Madonna Slane Castle 29-Aug-2004

Finally after all these years I get to see Madonna and I get to see her at home! The concert totally blew me away, her stage presence is phenomenal. All the stories about poor ticket sales seems to be rubbish as the place must have been at or very close to it's 80,000 capacity. The rain before the concert was pretty bad and she was about 45 minutes late getting on the stage. Mostly because they had to dry it off. 
It didn't matter though as she was so worth it. She had to wear a long-sleeve vest under the corset for Vouge as she was so cold. With the amount of activity on the stage I don't know how she was cold but I guess out in the open in Ireland is new thing to Madonna. When she got the crowd to sing Material Girl with her she told us afterwards "That was excellent", naturally the crowd went crazy then! When she came out for Nothing Fails she was wearing an extra jacket as she was so cold and a crew member had to hold an umbrella over her which she seemed to find rather amusing! She commented on how she finally got here with "Jesus Christ, what took me so long?" To a massive roar. The bigger roar of the night though must have been after she took some water and shouted "Cheers! I'll see you all down the pub afterwards!"
During Don't Tell Me when she sings "Tell the sun not to shine" she followed it with "well maybe today" After Papa Don't Preach when she was spinning around she then shouted out "I am just trying to get warm". The walk-way was down for the whole show and it was quite low so she was really down beside the fans when she was out on it.
I have to say that all the criticisms of the imagery in the show forcing Kabbalah and anti-war at people is nonsense. Regardless of what she believes in, nothing was forced and with the Kabbalah imagery it was more of a case that they were interesting images rather than a sermon. Overall the outdoor venue didn't affect the show at all, it seemed to go very smoothly and the effect was superb - I didn't wonder if the show would work outdoors and boy did it.
At the end of the show she thanked us and said "Ireland, you're the best!" We also got the confetti and were then treated to a bit of a firework show. I have dreamed of seeing her live and she lived up to all my expectations and exceeded them. The cold and the rain couldn't dampen my enthusiasm at all and nor did it affect her performance - just hope she doesn't catch any sort of a cold/flu now, wouldn't want her to miss any of the shows she still has to do.