Recently, Madonna lent her music to Fox’s show Glee, and I inadvertently caught bits and pieces of it. I’m sorry if you love the show, but it’s fairly cheesy. Don’t get me wrong, Jane Lynch is hysterical, but the rest of the show just reminds me of a hipper version of High School Musical. The episode I saw, “The Power of Madonna,” had the cast performing Madonna’s big hits and recreating her videos throughout the show, but I would much rather hear the real thing.
I headed over to trusty YouTube and found a clip of Madonna performing one of my favorite songs of hers in New Jersey! It’s “Into The Groove,” from the East Rutherford, NJ stop on the Blond Ambition Tour in June of 1990 which took place at the Meadowlands Arena (aka Izod Center). If you can get past the banter at the beginning, it’s a damn fine performance, just as Madonna’s usually are. Also, it’s obvious that Lady Gaga’s style in the prison scene in her video for “Telephone” is clearly inspired by Blond Ambition era Madonna.
I’ll admit that I wanted to maul Madonna when I was a kid. It was abnormal because while most of my friends were tossing around a baseball with their friends, I was tossing in videocasettes of Desperately Seeking Susan, Who’s That Girl, and The Virgin Tour VHS tape to ogle my future wife. I don’t regret not throwing the baseball around since I knew I wasn’t MLB bound, but I chalked it up to the fact that all my Madonna “research” may come in handy someday when I’m older and I need to write a blog post about one of Madonna’s performances in New Jersey.
