This Week in the Mercury
Friday, August 20, 2010
Live Review Lady Gaga, Live at the Rose Garden, 08/19/10
Posted by Ezra Ace Caraeff on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 10:15 AM
While my head is still spinning from the spectacle of it all, the best possible way to describe Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour is to say it's like being cornered by Tony Robbins in a gay disco. While high. Very, very high.
Lady Gaga might have already secured her place atop the pop music throne, but her show last night in the Rose Garden was an exercise in sheer positivity. Never missing a chance to offer up some "Hang In There, Kitty" wisdom to the nearly sold out crowd, Gaga was equals parts motivational speaker (turns out we're all superduper superstars and we can do anything we want) and the ringleader of the most bizarre and over-the-top pop moment of music pageantry you'll find on the mainstream circuit.
Cue photos of that crazy fire tornado atop her piano.
Suck it, Jerry Lee Lewis.
The stage show goes a little something like this: Gaga and her glistening abtastic backup dancers are in route to the greatest party ever at the Monster Ball, but their car breaks down and evidently the pop singer left her AAA card in her other form-fitting glitter corset, plus none of her chiseled dancers know how to add coolant to the smoking vehicle. Hijnks ensue, as do plenty of costume changes, as Gaga ran through her vast selection of mega hits (from "P-p-p-poker face" to "Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah! Romah ro-mah-maaaa!") in various stage settings that matched the sheer spectacle of her outfits. At one point a giant monster purchased at GWAR's yard sale eats her whole, this is before she wears some sort of table... on her head. Kanye West's lesbian hologram planet had nothing on Gaga.
And it was gay. So so so so so fabulously gay. And this coming from the guy who has seen Cher (and Cyndi Lauper) in the very same building. It was great to hear GLBT rights as a constant Gaga talking point alongside her nonstop advice sessions to the crowd, much of which was aimed directly at her teenage followers (high school sucks but you'll get through it and never "call your dad a drunk asshole"). With such positivity, druggy theatrics, and copious fake blood, the Monster Ball was one giant hamster ball away from becoming a Flaming Lips concert, but ultimately this is Gaga's show.
It's her bizarre, glittery world, we're just living in it.
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