonna returned to Toronto last night with the first of three sold-out shows at the Air Canada Centre. The 45-year-old pop icon notably didn't bring her 2001 Drowned Tour to T.O., disappointing fans, but she seemed to have been forgiven last night judging from the roaring reception. "Ah, it's good to be back in Toronto," she said towards the end of her hour-and-50-minute set. "It's been so long. Just because I have two children doesn't mean I don't like to have fun." Believe it or not, Madonna last performed in this city in 1993 with her sexy Girlie Show Tour at SkyDome. (She mistakenly remembered her last visit as the infamous 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour saying: "The last time we were here, the police almost arrested us. I'm a good girl.") But back in 1993, she was a vastly different artist, single and childless, and without her new-found faith in Kabbalah, the study of a kind of Jewish mysticism that has found her choosing the Hebrew name of Esther for herself. Not to give anyone the wrong idea. Last night's show -- which began 45 minutes later than scheduled and found 17,000 anxious fans chanting "Madonna! Madonna!" -- was still a hi-tech, flashy and fun affair but overall more tame, and slightly preachy with plenty of Bush-bashing, anti-war messages and Hebrew references. Like the L.A. tour launch on May 24, a select group of fans were guided into tiny pits on either side of the stage before the concert began for a first-class view of Madge, although five giant moving video screens enabled the masses farther away to get a good look at The Material Girl. (Given her tour merchandise ranged from $10 for a keychain to $105 for a pink hooded sweatshirt -- so much for her claim she's now The Non-Material Girl.) Kicking off the night with a slick, stylized video and recorded spoken-word monologue called The Beast Within, the concert really began when Madonna made her big entrance laying down on a platform that came out of the stage floor to the opening strains of her 1990 uber-hit Vogue. She was quickly joined by nine dancers, all dressed in French period costumes, with her seven-piece band divided into two camps in the shadows on either side of the stage. The biggest production number, however, came during the title track from her 2003 release, American Life, which saw a gleaming silver catwalk descend from above for a fashion show featuring Madonna's dancers dressed as everything from a rabbi, a priest, a nun, an Arab, etc. By this point, Madge -- who began the night in a sparkly champagne-coloured corset top, short black shorts and knee-high black boots -- had changed into army fatigues and a black beret with the rest of her dancers brandishing rifles for army-themed choreography. The background video, meanwhile, was sober images of victims of war ending with a Bush and Saddam Hussein look-alikes sharing a cigar. (Similar video of children in war-torn countries was shown during her cover of John Lennon's Imagine.) Because this is called the Re-Invention Tour, many of Madonna's songs were reworked, some better than others. Often she appeared as a solitary figure on stage playing the electric or acoustic guitar on such songs as Burning Up and Material Girl or the new tune, Nothing Fails, respectively. The weakest link in the entire show was the circus-themed third portion where, for some unknown reason, Madonna dragged out the awful Dick Tracy song Hanky Panky, and turned the normally robust dance song Deeper And Deeper into a cabaret ballad. Thankfully, that segment was saved by a wonderfully inventive tango version of her James Bond theme song, Die Another Day, before she was placed in an electric chair for the Evita number, Lament. Other crowd-pleasers proved to be a mix of old and new songs like Frozen, Express Yourself, Don't Tell Me, Like A Prayer and Music. Although Into The Groove, which featured bagpipes, drums and Madonna and her dancers in kilts, and the show-ending Holiday, complete with red-and-white confetti and another stroll down the catwalk, have to be singled out for special mention. Madonna wraps up the North American leg on her Re-Invention Tour on Aug. 2 in Miami before heading over to Europe. Otherwise, she plays two more shows at the ACC, tonight and Wednesday. The Toronto shows initially sold-out in a record-setting 80 minutes but more seats were released once the Re-Invention production was finalized. Rumoured among those to be in attendance last night were Madonna's two children -- seven-year-old daughter Lourdes, a.k.a. Lola, and three-year-old son Rocco -- and hubby Guy Ritchie. (source: Toronto Sun, via Madonna.com) Toronto - 18 July - Madonna re-imagines herself without the bite With a name like the Re-Invention Tour, one would expect to see Madonna at her absolute finest. Madge is, after all, the queen of Re-Invention, so the show should showcase her doing what she does best: challenging pre-conceptions and toying with her audience's comfort level — all while hosting a kick-ass dance party, of course. Unfortunately, in 2004, Madonna has reinvented herself as a kinder, gentler Kabbalah-practicing, children's book author, which doesn't exactly jive with her onstage personality. The first of Madonna's three Toronto shows certainly looked good. After the taped spoken-word The Beast Within segment (some quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo paired with some genuinely arty images of the singer on the set's many screens) Madonna emerged from the centre of the stage writhing and showing off her best yoga moves. Erupting into Vogue, she was joined by a troupe of "Rock Me Amadeus" costumed dancers. Things got off to a roaring start and concept-wise, at least, they didn't let up. Throughout the show, Madonna would disappear and resurface as a military fighter, a flapper-style circus girl, a laid-back guitar slinger and, for the last segment, in a full-length Scottish kilt and a "Kabbahlists Do It Better" T-shirt. Each costume change was met with a spectacular set transformation, complete with images representing Madonna's continuing fascination with religion, birth and death flashing on the multiple screens. Madge's dancing hasn't faltered one bit over the years — say what you will about the lady, but she still has the moves. Unfortunately, it's not all about the dancing (although, at a Madonna concert, it does count for a lot). On stage for about two hours, the singer didn't go for a particularly economical set list, eschewing many classic hits in favour of some of the lousiest tracks in her repertoire. Songs like Lucky Star, Like A Virgin and Open Your Heart were nowhere to be found, while stinkers like Hanky Panky (from the Dick Tracy soundtrack), Bedtime Story, Lament (from Evita), American Life's abysmal Mother And Father and the James Bond theme Die Another Day all got their due. Yes, I realize it's not 1984 — and she did throw in oldies like Burning Up, Crazy For You and Like A Prayer (all of which were executed quite nicely) — but if she's going to choose a song off of the Ray Of Light album, wouldn't the title track be a better bet than the subdued Frozen? Set list aside, Madonna's biggest problem wasn't the music, it was the attitude. Back in the Blonde Ambition days the singer's general coldness read as ballsy bitchiness, which worked for her. She's still just as distant with the audience, but with her new sense of concern for the well-being of the world, her whole onstage persona rings false. As playful as the dance moves were, she never actually looked like she was having fun. As she begged the crowd to "Help me out Tor-on-to!" with the words to the tinny Material Girl, it was as if she was reading the name of the city off the back of her guitar (yes, there was a guitar). The worst moment, though, came when Madonna announced that she'd perform a cover of a song that she hadn't written, but had "inspired" her. She proceeded to launch into a hollow rendition of John Lennon's Imagine, while images of children in war-torn countries appeared behind her. As I glanced at the people around me, who had paid up to $300 for their tickets, many of whom were wearing new $100 tour T-shirts, I couldn't help but feel that Madonna didn't really spend much time imagining that she has no possessions or envisioning the world living as one. The song was immediately followed by a version of Into The Groove, complete with video-taped rapping from Missy Elliott (to remind us all of Madge 'n' Missy's recent Gap ad, natch), making the Imagine stunt seem all the uglier. Madonna is what she is. She's all about stroking her own ego, crass marketing and a lack of political correctness. Hopefully she'll re-invent herself again soon so we can get past the hypocrisy of her latest flights of fancy and get back into the groove. (source: Chart Attack) Toronto - 18 July - Madonna thrills fans with over-the-top theatrical concert in Toronto The original Material Girl strutted, writhed and wriggled Sunday, showing her fans she still had the goods to compete with performers half her age. Madonna's concert, the first of three in Toronto, was an over-the-top theatrical production complete with costume changes, choreographed dance numbers and an ever-changing stage. After an awkward, avant-guarde video display where she appeared to turn into a wolf, the 45-year-old singer opened with Vogue, her tribute to New York club life. Dressed in a glittery corset, black short-shorts and knee-high boots, Madonna sashayed from one end of the stage to the next with the help of a moving sidewalk - a conveyer-belt built into the entire front section of the stage. Aptly-titled the Re-Invention Tour, the set went through several incarnations, at times appearing as a Renaissance painting, a war field, a circus, a traditional concert stage with a full band in the centre and finally, a dance club. Moving parts included a V-shaped catwalk that dropped down on top of the floor seats, giving Madonna greater access to fans at the back end of the Air Canada Centre. It's been 11 years since Madonna's strutted on a Canadian stage and fans showed they've been patiently waiting with thunderous applause throughout the show. "It's good to be back, Toronto," she told more than 16,000 fans who paid up to $300 - considerably more than the top-ticket price of $55 for her 1993 stop. "Just because I've changed my ways doesn't mean I don't still like to have fun." She briefly mentioned a run-in with Toronto police in 1990, when officers investigated reports of lewd acts during her concert. "I'm a good girl," she purred. The Material Girl has re-invented herself dozens of times since she left her Michigan working-class home in the late 1970s. Her most memorable persona was the sex-crazed diva, a harbinger of the current generation of pop music tarts. She offered the crowd some of that sauciness on Sunday with suggestive dance moves - although the show was relatively tame compared to her former self. Instead of sexual provacativeness, she filled the two-hour set with religious iconography. An illustration of Jesus was her backdrop for Mother And Father. She wore a T-shirt with the words Kabbalists Do It Better during Papa Don't Preach. Madonna's calmed down considerably in recent years, with her current role of demure mother, children's book author and spiritual practitioner. The show seemed structured to show off Madonna's new maturity, urging people to think about government, religion and world events, rather than push the usual buttons with simulated sex scenes. Her fans didn't seem to mind and said they continue to support her chameleon career. Carla Filoso drove from Ottawa for the show. "She's probably the most influential artist of our time," gushed the 24-year-old, who spent $300 on her floor seat ticket. "She's re-invented herself about 100 times." Natalie Michaud thought the '80s icon was worth buying a ticket from a U.S. scalper for $700 US. On top of that price, the 25-year-old psychology student flew from Grand Falls, N.B. with her boyfriend for the show. "I grew up with her. I love her," she gushed from her floor seat. Madonna didn't disappoint, working her way through the maze of past hits with confident ease, even finding inventive, modern ways to interpret her '80s songs. Express Yourself saw her treat a rifle like a baton, twirling it round and round and giving the song a more political slant. Burning Up, a syrupy pop ditty from her first record, became a bold, new wave rock song. Wielding an electric guitar, Madonna belted out her signature song, Material Girl to some of the loudest screams of the night. Other hits included Frozen, Into The Groove and Crazy For You. Madonna, who found time earlier in the day to stop in at the city's Kabbalah Centre, proved herself a versatile performer, putting on a Vegas-style show that left the audience panting right until the red-and-white confetti sprayed overtop during the finale, her song Holiday - the singer's first Top 40 hit back in 1983. With a huge library of songs to choose from, Madonna seemed to have picked one to represent her many image makeovers. Lament, from Evita, showed a bit of the sophisticated lady. Like A Prayer was her first religious foray. Hanky Panky, from the film Dick Tracy, reminded fans of Madonna's many attempts to conquer acting. Her button-pusher attitude was let loose during American Life, with dancers dressed like soldiers attacking others dressed as religious figures including a nun and a rabbi. She performs again Monday and Wednesday. The three Toronto shows are her only stops in Canada. Her tour ends in Lisbon in mid-September. (source: Canadian Press) Toronto - 18 July - Madonna's 'all-out assault on the eyes' Madonna's notorious 2003 flop, American Life, wasn't half as bad as its many detractors argued, but the record's messages about the emptiness of fame and materialism were not easily reconciled with a pop legacy synonymous with hedonism, conspicuous consumption and the relentless pursuit of the spotlight. A similar dissonance ran through the ungainly, but wholly spectacular, production the former Material Girl jammed into the Air Canada Centre last night for the first of three local dates — one follows tonight, another on Wednesday — on her Re-Invention Tour. Totally camp at times, yet yearning for gravitas at others in images of war and hackneyed John Lennon covers, the immaculately conceived and executed two-hour affair often resembled the world's most pretentious drag show. That it succeeded as ludicrously overwrought entertainment, despite a few obvious flaws, though, is testament to some of the most riveting stage and video design ever committed to the concert stage, an undeniable repertoire of solid tunes and the barely containable enthusiasm of Madonna's fans. This was only Madonna's second visit to Toronto since her 1990 Blond Ambition Tour stop at SkyDome provoked a visit by the local morality squad, a moment that immortalized the city as the "fascist state of Toronto" when it turned up in the documentary Truth Or Dare one year later. While her Girlie Show touched down at the 'Dome in 1993, she gave the city a conspicuous pass on 2001's Drowned World tour. The excitement among the Maddie faithful — a true cross section of the Toronto population, if tilted somewhat towards giddy gay men and 30-something women in unflattering outfits — at her return has, thus, been building for quite some time. The highest expectations were likely met, even if Madonna herself felt almost secondary to the Cirque du Soleil-esque whirlwind of high-res digital projections, costumed dancers, acrobats, skateboarders and bagpipers (yes, there was a pipe and drum band on stage at one point — for Into The Groove, of all things) swirling around her. From the coy, one-two opening statement of Vogue (first words uttered from the stage: "Strike a pose") and American Life's Nobody Knows Me until the closing circuit-party throb of a reconstituted Holiday— which had Madonna and her dance troupe cavorting over the ecstatic crowd on an enormous, triangular catwalk while confetti cannons discharged a small mountain of candy-coloured paper — the Re-Invention was an all-out assault on the eyes. American Life and a jubilant Express Yourself were conducted in fatigues and military-drill formation. The Dick Tracy soundtrack obscurity Hanky Panky, Deeper And Deeper and Die Another Day were (un)dressed as burlesque, the latter tune climaxing bizarrely with Madonna being strapped into an electric chair before a glowing half-pipe. A show-stopping run at Music brought the video's retro-disco imagery garishly to life on an illuminated staircase, while Like A Prayer concluded with stills of stigmata flanking the singer on stage. Still other tunes found Madonna assuming the pose of a simple rock 'n' roll frontwoman, strapping on a guitar for Burning Up and Material Girl and occasionally even playing it. If this spiritually questing, 45-year-old mother — there were some Kabbalah-themed T-shirts spotted on stage and Hebrew script on the monitors for Like A Prayer— and sometime children's author intended some overarching message to be taken away from this orgy of excess other than "Dig me, I'm Madonna," it wasn't getting through. But "Dig me, I'm Madonna" certainly did. It's not that her sentiments aren't sincere, it's that she's incapable of expressing herself through anything but spectacle. And she does it very well. (source: Toronto Star) Chicago - 11 July - Madonna trades memorable music for gaudy spectacle Over the course of her two-decade career, Madonna has accomplished many things: She has been a champion button-pusher, a fashion trendsetter and a provocative performance artist. The 45-year-old singer has also recorded some extraordinary music (along with a fair amount of pop fluff). But judging from her spectacle-laden performance at the United Center on Sunday, that's the accomplishment she cares about least. The dance diva's skimpy 105-minute show -- the first of four in Chicago -- certainly gave her fans a lot of high-tech, whiz-bang gimmickry for their hard-earned dollars. (The top ticket price: $317.50.) But the music was essentially an afterthought. Judged against the standards of, say, the Cirque du Soleil, a modern Broadway production or the videos-come-to-life concerts by Madonna offspring such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, it was a heck of a show. But call me old-fashioned: I went for the music. And in this department, the Reinvention Tour needed serious reanimating. After starting 40 minutes late and turning off the arena's air-conditioning in order to preserve her platinum pipes, Madonna played a mere 24 songs -- that's counting the ponderous "I am a prophet" faux-Biblical introduction -- and she wasn't even onstage for three of those. Yes, the set list spanned her career, and she overcame her longstanding reluctance to play her older hits. But several of these were delivered in arrangements that were so bizarre that they played like parodies. That is, unless you agree that bagpipes and martial drummers were always lacking in 1984's Into The Groove. (What was with the Scottish kilts and the odd choice of sonic filigree? Maddy and British director Guy Ritchie were married in a Scottish castle and like to vacation in the highlands -- that's the only fact that I could find to explain this strange detour, one of several in the show that made no sense to anyone besides the singer's self-indulgent choreographers, set designers and wardrobe artists.) Vogue was reimagined as a soundtrack for the court of Marie Antoinette; 1983's Burning Up got some incongruous, generic heavy-metal guitar and Lament from the musical Evita served only to underscore that Madonna was poorly suited to perform in musicals like Evita. (And no, the set piece that found her strapped into an electric chair wasn't enough to distract from her melodramatic crooning.) The singer also played six songs from last year's abysmal techno-folkie flop, American Life. Contrary to what some critics have said, the material fared no better in concert than it does on the flat and uninspired recording. Madonna continued to overuse the electronic vocoder effect on her voice (perhaps to mask the insipid lyrics), the sultry come-ons of her Erotica era were still sorely missed and the show came to a screeching halt with the dumb and stilted rap in the middle of the maudlin Mother And Father. Musically, however, the nadir was an anemic, histrionic and soulless electronic reading of John Lennon's Imagine set to a barrage of video images of children from around the globe plagued by the ravages of hunger and war. (War and hunger = bad! Imagine no possessions = good! That is, after you've gone into hock buying concert tickets.) As a political commentator, Madonna made Bart Simpson seem as sophisticated as Noam Chomsky. And her attempts to enlighten us about her arcane spiritual belief system didn't fare much better --though she mysteriously traded in her "Kabalists Do It Better" T-shirt for one that read, "Italians Do It Better." Imagine no facile preaching from Madonna. It's easy if you try. Or have you really forgotten the Material Girl who fellated a water bottle in Truth Or Dare and acted out pretty much every risque fantasy imaginable in her dirty-picture book Sex? In the end, if you removed all of the spectacle -- the half-pipe skateboard ramp, the bagpipers, the fake explosions, the dancers' military drills, the descending catwalk and the multiple video screens -- you had an aging singer with an impressive catalog and a voice that (at least on the dance numbers) is arguably stronger than it's ever been. Sadly, Madonna lacked enough faith in these assets to rely on them being enough to entertain us. Instead, she beat us over the heads with yet another dizzying and superfluous MTV-style visual assault. The most radical reinvention that Madonna could have chosen at this point in her career was to simply emphasize the music. (You know, that stuff that "makes the people come together/Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebels/ Think of yesterday.") Believe it or not, Maddy, it's your music that will endure when all the rest is gone, after the last bagpiper has hung up his kilt and the skateboarder no longer has enough hair to grow a Mohawk. (source: Chicago Sun-Times) Chicago - 11 July - Madonna reinvents her hits The engine of Madonna's 21-year career is reinvention. Look back and her lineage of videos and concert tours is lined with shifting selves -- from disco boy-toy all the way up to children's book author. By naming her current tour Re-Invention, the 45-year-old is not so much trying anything new as she is, for the first time, collecting all her former selves and seeing if they can co-exist together. Some call it nostalgia, but Madonna has never been that obvious. At the United Center Sunday, the first of four sold-out nights, she tried to make sense out of everything she's done in the past, but in the exhilarating collage, she demonstrated some previous lives live up to the present and a few do not. Some reinvention was musical and on these songs, Madonna and her eight-piece band and core of dancers celebrated their durability. Into The Groove, an early hit, was remixed with a more complex beat, rapping interludes from a recorded Missy Elliott and, strangely, a live bagpiper and drum corps. Like A Prayer, part of her disco folk set, swelled with spiritual uplift with the help of a recorded gospel choir. Unlike her dark and condensed Drowned World Tour in 2001, this outing joyfully interchanged past with present. The best moments blurred images and toyed with mixed messages. She and her dancers performed Express Yourself, an infectious dance pop statement of individuality, dressed in military gear and twirling rifles. For Burning Up, her earliest dance hit, and Material Girl, Madonna posed as a serious guitar rocker, hitting chords and transforming the songs' adolescent whine into adult certitude. The flow of imagery had its chinks when Madonna revisited weaker material -- notably Hanky Panky, a vaudeville jazz send-up from Dick Tracy. And no matter what you think of Andrew Lloyd Webber, his material (Lament) doesn't sound good being sung when the singer is strapped to a fake electric chair. Unlike the past, the show was not designed to provoke but was filled with more moments where she tried to present herself as a serious songwriter. She slipped into that mode during the show's third act, a short acoustic set that ended with a cover of John Lennon's Imagine. The choice may have been in protest, since Clear Channel Entertainment, her tour's producer and promoter, is the same company that banned the song from its 1,200 radio stations after Sept. 11. But since she was singing in front of a backdrop of televised starving children, it's more likely she was using the song to signal her altruism. Her shrill rendition didn't do that. Instead, it felt like another reinvention, just that this one was empty and presumptuous. (source: Daily Herald) Chicago - 11 July - Madonna's message lost in transformation So it's come to this: Madonna, who once writhed her way to R-rated MTV stardom, singing earnest protest anthems. What next? Madonna writing children's books? Oh, wait a minute, she's already done that. The singer's latest career transformation was accompanied by an occasionally dazzling, frequently puzzling, and sometimes ponderous multimedia extravaganza Sunday in the first of four concerts at the United Center. Even though her latest movie (Swept Away) and album (American Life) were commercial and critical flops, and even though she's been challenged by a new crop of tarted-up pop divas, Madonna remains a formidable concert draw. But the current Re-Invention Tour, spread over 21 songs and 105 minutes, is a mess, a hodgepodge of ideas that never quite establishes its tenuous theme: personal reinvention as the key to world peace. There were Cirque du Soleil-like acrobatics from her dancers, moody visuals on a handful of movable screens that suggested the Goth-rock influence of Nine Inch Nails or Depeche Mode, and a bevy of set changes that evoked everything from Louis XIV decadence to Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket." For longtime Madonna watchers, it simply meant a less-than-satisfying makeover, long on simplistic political themes and short on the old sexed-up dance numbers. Madonna was never a particularly personable performer; she always kept the audience on a short leash with her dominatrix demeanor. But the singer more than compensated with a subversive sense of humor that, when conspiring with the best of her melodic dance-pop, put a wicked twist on the notion of a "guilty pleasure." Once she was a female role model of the best sort, a self-possessed hurricane of ambition out to entertain at all costs. Now she's come down with a bad case of Significance, complete with self-help tips, a cover of John Lennon's Imagine and images of war-torn Third World countries. It didn't help that the singer was touring behind her weakest album, American Life, which signaled that the Madonna party was definitely over. On this electro-folk sidestep, the erstwhile narcissist had been replaced by a kinder, humbler, more enlightened superstar. Her current tour weaves the gray American Life tunes into the fabric of more colorful musical moments from earlier eras. Madonna is concentrating more than ever on singing. Though her voice was occasionally enhanced by backing vocals, she sounded poised and in tune, her tone warmer, her range broader. Her dance moves have become more stylized and deliberate, less overtly sexual and frantic, presumably to allow her enough room to catch her breath and belt out a forgotten Evita ballad such as Lament. There were some inspired moments: a splashy entrance for Vogue; a new-wave makeover for Burning Up, with Madonna strumming rudimentary rhythm guitar; an eerie techno-pop ballad, Frozen. But there were early signs the show was in trouble. The muddled title song of American Life was performed in military fatigues, its most memorable moment a closing video image of Saddam Hussein and President Bush look-alikes embracing. An acoustic set, in which Madonna continued her unpromising transformation from dance queen into coffeehouse singer-songwriter, limped along until collapsing with Mother And Father, in which the singer tried to rap. Almost out of desperation, she brought out a high-stepping Scottish bagpiper, right after a Missy Elliot video cameo on Into The Groove. What this had to do with anything was beyond me, but it sure was fun to watch. But just as the concert was starting to regain its balance, it was over in a shower of confetti and one-world bromides during Holiday. "Come together in every nation," Madonna chirped. "Reinvent Yourself," the video screen commanded. Enough already. (source: Metromix)