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Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
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Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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Madonna
I'm not going to pretend that I'm a fan of Madonna - because I'm not. I'm not going to pretend that I respect her artistry, either - I don't. In much the same way that the moguls of the disco era manipulated the masses into accepting pabulum as the creative norm, Madonna has invented a niche, exclusively hers, that allows her to release mediocre song after mediocre song, with some supposedly scintillating image that succeeds beyond my imagination in transporting each and every one of them toward the top of the charts. Media attention has become more important to her than music, and since this skews what would be considered “normal” priorities for an artist, it’s that much easier for me to dismiss Madonna as a social phenomenon instead of a musical one, as a stage performer instead of as a singer or musician.
Now, I need to ask a rhetorical, existentialist question. If you had an infinite number of monkeys stand before a microphone, how long would it take before one of them screeched out a well-crafted melody? I know that's not fair, because monkeys could never have the intense and unwavering ambition that Madonna has. Also, monkeys couldn't be as deliberately manipulative and usurious as Madonna has been to carry herself to the pinnacle of stardom. Besides, if you're a normal human being, there is no such thing as a sexy monkey.
A combination of intense discipline and backlot sexuality brought Madonna from apparently hopeless obscurity to being one of the most well-known performers of her age. Leaving her hometown of Detroit for New York, she sang briefly for an amateur band called the Breakfast Club. To support herself and gain experience, she acted, she posed, she danced... in short, she did whatever she could to propel her career. She even developed a contingent of female fans who began to emulate her style of dressing in vampish, second-hand clothing. One thing that these girls could not duplicate, however, was Madonna's formidable ambition. By 1983, the entire country was familiar with her belly button, seen on the ubiquitous MTV airings of videos from her first album, such as "Holiday", "Lucky Star" and "Borderline". Like A Virgin followed, and then her perfectly cast role as a flighty, flimsy sex symbol in the movie Desperately Seeking Susan. Once she became a star, her early career moves almost came back to haunt her when Penthouse and Playboy exposed her early nude photos. Instead of ruining her, they added to her appeal as a modern-day bad girl. She sold 80,000 albums a day. She posed as Marilyn Monroe for the video of "Material Girl". She married actor Sean Penn, and the couple seemed to be filmed by unwelcome paparazzi twenty-four hours a day. Their only film together, Shangai Surprise, was an outright disaster and it flopped. The deliberate controversy of "Papa Don't Preach," a song about a pregnant teenager, followed, and then we learned of an exercise regimen that firmed up her body but not her acting ability. Her performances in the film Who's That Girl and the play Speed The Plow were mercilessly and justifiably panned. By 1989, her marriage to Penn collapsed. Pepsi paid her millions to roll around on an altar with an effigy of Christ and to dance half-naked in front of burning crosses - as brilliant an advertising campaign for soda as could be conceived. Madonna and - egad, Warren Beatty - co-starred in the film Dick Tracy amid rumors of their liaison. The oh-so-tasteful single "Hanky Spanky," or whatever it was called, was released after that, followed by the documentary Truth Or Dare. This, in turn, was followed by comedian Julie Brown’s vastly superior lampooning, called Dare To Be Truthful. Then Madonna released her pseudo-controversial book Sex, but most buyers found the purchase price to be the most controversial element of the project. Then came the movie Body Of Evidence. No comment (why bother?).
Somewhere in the middle of this mess, she released "Crazy for You". Maybe I'm as vulnerable as the next guy, or maybe I'm desperate to relate to a cultural phenomenon that doesn't speak directly to me, or maybe I'm simply a sucker for a great pop song, but Madonna finally hit a nerve when she sang "Crazy For You". It's as overwrought, overproduced and undertalented as the rest of her work, but it stands out for the simple directness and overt romanticism of its message, as well as for the captivating lilt of the melody, written by John Bettis and Jon Lind.
Does she have a message? Is she conveying anything besides unbridled hedonism? Is there any humanity to her image or is it digitized sex? Essentially, Madonna offers us her body, but won't let us kiss her. Is this sexy? Is it desirable? Is it popular? Madonna is arguably the most famous woman on the planet Earth, so there is your answer. She is no more or less than a reflection of our own short-sighted desire for immediate gratification, and I don't like to admit such a personal weakness, but can 80,000,000 Madonna fans be wrong? Am I subconsciously crazy for her? If nothing else, observing Madonna means you will never be bored, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
 
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