Girls gone crazy
$300 Madonna tickets, Britney’s ‘Hotel’ rip-off, Janet with nothing to say
MELISSA RUGGIERI
Richmond Times Dispatch
MUSIC CRITIC
Thursday, April 1, 2004
Every once in a while, I find myself asking, “What planet are these people living on?”
That has happened a lot recently, from the announcement that Madonna will charge $300-plus for the good seats to Britney’s wretched display on Showtime this past weekend to Janet Jackson’s stilted, useless interview with David Letterman on Monday night.
I’m also wondering who is going to play new John Mayer and Sheryl Crow songs (not to mention’80s acts such as Madness and Devo) now that B103 has morphed into Celine Dion Central (aka The Mix). But that’s another soapbox topic.
Let’s start with Madonna.
Her Re-invention tour, which launches May 24 in California and comes to D.C.’s MCI Center on June 13 (tickets go on sale Saturday), is already generating multiple sellouts in heavily populated markets such as New York, Boston and Philly. Maybe people in these cities – who are already paying more than $2 for a gallon of gas – make more money than the average worker bee. Maybe they think a $300 concert ticket for a pop icon is justified. After all, The Rolling Stones keep doing it.
And look, if Madonna indeed breaks out the classics instead of the artsy crud that tainted 2001’s Drowned World tour, then it might be worth $100 to hear what she does with “Like a Virgin.” Maybe even $150. But no concert short of a reunited Beatles and Led Zeppelin double bill is worth $300. And that’s only with the inclusion of anyone named John.
On one hand, Madonna is merely playing the marketplace. When Sting commands $150 for a cheap seat in Atlantic City, N.J., and Elton John gouges Wisconsin tourists for $100 to $250 in Vegas, why shouldn’t Madonna and fill-in-the-blank concert promoter benefit, too?
Is she forcing any couple into a $700 evening, which it will be once you add in Ticketmaster fees and and a couple of burritos at the Chipotle at the base of the MCI Center?
Of course not. But the better question is, why be greedy?
Madonna is donating all of the profits from her children’s books to charities. She’s a millionaire at least 50 times over – a status she wouldn’t have attained without the die-hard affection of the same people she’s now asking to pony up hundreds of dollars.
Yes, there are other ticket prices on this tour – $45, $90 and $150 – but everyone knows that the primo seats cost more than the average minimum credit-card payment. You’re better off waiting for the inevitable DVD than throwing away $45 to be in the last row of a four-tiered arena.
No matter the spectacle she’s planning, Madonna could pull this off for a top ticket price of $100 or so. If she doesn’t think so, perhaps she should give Cher or Bette Midler a call. It seemed to work for them.
Madonna’s one-time smooch buddy, Britney Spears, is in the midst of her Onyx Hotel tour, which scored a big cable blowout Sunday night on Showtime.
I’ll tell you that the concert repeats Saturday, Tuesday, April 9-10 and 18 because I have a journalistic obligation to do so. But I also feel compelled to tell you that those 90 minutes of your life would be better spent trying to find a funny line in this season’s “Friends” or, perhaps, trimming the cat’s nails.
Spears starts the show by murmuring, “Once you check in, you can’t check out.” Do you think The Eagles know about this? From there, the show’s a poorly planned, sound-impaired debacle – though by the repeats, Spears’ team might have found a way to sweeten the sound, which drifted in and out as if someone forgot to flip the channel on her backing vocal track.
But the most surprising thing wasn’t that her microphone was deader than Keanu Reeves’ acting, but that for once, Spears looked best by toning it down. Her usual brassy platinum hair has been given a stunning ash blond rinse, and she used her longish locks to full effect. She whipped her hair frantically throughout her dance routines, but how odd (cue rolling of eyes) that it never made a sound as it smacked against her microphone.
She managed to make “Oops . . . I Did It Again” and “Baby One More Time” more boring than ever by spinning them into cabaret-jazz – the favorite sound of all 16-year-old girls in Spears’ target demo – and sang, yes, sang, “Only a Shadow” in a key that only dogs would find tuneful.
No matter how lavish this production, the songs – most of them from her uninspiring “In the Zone” – weakly crawled across a stage. It’s pitiful that so many people are willing to spend hard-earned money to watch Spears’ flub her lip-syncing while dancing to pedestrian songs. But this is the society that just bestowed a record contract on William Hung. Enough said.
As for Janet Jackson, I was ready to hurl my TV across the room if she cooed at David Letterman one more time, “Why are we talking about this, David?” The “this” was, of course, the infamous Super Bowl flash.
But Jackson apparently thought she had no reason to engage in conversation or explain what happened (which is all anyone really wanted to hear). By the time she whined for the umpteenth time, “Can we pleeeeease talk about something else?”, the canny Letterman – who already suffered enough with Courtney Love a few weeks ago – shot back, “What would you like to talk about?” Of course, Jackson had nothing to contribute.
Does she think that anyone is interested in anything other than those few seconds at the Super Bowl that have spawned an overbearing crackdown on the way we view TV?
Take a cue from Ben Affleck, honey. Poke a little fun at yourself,’fess up – completely – to any screw-ups, demonstrate some semblance of personality and call it a day.
Logic. Apparently it isn’t a no-brainer.
