Get the latest gossip
You want to sue Madonna for being late on stage? She’s an artist not a service industry worker | Alexis Petridis
Some music fans seem afflicted by a sense of entitlement, and to have forgotten inconvenience used to be part of the gig-going experience. Mind you, with today’s ticket prices, is it any wonder?
It is not an argument destined to cut much mustard with anyone who – like the claimants – is old enough to remember a time before golden circles, cordoned-off glamping areas at festivals, corporate packages, VIP suites, lounges and viewing platforms, “ultimate bars” and all the other latterday additions that have turned gigs into a branch of the hospitality industry. So there’s a certain irony about the fact that a considerable chunk of the Madonna show that occasioned the lawsuit involves a recreation of the arty, post-disco early-80s New York demimonde from which the singer sprung, complete with a dancer in character as Jean-Michel Basquiat and a mockup of the entrance to the Paradise Garage club. It seems doubtful that anyone who attended a show by Basquiat’s noise-rock band Gray, or turned up to hear the Garage’s genius but drug-addled resident DJ Larry Levan, ever considered getting the lawyers in because a late start meant they faced “limited public transportation” home.
Or read this on The Guardian