Lady Gaga – Rogers Arena – August 24, 2010
Perhaps one of the most anticipated concert events of the year blew through Vancouver for two shows. Unfortunately anticipation was the downfall of this concert for me. After reading and hearing about so many great things about Lady Gaga’s shows in other cities I had huge expectations for an amazing show.
Of course being Lady Gaga there was a huge elaborate stage, astounding costumes, a legion of dancers and scores of screaming fans (many also in costumes). During the costume/set changes there were some great video montages and vignettes played on the massive screen covering the stage. The staging itself was excellent and the sound was great.
All the ingredients of an epic concert but something seemed to be missing on this night. In hindsight it was the energy that was lacking to push this into the ”amazing show” category. Often Gaga stopped to discuss issues, talk to her fans or set up the next song, these breaks tended to only keep the lower bowl and floor seats engaged but failed to ‘reach’ the higher levels. With each chat, any energy built up from the previous song would just stop as the crowd around us sat back down. I’m happy to have an artist chat and engage the audience but these long spells of talk just fell flat in this case. If the music had have flowed from one song to the next, the audience wouldn’t have settled down and had to revive for the next song. You could see that the audience standing (and dancing) on the floor had energy that fed off of each person, where we were there was none.
It felt like an actor in the middle of Phantom of the Opera suddenly stopped at the end of a scene and started talking to someone in the front row, a total break from the production.I guess too high of expectations can sometimes make the disappointment that much greater. Friends who didn’t know anything about what to expect had a great time and were thoroughly entertained. Oh well, all in all it was good to check Lady Gaga off of ’the list’ but possibly this might be the last time I see her live.