Madonna Petco Park and Dodger Stadium

When David and I first met Madonna had just released her song Borderline. The song was great and I loved the video at the time. We didn’t buy her LP at the time – but I do remember buying the 45 of the song Borderline – i think it was one of the first purchases we made together. I love this 45 – it was such a hot concept – the cover for the 45 was a poster folded up to hold the piece of vinyl. We still have it and it is in pristine shape. Of course the type is difficult to read – it seems in the early 80’s that was a big thing typesetting wise – make everything indescribably difficult to read. I’ve scanned in some of the cover for you.

Of course she was the sensation all over the place at that time. And we thought just like everybody else she would soon just be another name, but we were all wrong. She has continued to be a great musical wonder – changing her style all the time and yet able to keep her fan base.

Our next encounter with her was with a man whom i had gone out with a number of time in the past in Seattle. Chuck Gerra “Upchuck” (by the way there is a new CD out with Chuck’s music on it if you’re interested Upchuck) called to tell me he was going to be in a Madonna film “Desperately Seeking Susan”. I remember watching the movie a couple of times just to see Chuck in the elevator with Madonna.

We have been buying her cds for sometime now and always have enjoyed her music but had never seen her. While I was looking on francebillet.com I noticed there were going to be tickets available soon for Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet tour in Nice – of course we weren’t going to be in Nice for the concert – but I wanted to see her and we had to get tickets to see her in Southern California. It was imperative. After seeing her at Coachella Fest in 2006 we couldn’t miss her. That show at Coachella Fest had been one of the most exciting experiences we had come across in the many concerts we had attended, especially great was how Paul Oakenfold played non-stop for over an hour in the big tent before she came on and the hot sticky nature of the tent filled with thousands of people just hoping to catch a glimpse of Madonna was just incredible. We had to go – so we had three computers fired up to get tickets in Los Angeles.

We wanted to get up close but when it got to purchasing the tickets for the LA show we got tickets in the first tier behind 3rd base line row M. Not bad – when we did see her at Dodger Stadium – it was a great site line to the stage, but I’m jumping ahead. David was on another desk and wanted to see if he could get seats closer to the stage – and decided since we couldn’t get tickets for Las Vegas – we might as well try to get tickets for the Petco Stadium in San Diego. I don’t know how he did it but he got us seats in the 24th row from the stage. I thought that was pretty cool. Of course our bank account didn’t like the hit – but you only live once – right? So we bought them. Oh my god they were so much better than we thought they would be. When we got into the stadium we found the seats – they were about 8 seats away from the catwalk that she was going to use during most of the performance.

The spent the morning of the concert in a line that we didn’t expect waiting to vote. It didn’t take that long but if there was a line in Las Palmas then there were going to be lines all over the country to vote. So we voted and got on our way to San Diego. Well since we had just got married and we had spent money to see Madonna we decided to stay at a hotel close to the stadium. We stayed at the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina – the room and the hotel were very nice – a bit overpriced – but it made it very easy to get to the concert and to get out of the concert. We went out and walked around the stadium, picked up our tickets at the will call and then we went out to have a nice dinner. We ended up a a restaurant called Blue Point – we had enjoyed a meal there a couple of years earlier and decided to try it again. The food was great, the wine was wonderful and we had a great time. The anticipation of seeing Madonna was getting to us – so we decided to just go over to the stadium and get to our seats. Well we didn’t rush in – instead we bought some t-shirts – which cost of fortune and then made our way to our seats. Man were we close.

We heard there was going to be a opening act but nobody knew who it was going to be. Then the dj stand appeared on the catwalk and it was our favorite DJ – Paul Oakenfold – this was an added bonus and it was great because he had played before Madonna the last time we had seen her. We took a moment and went up to the stage to give Paul the thumbs up – we really were enjoying his music. Or course everybody was involved with their phones trying to find out what was happening as far as the election was going. I had the blackberry tuned into the web and was getting updates as fast as they were coming in. I finally got an alert saying that Obama had won and that McCain was going to concede. When I told David this he just stood up and said very loudly – his hands cupped over his mouth – “Okay – listen up everybody – Obama just won!” – oh my god – the cheer from all around that heard David’s shout was very loud and exciting and I guess disturbing to Paul Oakenfold – read what he has to say on his myspace blog about that night. – His set over the crowd became anxious about Madonna coming out and we didn’t wait very long. Oh my god what a show. We didn’t get any video of the show and David’s camera went dead after we took the first couple shots before the concert. But there are plenty of postings on youtube that can give you idea what it was like that night.

Here is one of the opening song from that night – Madonna had some great visual graphics going on before she came on stage – I hope she puts it on the DVD when she does release a DVD of the concert because it was incredible.

Every song was great even the one where she forgot the words – her energy was explosive and every person in the park was up and enjoying the show. David and I both especially liked her performance of the song “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” – I found this one video on youTube that shows what a great performance this was even though it is not from that night.

here is one from san diego – even though it isn’t very close to the stage – it captures the feeling.

Of course one of the high points of the night was when she talked about the election and the crowd cheered and cheered – it was such an exciting feeling to be with all these people and cheering in the new and getting rid of the old. I have to say though that the most visually exciting piece of the concert was the “4 minutes” piece. The use of video and sound was just over the top – especially the four rolling stands that had videos playing on them of speakers and then became videos of Justin Timberlake dancing and Madonna dancing to the videos – it was an exciting moment of stage performance. We were pretty exhausted by the end of the concert and struggled through the sea of people to get outside of the stadium and back to the hotel.

Thursday we left Palm Springs at 5:30 pm to get to the Dodger Stadium by 9. It should have been a piece of cake and it was easy getting all the way into LA. We were at the 101 and Grand exit by 7 – and with the Dodger stadium only 1 mile away you would have thought that we had got there in plenty of time. But no – we were caught in a traffic jam the likes I haven’t seen in my life. It tooks us until 10 pm that night to get into a parking place and finally start walking to the stadium which was a good distance away. Fortunately Madonna didn’t go on until 10 and we only missed the first song and while we were taking our time getting to our seats, bathroom break was really needed and then a good stiff drink – Britney Spears came out and did a song with Madonna. Finally we made it to our seats and we had a really good time. The seats allowed us to see the show from a different perspective and it really was a solid show even from the distance of the ball field. The big moment of course was when the song “4 minutes” was played instead of the videos – Justin Timberlake – came out and did the song with Madonna. That was the topper. It was a long day especially after having sat in the traffic jam – but we really had a great time.