Our friend Dirk aka Excessbln sent usa picture of the shirt he was going to wear with his friends coming to Arnhem from Berlin. He’s now back from the Re-Invention and wants to share his story with the Tribe.

“Hello Tribers!

I wanted to share my impressions of the first Arnhem show on 08. September with you.
We traveled to Arnhem from Berlin and arrived at the venue around 2.30 in the afternoon. I was surprised at how many people were there already.

There were a few negative things (like the tons of stinking garbage everybody had to walk through to get inside and the very poor organization of the gate policies) but I don’t want to go on too much about that.

The gates opened rather late at 7 p.m. and the show started at 8.50 p.m. I knew that Madonna was not going to be on stage any earlier so that was no problem.
You all know the set list so I won’t go into those details. There seemed to be a problem with the two big video screens during “The Beast Within” but that only lasted a few seconds. Other than that, the video projections were simply amazing!!!!! I just hope they will all be shown on the DVD! A true work of art.

Madonna was flawless, her voice amazing. I had read about it before and saw the NYC June 16th DVD but there is nothing like the real thing. She really can sing live!
The sound was ok but not really brilliant. I was in the center of the floor, only a few meters away from the end of the catwalk. Especially during the more uptempo songs the sound was too high pitched and made it difficult to hear her sing at times. The ballads were perfect, you could here every word Madonna sang.

The crowd was ok but not really enthusiastic. But maybe that was due to the sound as you couldn’t really understand what she said when speaking to the audience. Sometimes you could only guess.
It got better after about 1/3 of the show and then I saw 30.000 people up on their feet dancing and singing. Well, except for a few idiots around us that behaved more like being in an opera house than at a Madonna Concert. They started bitching around because we danced and sang our hearts out. I guess you’ll find people like that everywhere.

Personally I thought that the venue was just too big.

The space between the stage and the seats on the sides was huge and there must have been around 10.000 people on the floor. The stage itself seemed out of proportion and too small for this huge venue. I prefer smaller venues because the atmosphere is more intimate and people tend to react more to the show.

People seemed a bit surprised that there were no encores but if you’ve been to a Madonna Show before you know about that.

To wrap things up my overall impression:
Madonna – perfect!!!!!!
Stage Design – absolutely amazing!!!!
Sound – ok
Venue and Organization – poor

Thank you Madonna for a wonderful show!!. I hope she comes back to Berlin on her next tour so we can show her just how crazy people are about her over here!
P.S.: Happy Birthay Mr. Ritchie :-)”

Dirk aka Excessbln

Thanks to Dirk aka Excessbln for sharing his experience with the Tribe.