{"id":693,"date":"2019-12-20T02:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T02:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=693"},"modified":"2026-06-20T02:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T02:47:24","slug":"madonna-level-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=693","title":{"rendered":"Madonna, Level 42"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

June 1987, Orange Bowl, Miami, Fla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a guy, he\u2019d be about 31 or 32 now, and back in high school he was a big fan of Staind, or maybe Megadeath (though it could also be Radiohead and Blink 182). He would tell you that in the late \u201990s, the height of boy bands and teen-girl pop, he hated that crap with intense disdain \u2014 but for one exception. This exception will hit him in unexpected places \u2014 walking through the mall with his kids, or at the grocery store. \u201cBaby One More Time\u201d will play, and he\u2019ll sing it, quietly in his head. Begrudgingly he\u2019ll admit Britney Spears stayed with him because her music was there through his high school years, whether he liked it or not.<\/p>\n

This is how I feel about Madonna.<\/p>\n

If you grew up at any time in the 1980s, Madonna is with you, in some form or another. In high school I was not trying to listen to Madonna \u2014 I had R.E.M. and the Clash and Husker Du and The Cure with some AC\/DC for good measure. But there was no escaping her.<\/p>\n

There was alternative Madonna, followed by pop Madonna, movie star Madonna (with co-star Sean Penn), and then Sex Madonna. And at each juncture there\u2019s a song, a ubiquitous, catchy-ass song that stays with you because, and I don\u2019t mind saying this, Madonna had some great songs. \u201cLike A Virgin\u201d was a joke, the lyrics were stupid \u2014 but you listened to it EVERY TIME. Then you learned Niles Rodgers produced it, and how he went about delivering the hook, and you understood. And you cursed that you sang \u201cYou\u2019re so fine and you\u2019re mine\/I\u2019ll be yours \u2019till the end of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had some friends, all women, who had an extra ticket to see Madonna for the Who\u2019s That Girl tour at the Orange Bowl. We were all in college by then, and I didn\u2019t have to fake hating Madonna. And besides, I was 19 and there was no way I wasn\u2019t going to turn down an invite by three young women to go anywhere. I was also curious to hear and see what Madonna was like in a live setting.<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re attending a festival in a field somewhere in rural Tennessee, or California (or wherever people gather in fields to hear music), there\u2019s not much of a chance you\u2019ll see a concert with 70,000 people nowadays. But in the 1980s it was the norm \u2014 if a band got big enough, you were certain to see them in a football stadium. The Orange Bowl was a popular destination for me as a teenager, for Dolphins games, Hurricane games, and concerts. This series will discuss some of them, but they include The Police and Bruce Springsteen. In June 1987, Madonna was added to the list.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to this tour, something you won\u2019t find for Big Black\u2019s Songs About Fucking<\/em> tour (also in 1987, which may or may not be ironic). It also confirmed what I easily remembered about the show \u2014 it was more of a production than a concert, with the setlist pretty much the same because it\u2019s difficult to change a play each night. She would perform the characters of her music videos during the concert (music videos were popular once), and I think she was singing, but who could tell. Our seats were along the side \u2014 if the stage is the end zone, we\u2019re about on the 35-yard line.<\/p>\n

Now Who\u2019s That Girl<\/em> was a soundtrack to a terrible movie, but Madonna also released True Blue<\/em> the year before, and she grabbed many songs from these two albums. She did a medley of sorts with \u201cMaterial Girl\u201d and \u201cLike A Virgin,\u201d which if I remember correctly was played with an Egyptian\/snake charmer type of groove. There was a bed, that I do remember.<\/p>\n

It was, I\u2019ll admit, a fun show because it was different. At this point I was heading to several punk shows, and this was about as far away from slam dancing as you\u2019re apt to find. I would never see her in concert again, but not for lack of appreciating her music \u2014 \u201cLike A Prayer\u201d is one of those songs that can be done in a variety of ways (gospel, funk, blues, rock, pop) or can stand alone with an acoustic guitar (a la John Wesley Harding) and be great every time. Ray of Light<\/em>, from 1998, is excellent, showing Madonna can master a new genre and do it well.<\/p>\n

It was a rite of passage for children of the 1980s. Sometimes the things you\u2019re supposed to hate have a way of winning you over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 1987, Orange Bowl, Miami, Fla. There\u2019s a guy, he\u2019d be about 31 or 32 now, and back in high school he was a big fan of Staind, or maybe Megadeath (though it could also be Radiohead and Blink 182). He would tell you that in the late \u201990s, the height of boy bands and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-madonna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}