A good question! I just like her – that’s all. Perhaps sometimes my obsession gets to be a bit too much at times, but basically I’m just a fan. People just question it because it’s Madonna. Were I obsessed with Pink Floyd or had my entire house done up as a shrine to University of Georgia football, no one would notice or even care.
Having said that, let me tell you a story. I remember the first time I saw Madonna. I used to kick around at a place called “Skip’s Records” in my old hometown of Snellville, GA. I was really close with the owner, as I was there nearly every day and bought all of his Duran Duran import stock as soon as the UPS guy brought it in. He sometimes let me open the boxes of records, and one day I opened one up and there was Madonna staring back at me from the cover of her first album. I had bad hormone issues as a teenager and her picture just… captivated me. The “come and get it” look on her face grabbed my attention in a heartbeat. I remember holding it up and showing another of Skip’s regulars – a skinny, pimply high school head-banger dude who now reminds me of the teenager from The Simpsons– and we just sat and stared at her picture for several minutes.
Soon, she would debut her new song “Like a Virgin” with an infamous performance on the MTV Music Awards. She wore a thrift-store wedding dress and gyrated, bumped and ground for those four minutes. I was in awe. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All the girls I knew then (I was only 13 at the time) were coy, shy and burst into a giggle fit at the thought of sticking their tongue in a boy’s mouth. And here the Material Girl putting was on a show. I was hooked.
And I have been ever since. In fact, I probably made my parents worry about my sanity in the early 90s. Not to get all “better than you” or anything, but when I was growing up my room was quite large by most people’s standards (as in, “1500 square feet”) and almost every single square inch of the walls and ceiling were covered with Madonna: posters, pictures cut out from magazines and newspapers, etc. It was a shrine gone out of control. I know it creeped everyone out, but it started with just a couple of posters… and then Wax and Facts in Little Five Points got a *huge* double poster in stock. It was two 3’x5′ posters that made one gigantic poster when put on the wall. So after I put up a 6′ x 10′ poster on the wall, I had to find something else to “balance” it all out. And then another… and another and another. Your grandmother’s obsession with Precious Moments figurines probably had its origins in some rational action, just like mine did. Thankfully for me, I one day looked around and noticed Madonna staring back at me from every angle in my room and thought it was a little creepy… so most of the stuff came down.
But I’m not blindly obsessed with the Material Girl. My interest in her has ebbed and flowed over the years. Like most people, I got kind of sick of her sex act in the early 1990s. And I think that American Life might just be her worst album yet. So she’s not infallible in my book. But while my obsession with her began as a hormone thing, over time her music got better and better. I started liking her less and less for physical reasons and more and more for her actual music. Which might sound petty or silly, but come on – I’m a heterosexual male. Jammin’ out to “Material Girl” just isn’t in my nature, although “Bedtime Stories” is as freakin’ cool today as it was then. This all came to a head with Ray of Light, which quickly became my favorite album of all-time.
But wait – there’s more! One of my biggest hobbies as a teenager was collecting records. I was a fixture at several Atlanta-area record stores, read Goldmine magazine religiously, went to record shows every time they came to town, and made dozens of transatlantic phone calls (a big deal in 1985) tracking down certain records. One thing I noticed early on was that Madonna had a lot of collectible stuff like colored records and picture discs. It was easy to find the out-of-place Madonna disc at a vendor that specialized in 70s rock, buy it, take it to another vendor and “flip it” into a rare This Mortal Coil disc or Cocteau Twins bootleg. So I started buying her stuff, mostly for resale. As you might guess, over time I became a fan, so I started keeping the stuff I once bought just to flip. And thanks to eBay and other similar online sites, collecting is far easier than when I was a teen. Back then search all over hell and half of Alabama for treats like these:
Various older stuff: a pillowcase, watch and several temporary tattoos, approx. value $40.
Rare Ray of Light banner, approx. value $75
Uncommon US Ray of Light Henna Tattoo Kit, approx. value $50
Common Ray of Light lunchbox, approx. value $15
Uncommon British pressing of Ray of Light on marbled vinyl, approx. value $40
Uncommon US “lenticular” version of the Ray of Light album CD.
The cover is “faux 3-D” and looks like real satin in good light. Approximate value $45
Japanese limited-edition 2-disc Ray of Light set.
Disc 1 is the complete album and disc 2 has interviews with Madonna and William Orbit.
Rare US Ray of Light votive, approx. value $70
Of course, if I had real money, I could buy these:
Extremely rare Ray of Light fiber optic lamp from the UK.
Extremely rare Ray of Light lava lamp from the UK.
Only 10 of each lamp were ever made. They sell for around $2,500 each on eBay and other auction houses.
Rare UK Ray of Light flashlight, approx. value $100
Extremely rare American Life Mini Cooper, minimum value $500
Only 25 were made!
So if you wanna know some great gift ideas for me, look no further! But more than mere collectibles, Madonna was a vital part of my home decor when I lived by myself:
Above: a British Drowned World tour poster, a fridge magnet, a 2002 wall calendar and desktop wallpaper.
All items are common and are worth around $20 total.
I am currently a card-carrying member of Icon, Madonna’s fan club, although I’m not very happy about it. I was “serious member” back in 1990 when I first joined, but I only renewed my membership with them a couple of years ago to get in on the fan club ticket presale. Back when I first joined, the club was run by real fans that actually gave a damn about the members; now it’s some outsourced corporate thing. You used to get a lot of cool stuff from the fan club, but nowadays you get an email every six months and a lame website that’s updated even less than that. Boooooooo!
Lastly, I have seen two Madonna shows, both in Atlanta: the Drowned World Tour (2001) and the Re-Invention Tour (2004). The Drowned World Tour is far and away my favorite concert ever, mostly because of the set list. I’ve been to hundreds of shows by all kinds of acts in my day, but I swear Madonna put on the Drowned World Tour just for me. Every song was exactly what I would have chosen. As you might guess, I’m not much of a fan of her earlier music (although I own it and listen to it sometimes), so a show based on tracks almost exclusively from Ray of Light and Music is about as perfect as you can get. For what it’s worth, I did my best to get tickets to one of the NYC Blonde Ambition Tour shows but couldn’t get through to Ticketmaster in time to get any and also couldn’t afford play a broker $800 each for the seats. 🙁
The Tattoo
Everyone does something crazy during a break-up. Girls get their hair whacked off and dyed. Men go on drinking binges and chase 20 year-old girls. I decided to get a tattoo!! It’s my first, and it’s the symbol from the Ray of Light album. Here’s the original design, followed by pics of the tat:
OK, maybe I am a bit obsessed!