By Craig S. Semon
Madonna, performing Tuesday at TD Garden in Boston. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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BOSTON - When it comes to the great minds that emerged out of the 20th Century, Madonna has to be ranked high on the list, right near Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
No kidding.
Nearly 30 years in her career, Madonna has survived changing musical trends and has outlived most of her musical rivals. Selling a whopping 300 million-plus albums worldwide, The Material Girl has forged a stellar career out of marginal talent, impeccable timing and uncanny marketing skills. Let's see those eggheads Einstein and Hawking do that.
Besides being pop's ultimate opportunist, Madonna's still a taboo-breaking, button-pushing pop dynamo ready to explode with imaginative costume changes, dazzling choreography, elaborate set pieces and a stellar roster of hits.
And who needs “Fifty Shades of Gray” when you have 54-year Madonna?
Fresh from her controversial, breast-baring, crowd-mooning, Israeli flag wrapping, swastika-displaying, anti-Pussy Riot prison sentence and pro-gay rights pontificating treks through Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Rome Paris, London, Edinburgh and St. Petersburg, Madonna performed a salacious, scandalous, unorthodox, unpredictable, inspired, seductive, sexy and spirited, 19-song, hour-and-50-minute set last night to a sold-out crowd at the TD Garden.
The show opened up with an elaborate and eye-popping cathedral scenario complete with winged, bare-chested demons gyrating and contorting their muscular bodies and red cloak-wearing monks tolling a church bell and swinging an incense burning censor like they were taboo-smashing wrecking balls, all unfolding in front of a humongous cross with the initials “MDNA.”
Always a master in the entrance department, a floating confessional booth (with Madge tucked inside) descended to the stage and the pop icon smashed through the cathedral's faux-stained glass window with an AK47. Then, a lean, mean Madonna and her monks-turned-“Magic Mike” extras strutted their respective stuff on the stage while religious icons and fire and brimstone imagery rained on the video monitor during “Girls Gone Wild,” the first of eight songs from her latest, “MDNA.”
If Armageddon is just around the corner, it's going to look pale and less memorable dance moves in comparison to Madonna's latest concert extravaganza.
With the accompanied visuals sometimes more compelling than the actual songs, Madonna was figuratively and literally packing heat as she threateningly pranced on the stage waving a big silver handgun (and pointing it at the audience) during “Revolver.”
Boasting what may be the highest body count ever depicted during a stage number, the carnage continued with the over-the-top, Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy and splatter-fest, “Gang Bang.” With Nancy Sinatra cool, Madonna — sporting a Pussy Galore-like getup that made her part femme-fatale/part Bond girl — hid out in a sleazy “Paradise Motel,” where a group of ninja-assassins tried to sneak up on her, only to get shot at point-blank range, their brains splattered on the video screen monitor.
While this blood bath might have been one of her most alarming and disarming stage antics Madonna has performed in decades, it was “Kill Bill” cool and not to be taken seriously in the very least.
After an abrupt version of “Papa Don't Preach,” masked marauders took Madonna away in chains and prepared her for what promised to be a pagan sacrifice during “Hung Up.” At one point, Madge did a high-wire act while teetering on the thin line that separates entertainment and schlock.
After all the bondage, buckets of blood, hail of bullets and bouts of blasphemy were over, Madonna reemerged as an adorable, baton-twirling majorette leading a cheerleading squad and sporting a mischievous grin on her face.
Without warning, Madonna slapped Lady Gaga silly by sneaking a snippet of “Born This Way,” (Gaga's shameless rip-off of “Express Yourself”) during — you guessed it — “Express Yourself.” In case the meaning was lost on anyone, Madonna, aka the undisputed queen of pop, added a chorus of “She's Not Me” in the mix.
On “Give Me All Your Lovin' (or what I like to call the Toni Basil-meets-Gwen Stefani cheerleader chant from hell), Madonna made another case why she is the one and only.
After a video montage of her extensive pop catalog, Madonna — who looked more comfortable carrying a toy AK47 than a real electric guitar — donned a six-string solely as a fashion accessory for “Turn Up the Radio.”
Dressed in black from the beret on her head to the thigh-high leather boots that covered her toes, Madonna was in full bohemian dress for her an inspired reworking of “Open Your Heart” that featured the organic rhythms of Kalakan (a trio of Basque singers and drummers) and her son Rocco cutting a rug.
Madonna, who recently came back from touring around the world (and causing a lot of controversy everywhere she played), spoke about how she has grown to appreciate the United States because we have the freedom of expression that most places in the world don't have and ““It's ok to be whatever you want to be” over here.
The evening's most visually stunning number “Vogue” combined artsy, black and white styles from different era to form the coolest fashion catwalk ever choreographed. The number also featured a tongue-in-cheek reinterpretation of her signature torpedo bra (now an aerial-dynamic exoskeleton) from days gone by.
During “Human Nature,” Madonna did a titillating striptease in which she got down to her skivvies and flashed the words “NO FEAR,” which was scrawled in big letters on her back.
The evening's most bizarre reworking was an almost unrecognizable, Kurt Weill-inspired version of “Like a Virgin,' in which Madonna played an old and decrepit broken-down saloon singer knocking on death's door. Tapping into her inner-Marlene Dietrich with a whiskey drenched splash of Lotte Lenya thrown in for good measure, an exasperated Madonna sang the number like she didn't have the strength or the air in her lungs to push out the words, let alone breath.
A barefoot Madonna wearing a combination ceremonial robe/disco getup transformed what appeared to be a virtual Buddhist temple into the coolest dance club on the planet on the throbbing, club-hopper, “I'm Addicted.”
In what might go down as the pop concert of the year (I said pop concert; Bruce Springsteen and Roger Waters are rock concerts), the evening came to a rousing close with a show-stopper version of “Like A Prayer,” complete with 30-plus-strong chorus, and the all-out aerobic workout, “Celebration.”
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