Madonna-The Confessions Tour CD/DVD

Here is a review of Madonna's Confessions Tour cd/dvd. I must say, I spent some pretty decent money last July to see her in Boston. I have seen her previous 2004 Reinvention Tour and 2001's stellar, Drowned World Tour. I must say I was slightly bothered this time around by the over stimulating production. The headlines read; "The highest-grossing tour by a female-EVER!! " Do music junkies really care how much money the artist makes? Is that going to encourage me to spend even more money on their tickets the next time they come around? It sure as hell shouldn't. Why is Madonna promoting herself like Michael Jackson, anyways? Will she be floating a 1000 foot statue of herself down the Thames to promote her next record? What the hell Madonna, let your music speak for itself. Her music isn't rock cred. Its pop and is meant to be fun. The U.K. charts her highly on everything while the U.S. barely recognizes her anymore-at least on radio. Her fan base is still with her. I feel like this is deserved. Many of her tunes from 2005's Confessions on a Dancefloor are as catchy as her early stuff-though not as good. I often realize she may be creating with the use of a formula and this is where it is damaging. Her live show was too conceived. The sound at the Boston show was bloody awful. 90% of the time I could not hear her at all. I found myself trying to figure out if it was mimed. She denies this(or her publicist denies it for her) that she lip-synchs. I understand and believe she has real pipes, but maybe its the shitty vocal effects her sound people force her to use. Musically, it seems her show is layered with many tracks of prerecorded music. I swear her keyboardist was faking certain sections. On the cd, the drums to the "Lucky Star/Hung Up" mash up sound like low quality mp3. There are entire bars where all the output is put through a phaser. It adds to the fakeness. Is that what she was going for? I understand her live shows are a marriage of studio trickery and live band overdubbing. This time around it seems that most of the music is not live. Maybe I'm totally wrong. But the sound was just awful. At the Boston show, the music was very loud with the exception of "Let it Will Be."I think it was just a straight remix. The level was just too comparably low. I downloaded other Confessions Tour dates and they sound this way as well. On the Cd, "Let it will be" sounds as if its amplitude was optimized to match the levels of the other songs. A simple yet stellar remix of "Sorry" was louder than ANYTHING in the whole show. The remix also sounded better than anything in the whole show. I found this was similar to other bootleg dates I downloaded. For some reason, Madonna put the remix on the live cd. Why? Also, the cd features a track called, "Confessions" which is sort of a public awareness announcement from some of her dancers on top of several bars of "Live To Tell." Instead of putting this on, put "Live to Tell" on the cd. The cd also lacks some of her better performances of the show. There is no "Get Together"-which was nominated for a Grammy. There is some awful vocal frequencies during "Hung Up." "Ray of Light" is missing as well. I kind of feel she didn't want to add certain songs to get out of paying other co-songwriters/producers. The DVD is directed by Jonas Åkerlund who directed her "Ray of Light" video. Åkerlund is a very talented director and I feel this show lacked a lot of the spontaneity. The editing was too much and the result is a cold performance. I feel like they edited her to avoid seeing her mouth move to the lyrics. If you get a chance to see it, you will realize what I'm speaking about. The show is well produced, but too produced. Less is more.If you are looking for evidence of pure live greatness, you can buy the 2001 Drowned World Tour on DVD. It pleases.