L I V E F R O M N I C E (laserdisc & bootleg)
This is the famous Blond Ambition Tour, THE definitive tour of the 1980s/early 1990s by anyone, more talked-about than any other tour of the period. Unfortunately, it has never been released on DVD or VHS because it was sponsored by Pioneer (who made the laserdisc format) when Pepsi pulled out following the scandal surrounding the 'Like A Prayer' video.
Chapters
- Express Yourself
- Open Your Heart
- Causing A Commotion
- Where's The Party?
- Like A Virgin
- Like A Prayer
- Live To Tell/Oh Father
- Papa Don't Preach
- Sooner or Later
- Hanky Panky
- Now I'm Following You (Parts I & II)
- Material Girl
- Cherish
- Into The Groove
- Vogue
- Holiday
- Keep It Together
This review refers to the final show of the Blond Ambition Tour in Nice, France. The show starts with a highly mechanical set with cogs, wheels and scaffolding (like the Express Yourself video) and Madonna's half-naked male dancers stumble onto the stage dressed in workman's overalls to a thrashing industrial drumbeat. The dancers start to dance against a dimmed set...something is about to happen!
NB: Some of the pictures in this page are from other shows in the tour (e.g. the ones with the ponytail haircut)
Madonna rises in a lift to a throne above the set, sporting a monocle and dressed in a man's pinstripe suit with slits to allow her breasts to show through, showing everyone her famous cone corset underneath. Her hair has a wild scrambled egg appearance. She stalks down the stairs, starting to sing Express Yourself and is joined by similarly dressed backing singers Niki Haris and Donna Delory. They remove their jackets to reveal in full the aggressive, almost armour-like corsets that Madonna will forever be known for. What follows is a high-paced and at times quite stunning piece of dance choreography as Madonna and her backing singers, later joined by the male backing dancers stalk around the set and then engage in complex dance routines. This being Madonna, however, the whole thing is sexualised, with the male dancers appearing as subservient slaves to pleasure the three powerful female figures and the whole ensemble bump and grind their way sexily through the energetic routine. This empowerment of females is a theme of the song, and the dance routine reflects this suitably, oozing attitude. The song ends with a Michael Jackson-esque (or in truth Fred Astaire-esque) kick and a pose with the arms held up to dimming light.
This is followed by Open Your Heart. Forget the cute routine in the Who's That Girl Tour...this is more like the peep-show dance of the video, with Madonna writhing around on her chair as the 'boy' (an older teen this time dressed in a skin-tight transparent gold shirt and hat) dancer watches her and dances around her, often mimicking her moves. As impressive as some of his dancing is, this version loses the charm of the original video and earlier performances, and Madonna's first totally live singing of the show (since Express Yourself was backed by a taped version) is merely OK.
The next song is Causing A Commotion and here Madonna is joined just by her two backing singers, and they all put on some rather garish hooded tracksuit tops (over their corsets!). Madonna is intent on performing the song to a routine, but her two friends muck around and generally 'cause a commotion' and Madonna sets about trying to knock them into shape, which they resist...not surprisingly, this descends into a frank fight towards the end of the song! Naturally, Madonna wins the fight! Despite this sounding quite corny, it actually works well, since the dancing is pretty good (despite the interruptions!) and Madonna's strained vocals are heavily supported by her backing singers. After beating up her dancers, Madonna stalks around their prone forms, extorting about how she's the boss (partly in French) and then launches into an incredible tirade containing multiple instances of the F-word against bad reactions to her show in the US. Naturally, all this goes down well with the crowd, who respond enthusiastically to her French phrases. She looks totally hyper towards the end of this testosterone-charged performance.
Madonna clears the stage for the next song Where's The Party, and dances solo with astonishing quickstepping to a heavily pre-recorded vocal-backed track, though she does sing on top of this. As a result, this sounds really good and it looks spectacular as the grooving and spinning Madonna is joined by similarly tracksuit-clad male dancers halfway through the song, who jive down the stairs to the main floor. Cue the start of the amazing mass dancing in formation which is part-aerobic, part Michael Jackson but all the better for having some swirling arm movements a la Vogue. Madonna dances off the stage, leaving her dancers to boogie to the music, backed vocally by Niki and Donna...this is the dancers' showcase as three of them show what they're made of with a tremendously energetic, acrobatic and gymnastic routine while Madonna gets ready for the next scene. You won't see a better piece of dancing than in this song!
Spicy middle-eastern chimes fill the air as the darkness lifts to reveal Madonna sitting like an arabic queen on a richly velveted bed wearing a gold corset, with two male dancers also dressed in conical bras as attendants. Madonna writhes her arms sinuously like an exotic bellydancer, and proceeds to sing Like A Virgin live in a manner that is totally unforgettable. As her dancers contort around her, Madonna puts out a decent vocal performance whilst adding tonnes of style and sauce! So far, so vintage Madonna...however, she is about to top her MTV performance of the song (where she writhed about on the floor in a wedding dress) as it becomes obvious that this version of the song is about the pleasures of self-stimulation - in other words masturbation! Indeed, at the end of the song, Madonna goes into a mad ecstacy of simulated masturbation as the music gets more frantic. This is the scene that landed her with threats of imprisonment in Toronto (the so-called "immoral live act")...but fortunately, as we saw in Truth or Dare, she didn't give a damn and went ahead anyway, calling the Police Department's bluff.
From one scandalous song to another as the famous "God?" and choral intro of Like A Prayer plays. Madonna is clothed in gospel robes with crucifix and proceeds to writhe on her knees, this time in religious ecstacy. As she rises to her feet under a spotlight, she belts out the song like an evangelical priest and is joined by her dancers and veiled singers and they shuffle en masse back and forth across the stage in their religious fervour. There is minimal dancing initially while she is singing, as this is a vocal performance with the passion of faith. This consists of being lifted by her dancers and a few slow spins and shuffling, pacing around the stage in the group. However, towards the end of the song, she adds a few rhythmic leaps of praise to the Lord, before going into an arm and body spinning dance routine to the dance section from The Immaculate Collection remix of the song. At the end, Niki takes over with her super-powerful vocals while Madonna and the dancers groove out the end of the routine.
The music shifts almost seamlessly into Live To Tell and you realise that imperceptably, extra elements of the set have descended to transform the stage into a church, complete with a wall with a stained glass window, candles and a pew. She sings part of the song, and then darkness falls with minimal lighting and she performs this gloriously artistic piece of expressive whirling, showing her contemplating as if in a confession. Then she continues where she left off and finishes the song.
However, she launches immediately into the bridge of Oh Father, yet another seamless transition. She is joined by a male dancer, and they dance together in a passionate and expressive combination, showing her conflict within herself and with her beliefs. She resolves this towards the end of the song by removing her crucifix and outer robe, revealing an inner robe which transparently shows her corset underneath.
Madonna is then joined by all her male dancers for another take on the church scene with Papa Don't Preach. This dance is ballet-inspired and shows Madonna taking control of her life, rejecting the male dancers' controlling influences. In the middle of the song, there is a great passionate dance segment before Madonna finally rejects her dancers' influence by pushing each over in turn. The balletic formation dancing by the dancers is quite a spectacle, Madonna ends by allowing them to lift her around. Then she leaves and they remain, spinning, rolling, holding one-legged poses and bobbing up and down in the floor in a totally artistic dramatic fashion which is so engaging that you hardly realise that Madonna is no longer on the stage. They end in a human pyramid with one dancer seated on the shoulders of another reaching for the sky while their fellows reach up to them. Thus ends the most convincing and powerful segment of the show, a complete piece of artistry that is both perfect both vocally and in terms of dancing.
A piano rises from the floor and Madonna appears lounging on it, dressed in a tiny green sparkly outfit over a long black top that reaches down to her ankles but which is split at the front to show an incredible amount of (very nice) leg! Madonna starts to sing Sooner or Later with the same style and panache (recalling the great female singers of yesteryear) that she used in her famous Oscars performance. Flirting with the pianist and oozing glamour and style, Madonna's performance is quite stunning.
The piano disappears after the pianist helps Madonna down from it, and she sheds the black over-dress to reveal the little green outfit and Madonna is joined by her two backing singers and they launch into a saucy performance of the naughty song Hanky Panky. Here Madonna uses a deep-throated growly voice while her dancers squeak like old-fashioned backing girls. They dance using handkerchiefs sexily before they are joined by a dancer dressed like Dick Tracy (since the song is from the film Dick Tracy).
Then Madonna makes a few naughty double-entendre jokes about her "Dick", endearing herself to the crowd with more phrases in French (some of them rather naughty!) before she proceeds to lip-synch (as she admits) Now I'm Following You (Part I). The dancing is somewhat leaden-footed, but maybe that is point because "Dick" sheds his yellow coat and the songs transforms into the more energetic Part II with the other dancers in yellow coats arriving. Madonna then proceeds to partially strip "Dick", to his consternation and causes havoc by stealing his gun and running off with it. Then she and "Dick" leave the stage to the other dancers, who perform a strange male can-can, before opening their coats to show that they aren't wearing much underneath - just underpants in fact! The Dick Tracy segment ends with the dancers twirling off stage one at a time, egged on by Madonna.
The deep male backing vocals of Material Girl usher this song in. Madonna and her backing singers appear high up on the set dressed in dressing gowns with their hair in rollers and sitting under hairdresser's dryers. They put a hilariously comic and infantile performance in a thick New York accent, like spoiled Brooklyn girls enjoying a day out in Manhatten. They shed their robes and rollers halfway to reveal colourful and fluffy salsa dresses underneath, before descending to the main stage.
The backing singers leave the stage and three bare-chested male dancers rise from the stage wearing merman tails with a large harp. Madonna starts to sing Cherish while the smiley mermen flirt boyishly with her. Madonna plucks the harp in the bridge before the mermen contort athletically on the floor (since they can't stand!), whilst cutely paying Madonna homage all the time. Finally, they sink out of sight and Madonna mops the stage and jokes with the crowd about the limitations of having a relationship with a fish. She then tells a naughty Adam and Eve joke!
Madonna is joined by her backing singers and three male dancers dressed in leather, and the three girls slip in a subtle educational about the importance of using condoms, before flirting with the boys. They proceed to sing Into The Groove according to a remix reminscent of the "You Can Dance" remixes. They pair up girl-boy and jive away as Madonna sings, with the guys acting extra macho and the girls acting extra girly. As this is a flirting song in theme, they separate into their gender groups and admire and flirt with each other at a distance before rejoining for a great salsa dance segment with a piano break. The girls and boys then separate again to rise to the top of the set in their groups using different stairs, before grooving up on high, before descending again for the end.
Ice-cool notes herald the advent of the dancefloor monster that is Vogue. A darkened stage with lights moving across it reveals the dancers with exotic headgear and skintight outfits. For her part, Madonna appears in a conical bra top and skintight shorts. She and her similarly-attired backing singers then sashay across the stage singing the song as the dancers pose in the background, before launching into the famous hand movements. If you didn't believe the dancing in the video was real, then believe now, because the effect is quite stunning! This most famous of Madonna dances is performed in breaktaking complexity which quite leaves the video performance behind in fact. The deafening cheers that accompany the end of this song give testament to the effect this superb performance has on the crowd. It's almost as if the show has ended and the crowd are cheering Madonna off. Indeed, Madonna, dancers, singers and musicians bow as if it really is all over and the cheers just get louder and louder.
But oh no, Madonna hasn't finished quite yet...she has one last trick up her sleeve with the dancefloor favourite which is Holiday. She erupts onto the stage wearing a short blue top with white spots and gianted frilled sleeves, and tight white trousers with huge spotty flares, obviously inspired by a clown doll's outfit. The appreciative shrieks of the crowd as they (a) realise it isn't all over and (b) that this is Holiday are quite obvious as Madonna launches into the song. In the dance, Madonna makes use of her large flares, twirling them around to good effect, then alternately bouncing around the stage and performing a Seventies-inspired posing dance. She is joined by her singers and the male dancers (who are dressed in white trousers and white shirts with blue spots, some of which are open, the rest being tied up high). They all "do the bus stop" dance and then bump hips and butts and then involve the crowd in the singing. The dance ends with a great Seventies segment and a side-profile pose with a finger pointing to the sky that could be right out of Saturday Night Fever. Madonna then thanks the crowd and everyone involved for a great and exhausting tour. It's all over...
...well, not quite! The final song, Keep It Together is a feel-good song that emphasises that the performers are all brothers and sisters in this tour. Madonna comes onto the stage wearing her Vogue outfit over which a huge-mesh garment (formed by large rubber or leather straps) is worn. A bowler hat and knee-pads complete the look. Madonna is then joined by the dancers and singers dressed similarly. They each have a chair and they perform the dance to this song with much chair-twirling. The dance sequence is smooth, fast, slow, incredibly complicated and great to watch from a distance as you see all the moves together. This includes an inventive piece of lifting where a dancers stands behind Madonna (who is lying prone over a chair) between her legs, linking arms with her while she grasps his waist with her legs, before levering her over his back onto a chair which she carries. Madonna interjects between the singing in a mock Cockney accent as her 'family' interact behind her, slapping backs and doing high-fives. At the end of the song, the dancers and singers leave one by one, falling into a hole in the stage as Madonna describes the importance of family in a spoken voice against the song background, thanking the performers. Then all the musicians, technical crew, even the director and Madonna's brother Chris come on stage, kiss Madonna and fall into the hole, as this is the end of the show (and the tour). Madonna is left on stage singing "keep keep it together, keep people together for ever and ever" with only the drummer, the pianist and the percussionist, but even they leave, and Madonna is totally alone, still repeating that phrase, but never mind - the crowd clap to keep her company. Finally, Madonna stops, sheds her bowler hat and microphone on the stage and skips off, to great cheers. Finally, the show is over.
Rating
This is without doubt Madonna's most famous and talked-about show and helped her to cement her iconic status once and for all. The great songs of the 80s are mostly all there, the dancing is mostly fantastic. Madonna's singing, which started out a bit rough in the beginning of the concert, warmed up nicely after the first few songs and was quite good by the middle.
This is a piece of pop culture that will always be remembered no matter what Madonna does in the future. Madonna has exceeded this performance artistically in what she achieved after this, but there will probably never be another tour of hers which can compete with the amount of attention and controversy that this juggernaut spawned as it thundered across the globe. In short, this is a must-see for any Madonna fan. It's also the last tour of Madonna's that is a pure concert, since both the Girlie Show and The Drowned World Tour seem to shed the concert feel for a more theatrical air (in different ways).
Unfortunately, due to Pepsi (who were supposed to be the sponsors) withdrawing after the Like A Prayer scandal, the sponsoring was taken up by Pioneer who insisted that the concert be released only on their format, Laserdisc. For over ten years this has been the only way to get hold of this concert (aside from bootleg VHS and DVD that is), but the good news is that there is a very good possibility (according to Madonna's manager) that we will see an official DVD release of this show soon. Here's to hoping!
9/10.
© Josh Deb Barman 2003 (thanks to Madonnashots & others for the photos)
