Touched for the very first time

I've waited 22 years to see Madonna live in concert. But would seeing the Material Girl, lithe and gyrating at 47, make me feel like an old fogy?

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Madonna, Music, Pop Culture, Rebecca Traister, Life

AP Photo/Robert E. Klein

Madonna performs in Boston on July 6, 2006.

July 21, 2006 | The question I was asked Wednesday by more than one person was: Is it too late to see Madonna?

They were asking me this because, at the last minute, my friend Sara had found tickets to Madge's final stop at Madison Square Garden on her "Confessions on a Dance Floor" tour. I couldn't afford a Madonna ticket and I told Sara this and she said she would buy it and I would pay it off via a kind of social layaway plan. She also said, in a bracing way: "Look, I have never seen her. You have never seen her. And I don't want us to see her when she's 65 and it's too late, you know?" Yes, I said solemnly. I know.

I understand that there are a lot of people out there who have never seen Madonna and who don't consider it a missed opportunity. But I am a 31-year-old American woman. I was 9 when I watched a ratty-looking woman pleasure herself on a Venetian gondola while a panting lion looked on in the "Like a Virgin" video and my father, glancing at the television, asked, "Who is that?" I am sure that my father, who has barely glanced at a television since, has no memory of this. But I remember. Because while I didn't understand the first thing about who she was or what she was doing to that poor lion, I knew she was fascinating. And because my mother -- who also never glances at the television and has never been able to remember anyone's name, including mine -- stunned us all by informing him, "That's Madonna."

The conclusion to which I stumbled by following the logic of that exchange turned out to be coincidentally accurate: If my mother knew who Madonna was, then she was the most famous woman in the world. Twenty-two years later, she is, at 47, the most famous woman in the world -- at least the world I grew up in. Even without having been a truly devout Madonna fan (too young to be a wannabe, I was a wannabe wannabe), I managed to own every one of her albums back when people owned albums. Even songs I think I don't know the lyrics to -- like "Music," or "Ray of Light," or "Take a Bow"? -- I know the lyrics to. Madonna has been the soundtrack to my life.

So I agreed with Sara that this was a pretty momentous event and besides, we had a hot ticket. They all sold out in four minutes or something and this was the kind of concert the cool kids went to, and weren't we hip to be going at all. In short, I felt the way I probably should have felt at 15 if I'd scored tickets to the "Blond Ambition" tour.

Which became abundantly clear when I happened to mention to my mother that I was going to see Madonna. "My goodness!" she chuckled. "That's really some old-fashioned entertainment." That's right. My mother -- the 62-year-old woman who still occasionally asks me what ever happened to "that young rock 'n' roll guy, Billy Joel," which she still pronounces Billy Joe-Elle despite having been corrected 1,000 times, that mother -- was teasing me about being an old fogy because I was going to see Madonna.

Then my brother called. He's been calling a lot recently because he has a 6-week-old son and chatting with a 6-week-old gets boring fast, which makes chatting with your sister a lot more appealing. I told him I was going to Madonna. "Well, you're showing up a little late to that party, aren't you?" he said. I should mention that my brother is 28 and cannot drive a car so I don't know where he gets off making fun of me. "No, I'm sure it'll be great," he said. "Like if Yente from 'Fiddler on the Roof' got her own show for two hours." Then my brother underscored just how doddering we both are (as if the 'Fiddler' reference weren't enough) by consulting with his 6-week-old son as we spoke. "Do you think Madonna is still relevant to your generation, Noah?" he asked. "Do you think that the Material Girl still has the power to put asses in the seats?" I heard Noah burp loudly before hanging up.

Here is the thing: Because I have never actually been to a Madonna concert, and because going is something I considered doing at 9 and 13 and 25, it is not something that makes me feel old at all. In fact, it makes me feel rather spry! Then again, here's another thing: I go to Bruce Springsteen concerts. All the time. As a matter of fact, I have seen Bruce Springsteen four times in the past three months. And what's more, some friends just yesterday proposed that we fly to Dublin to see him play in November and to my immense surprise I said that seemed like a good idea, even though I have never been the kind of person who thinks that flying anywhere to see someone perform is a good idea, let alone if you have seen that person perform four times in the past year, let alone if that person is in his late 50s and you are completely aware that your devotion to him sort of dates you.

Also, in the past year, I have paid money to see Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Prince. For the record, I have also seen Feist and Neko Case, though we left Neko Case early because it was standing only and sort of hot. And I thought about seeing Cat Power, but didn't.

But in any case, what I am saying is that I am not one of those people who goes to shows by Modest Mouse or the Libertines. I feel comfortable admitting that my musical tastes are creaky.

But I somehow felt bad about the perception that Madonna is a creaky act. Maybe because it makes me feel old. Maybe because my radar was so off that I thought it was cool I was going to a Madonna concert when really it was fogyish. Maybe, because seeing Madonna was something I'd wanted to do since I was 9, I got momentarily tricked into thinking I was 9 again.

Anyway, I went. And I think it's a good thing I didn't see Madonna when I was younger, because I might not have been old enough to handle it. There have been a lot of reviews of the concert -- which I assume never varies, since who could do anything spontaneous when you have 14 tightly choreographed backup dancers in chaps? -- but here is a rundown of what happened:

Madonna hatched out of a disco-ball egg that opened like a multifaceted DeLorean; there were pulsing lights and reflecting surfaces; it looked like 12 disco emporia had vomited simultaneously all over the Garden stage. A team of shirtless, musclebound dancers clippety-clopped around in plumed riding hats; gymnasts did some impressive tumbling and jumping on uneven bars, and a woman in electric blue Middle Eastern-ish gear convulsed in a cage. There was crumping. (OK, the truth is, I thought it was break-dancing but when I read Kelefa Sanneh's review of the concert in the Times, he said it was crumping.) At one point, Madonna donned a white Travolta suit and danced like Tony Manero on a lighted-up tiled floor; at another, she invited the audience to "suck George Bush's dick." Images flashed: of dead dolphins and tigers and falling horses. Of Bush, Dick Cheney, Nazis, scud missiles, Klansmen, red blood cells. There was a roller-skating segment straight out of "Starlight Express." It was the Folies Bergères, it was Bianca Jagger at Studio 54; it was the Moulin Rouge -- if all those things were viewed at a distance, as if they were being broadcast when they were actually live.

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