Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ tour might have wrapped with it’s final show in Sydney earlier this month but the love for Madonna lives on as Connections Nightclub present their own ‘Rebel Heart’ show.

OUTinPerth’s Graeme Watson and BarbieQ chatted about their mutual love for the material girl and their experiences of seeing the Rebel Heart tour.

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Where did you see Madonna during her Australian tour?

I went to the opening night show in Melbourne. It was amazing, she was only half an hour late. She was absolutely spectacular.

The only thing that annoyed me, and it was nothing to do with the show, was the way the press covered it. The next day when I got up and read the papers it’s literally said “Madonna has a breakdown on stage” and it described how she said to the audience, “Who’s going to fuck me and take care of me?”

It was nothing like that, that’s not how she said it, her and Courtney Act were mucking around and pretending to be white-girl wasted.

When I saw her in Sydney throughout the whole show she just made jokes about how the press kept saying she was having a meltdown.

It really felt like the press gave her a hard time. Yes, the whole lateness thing was terrible, and even die hard fans were getting annoyed. But when you look at that coverage it just convinces me that she’ll just never come back, the press really never gave her any credit.

It was interesting that after there were claims that there were empty seats at her Brisbane show she posted a picture to Instagram of the packed stadium and asked ‘where, which ones?’

The first thing everyone asks is ‘how late was she, and my answer is ‘I have no freaking idea, I was way too excited!’  

People keep asking that, and the question should be ‘How was it?’ In this day and age people are so focused on the negative they forget to ask ‘How did she sound?, How did she look? What were the costumes like?’

I thought she was out of control, that 57 year old bitch, she nailed it.

There was a point in the show where I had a very transcendental moment, I was thinking “I know she’s 57, but in this moment she could be 27′, because she’s Madonna, she’s an icon.

There was a magical Madonna moment where I felt like I was 14 years old and dancing to ‘Into the Groove’.

My most magical moment in the show was that amazing opening to ‘Iconic’, with the gladiators, I thought that was incredible. I also loved her doing ‘True Blue’ on the mandolin, it was so good, I thought, ‘I wish this was a single’. It was so cute.

Also in Melbourne she sang ‘Take a Bow’ and dedicated to Molly Meldrum and that was so sweet.

In Sydney she pulled Gwendolyn Christie from ‘Game of Thrones’ on stage and it took a moment to realise who it was she pulled up. 

So when you do your tribute show at Connections, keeping it real, how late on are you going to be?

I’m always within 15 minutes! We did the show last week and we came on at two minutes past one, so we’re pretty timely. We do keep it real though we play ‘I Wanna be startin’ something’ by Michael Jackson before the show, which is Madonna’s traditional pre-show tune.

On her very first tour she performed ‘Beat It’ in the middle of “Like a Virgin’ Maybe one of the earliest occurrences of a mash-up. 

You know I’ve never seen ‘The Virgin Tour’ I know it’s on DVD, I should really watch it.

It’s strange when you think back to that tour in 1985 everyone was proclaiming it to be a ground breaking presentation ,she had two backing dancers!

Now she’s got like 20! The part of the Rebel Heart show where they were all swinging on those poles, that was crazy! That tune ‘Illuminati’ is also such a great track, one of my favourites from the album.

The day I went to the show in Sydney I was listening to Madonna on my iPod, I had a bout 250 Madonna songs, there are so many! Was it hard to pick which tunes to put in your show?

It was really hard, you don’t know which songs people really like. Even at the concert there were so many people saying ‘Oh she didn’t do that song I love’, but she’s got 15 albums and can only fit twenty tunes into a show.

Just before the show starts Madonna always gets shown pictures of people in the crowd. Her manager Guy Oseary heads out and takes pictures of people in the crowd. I got a gold jacket identical to her ‘Living for Love’ outfit made and wore it to the show.

He came straight up to me and took a photo, so hopefully she got to see it.

Do you have a favourite Madonna song?

I’ve always loved ‘Cherish’, it’s jingly, it’s cute, it’s happy and it’s not dirty, like some of her tracks can be.

It’s got an amazing video?

I remember watching it and I used to say to my Mum, ‘Oh my God, it’s all the mermaids.” I always loved it as a kid.

It was directed by Herb Ritts, it’s one of the few videos he made. He shot that very iconic album cover for ‘True Blue’, sadly he passed away from an AIDS related illness.

What made the cut for your show?

It’s starts of with ‘Living for Love’, we have two bolero themed pieces and then we move into a more religious section. Bobby from Bobby Pole Dancing Studio also performs during one number. There’s quite a bit of circus and ariel work in the show.

We’ve also got a really thrashy rock version of ‘Hung Up’ in the show, a great version that I’ve never heard before.

The Rebel Heart show is on three Saturday nights this month at Connections. Catch the show April 2, 9, and 23.