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Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Blast from the past

I have this long history of eagerly awaiting the arrival of the mail. When I was growing up, I actually wrote letters to a lot of people so I had a reason to obsessively check the mailbox during every commercial break of "The Young & The Restless." As an adult, I find myself still kind of excited by mail delivery, even though it's usually just bills and other things I don't particularly give a shit about.

I'm kind of in a "where's the mail, dammit?" mode because I ordered a Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt from the Live Nation store during a one day $9.99 sale. As I said on Facebook, I absolutely won't spend $30-50 on a crappy tour shirt that cost 50 cents to make, but I will spend 10 bucks. (I was looking for a link to it in the store, but it's apparently sold out. This is the one I bought.) Anyway, that didn't arrive today, but this did:

It is nothing less than a Blond Ambition Tour era postcard! I don't know if it's actually from that time period or not, but who cares because I love that photo! It is one of my all time favorite photos of Madonna. As it turns out my friend Matt found it at a record show he went to this weekend and knew that I would love it. And at only a buck, the price was right. I think it's frickin' awesome.

Semi-relatedly, Madonna's new video is available for free on iTunes right now. I think you almost get your money's worth with it at that price. I'm sorry, but if she isn't going to put any effort into making videos any longer, she just needs to STOP DOING THEM. I know that not everything can be a "Vogue" or "Express Yourself", but seriously! When was the last time she had anything approach the greatness of even some of her late 90s videos? This one is even lamer than the "Give It 2 Me" video was! (even though I kind of liked GI2M at first)

And then, to add insult to injury, there is a "deeeeluxe" (Heidi will get the reference) edition of Celebration on iTunes which is the single most horrific example of money grubbing I have witnessed in quite some time. OK, at 30 bucks, it's probably a deal. You get the two disc set, 30 videos and two bonus tracks, one being a remix of "Celebration" and the other a never-before-heard American Life b-side. I will NOT be purchasing it, mostly on principle but also because this is one rare example of me actually wanting the physical CD vs. the digital copy. I simply cannot justify spending the money twice this time around (like I did with Confessions and Hard Candy). Plus, there is a DVD coming out with FORTY SEVEN videos on it + I already own all those videos on the video collections already out. Paying all that extra dough for what boils down to one song? Forget it. The record company is begging for that to be pirated like crazy.

OK, I'm done bitching. For now. I'll be back tomorrow or the next day with a word or two or fifty about a couple of new releases to really be excited about.

7 comments:

Myfizzypop said...

i have to say that I'm actually quite pleased about the dvd collection as I've never bought any of her incomplete collections in the past so this will do nicely :) Cool postcard :P

Lammert said...

At first i was a bit dissapointed but after watching it a couple of times: I really like the video for Celebration! It's fun and oldskool naughty Madonna.
It's great to see Lola making her debut in her mother's video :-)

Have you seen the pic of Lola as Virgin-Madonna yet? Lola and fans (dressed also as Madonna) will be in the "real" video for Celebration. Which will be released in a couple of days. It will be a lot better then this remix-version i guess...but for now i am happy with this one.

The postcard of Express Yourself was on my concertticket back in 1990 for Blond Ambition in Rotterdam. It's indeed a great photo...

Don't bother all this deluxe editions. Just DL the track when it's available on Madonna-forums. It's so cool...!

Dan said...

Oh, I think that the DVD collection of her videos is going to be great. It's 20 bucks, a lot more videos than we've ever gotten before and as you said, much more complete - it's just that premium deluxe set that I have an issue with.

I have seen that pic of Lola as Madonna - that video may actually be worth it! ;)

Lammert said...

Lola as Madonna:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_38T64sfKt3Y/Sp1VqISb2GI/AAAAAAAAHCM/MI_2uvsgQuQ/s1600-h/lola.png

Yuяi said...

I love that photo too, Dan. I picked up the t-shirt with this photo emblazoned across the front at the Blond Ambition show back in the day.

Anonymous said...

Hey Dan, just wanted to drop a line to say great blog and reminding me of my past, when you wrote about the love of receiving mail, did that take me back, pen pals, writing to musicians and actors and getting responses, treasured times! It makes me glad that I grew up in the 80's and early 90's than growing up in this day and age!
Physical formats will always be better than downloads, in 10 or 20 years time, who knows what state the online providers will eb in, imagine is itunes folded? Imagine if all the downloads went corrupt? At least you have a physical format to always turn to!
take care
M

Dan said...

M - welcome to the blog! I am usually one of those that is not all that worked up about the physical release. What I'm after is the music and don't really care as much about the packaging. I think the last physical CD I bought was Hard Candy!

Yuri - I bet the picture of Madonna on that T-shirt is as huge as the one on the Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt!