Madonna in Kent, by Robert

Here’s a nice report with pics from Saturday’s show in Maidstone, Kent by our dear community member Robert:

“Phew! What a weekend! I’m gonna do my best to give you an idea of my experience but take into account I am currently a zombie as the big weekend started on Friday for me and sleep has been in short supply, eventually arriving home at 7am this morning….

Well me and my fella John set off from Leeds at 7pm on Friday and after a looooong drive down finally arrived in Kent over five hours later. We decided to go and check out the queue situation as soon as we got there so we walked over to the entrance at 1am. Apart from one other guy who had just arrived we were the first there! It seems that getting no sleep the night before a Madonna event has become the norm for us and Friday night was no different, we got as comfy as we could and started the wait! To our amazement the next people didn’t arrive till about 6am and then after that no one else until after 8am… it was all a bit surreal and it started to feel like we’d arrived on the wrong day or something.. but steadily people arrived and by 12 there was the kind of crowd building that you would expect.

After a bit of stress worrying that bad queue control was going to ruin our chances at being front row, despite being the first to arrive the gates finally opened and we were off. It seems that the thought of missing out on the best spot after all our hardwork turned us into Olympic athletes – We unleashed more energy than is natural for people who hadn’t slept and I think we ran faster than either of us ever has before! But it was worth it… we secured a spot right in front of the stage and the stress subsided… now it was just the wait to get through… but after the stress of waiting to get in that was gonna be the easy part, Nothing was gonna shift us now!!!

It feels like a went into a bit of shutdown leaning across that barrier all day and I made the effort to store up as much energy as possible… I knew it was gonna be needed later! By the time Madonna’s DJ came on the Madonna energy I had been reserving was unleashed, the excitment began to build and all thoughts of being tired faded away, none of that mattered now! Then came the moment we had been waiting for, C-A-N-D-Y! The fateful sound that the show was finally about to begin, we knew she was on her way!!

Tearing through the songs from Hard Candy, she gave a performance to rival any others, and she certainly seemed to be comfortable in her new setlist. All of my concerns after watching Hung Up at Roseland disappeared, she hit the nail on the head last night and it rocked! I think it was the step away from the same routine we all knew and loved (repeatedly!) that was needed to break the song out into something new. I loved it!

The highlight for me came during Give It 2 Me when Madonna came and knelt in front of us. She sang directly to us and even reached out for my hand when she saw me stretching towards her. It was simply incredible and you can see from one of my pictures the moment it happened! Music came about quickly and it was the perfect end to an amazing set, it seems that song can mix into any other flawlessly every time. These promo gigs always seem to go so quickly, but it’s no surprise with the amount of energy flying around…one day on it feels like a dream but my dreams are never usually this good!

There’s lots more I could say in terms of reviewing the show but you’ve probably already read it elsewhere, she was amazing and we all know it! I just wanted to try and give you an idea of the experience I had so I hope that’s coming across.

One thing I do want to say is just how refreshing it was to have security that were actually human. It actually worked out pretty well for us as we had a really lovely girl working in front of us and during Usher’s set I realised she was a big fan as she was mouthing along to all his songs so I told her to stand in front of the stage and I took a picture of her with Usher behind her, she was so pleased that for the rest of the day she treated us like VIPs, we had water on demand and she saw to it that our request that they didn’t put tall security in front of us during Madonna happened! The security even moved their heads to the side when they saw us taking photos, they were that good to us! So it really does pay off to be nice to the security, she was definately our lucky star for the day!!

We finally arrived back home at 7am this morning and after two totally sleepless but totally worth it nights we got in and watched the show on Sky+ before finally letting our heavy but happy heads hit the pillow and sleep into a coma until this afternoon

So that’s my story! As always I could go on more, but I won’t… I’m tired but the excitement is still going strong! Long live the Queen!!!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my happy ramblings!

Rob”

Thanks to Robert. Check out his gallery of pictures from the Big Weekend by clicking here.