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Kevin Antunes destroyed Madonna's reputation as a Live Act.


nito84bcn
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On 11/15/2020 at 1:25 PM, kesiak said:

Destroyed her reputation as a live act? You mean by being the musical director of the highest grossing tour for a female artist ever? :) 

Just like Subway is the most popular franchise in the world, that has little to do with legacy or reputation, which was what the original post was about.

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Kevin Antunes inherited the musical director position from Stuart Price who had completed with 3 stellar arena tours with good albums to pull from, and let’s not forget he produced the bulk of confessions, too.

He spent pretty much ALL of 2004, 2005, 2006 working, performing and creating with Madonna. Of course he could direct her shows because he knew HER, and he knew his shit behind the boards. 
 

Kevin Antunes inherited an uneven new album to tour for, in huge stadiums and ball parks (while the new boss is getting a divorce, no less), the SST had some really odd moments with all the mashups and weird transitions, so even having done the big shows with previous artists, dancers, choreographers, etc. , I never envied the position he was in, because after the Roseland Hard Candy promo show, his fate was sealed with Madonna fans after Hung Up. 

I also would not have envied making the sound work on the MDNA tour going back and from Stadiums to Arenas, working out the sound and musical elements with all the elements that show has, I think he did a good job. 
RHT I felt was better and worse, sometimes simultaneously, but it was fun show that Madonna seemed to have fun with, so the mp3 quality stems high up in the mix was little more easily forgiven. 
 

I think he did as good a job as he could with Madame X, he had a rich sonic palette laid out for him, (although all those trap beats over every older song was annoying and sounded lazy) as musical director, I would have demanded a live drummer and bass player. But for the most part the sound mix was good. Especially American Life, Batuka, and the Fado Section.  
And even though I’m mystified that NO ONE has offered her or discovered a different vocoder effect for the live vocal mix since DWT, all I can think at this point is that maybe she’s pissed off her band with some of the antics and  is purposefully overdoing the auto-tune/vocoder to sound so much like a goat....at times. Not all the time. Lol.

Going back over his work with Madonna, I have a hard time thinking at this point he hasn’t figured out to use his band to make her voice sound better live instead of artlessly using studio stems and vocals pitched way the fuck down. 

All that said, who knows though, maybe he was contracted by LN for the duration of her 360 deal, so they could maximize profit and make sure the machine kept running, and running, and running. 
Unfortunately though, she is the boss, and she’s primarily responsible for any damage to her live reputation. 


 

 

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11 hours ago, madaboutM said:

Just like Subway is the most popular franchise in the world, that has little to do with legacy or reputation, which was what the original post was about.

Personally, I don't like Sticky & Sweet Tour much but it is in the Guinness Book of World Records, she's often mentioned as the best-selling solo touring act of all time thanks to it -  it IS part of her legacy clearly. It's one thing not to like what Antunes does, quite another making over the top, dramatic proclamations that her musical director ruined her reputation as a live act. :)

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44 minutes ago, kesiak said:

Personally, I don't like Sticky & Sweet Tour much but it is in the Guinness Book of World Records, she's often mentioned as the best-selling solo touring act of all time thanks to it -  it IS part of her legacy clearly. It's one thing not to like what Antunes does, quite another making over the top, dramatic proclamations that her musical director ruined her reputation as a live act. :)

Dramatic is how cheap is his sound, not our proclamations. 

Thanks. 
#reallyexpensivetickets

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2 hours ago, nito84bcn said:

Dramatic is how cheap is his sound, not our proclamations. 

Thanks. 
#reallyexpensivetickets

Again, you're welcome to dislike what he's doing, there are valid reasons for it and it's your prerogative. But claiming he ruined her reputation as a live act is so over the top (and objectively untrue) that it's simply amusing and it actually undermines your argument. :)

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9 hours ago, kesiak said:

Again, you're welcome to dislike what he's doing, there are valid reasons for it and it's your prerogative. But claiming he ruined her reputation as a live act is so over the top (and objectively untrue) that it's simply amusing and it actually undermines your argument. :)

Agreed.

And:

Quote

 

"Thanks. 

#reallyexpensivetickets"


 

Has no meaning in relation to the conversation. You sound like a fool.

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On 1/28/2021 at 5:51 AM, cosmic_system said:

Funny how everybody keep saying like a broken record how amazing Price was when most of RIT sounded like a karaoke tribute act, from the lazy Vogue beat to LAP. Thank god she sounded great.

He did great on Confessions because most of the show came from the record he co-produced but let's not act like La Isla Bonita was genius for example. 

Also peple shitting on Madame X when all they heard is a bloody bootleg, please.

 I agree her last GREAT live band was Girlie Show and I also agree Kevin is not perfect at all, but stop pretend like Stuart Price is God. 2005 was 16 years ago, get over it already and deal with it.

 

 

I dont know if anyone thinks Stuart Price was god but i think people miss things being so polished and professional and even though some versions weren't that inventive, he still made some really incredible versions of songs and the shows flowed flawlessly. Her shows were THE shows in the industry in the 2000s. Recent years pale in comparison, and I do agree that the quality of her shows has suffered and perhaps that has affected her live reputation, but the late starts and albums that didn't do so well also didn't help. Still waiting to see Madame X though. 

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On 1/28/2021 at 5:09 AM, Blue Jean said:

She’s been doing the same show since 1997 but lower budget each time. Her Glastonbury performance was especially bad, Kylie put her to shame.

Janet's first three tours were amazing. All for You was cute but somewhat repetitive (the Control medley, Alright with the Zoot Suit, light c*ck-teasing/grinding up on a male audience member, Rhythm Nation in all black). The Rock Witchu Tour was refreshing change but was also the beginning of her jamming a lot into one show. Unbreakable was when people were just getting a 90 minute mixtape and Janet has been rehashing that show ever since. While people want to blame Kevin for Madonna's decline, I want to blame Gil Duldulao for Janet's but we all know that they both aren't completely to blame. Kylie while she doesn't have Janet's and Madonna's dancing skills or all of Madonna's production value has still managed to deliver a different and intriguing show each and every time since 1998 and she is at a point now where she is only reliant on a few of her hits to include in all her tours since 2011 onwards (Better the Devil You Know, Spinning Around, On a Night Like This, Kids (Kylie's Candy Shop/Human Nature), Can't Get You Out of My Head, Love at First Sight, Slow, and All the Lovers) instead of packing all 33 of her UK top tens into one show. She also gives her fans some tracks from the new album and even throws in some album tracks and fan favourites. I think it helped that in the beginning, she had no real budget to tour until Fever so she had to become reliant on her stage presence more than designer costumes or elaborate staging. It also helps that her MD, Steve Anderson (one half of Brothers In Rhythm),  is a remixer so he understands how to rework a song without taking the essence of the original away and William Baker was close enough to Kylie (much like Chris or even Jaime King were to Madonna) to understand how to help her translate her albums into a live setting/staging, the pinnacle of their work together being Aphrodite Les Folies. 

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On 11/15/2020 at 1:37 PM, momosfantasy said:

I just want her to put down the guitar.  Forever.  At first it was cool, and if she persued it the way she does her skin-care line and all the non-musical stuff, she would probably be fairly good by now and be able to actually compose with it and/or use it to record new music.  But as it stands, the three-chord thing is just a kinda silly way for her to "rock out" onstage and to take away what should be a great opportunity to rework her older songs with more interesting arrangements.  I would loooooovvvvvveeeeee to hear a cool new take on something like "Burning Up", but instead she straps on that damn guitar and plays a ridiculously lifeless version of one of her best early tunes.  Don't misunderstand, I love me some guitar rock, and I love primitive, Stooges-type 3 chord stuff, but the novelty of M bashing out her classic songs with that thing on every tour is so over.

No. Putting it down would be one more reason for some to say Gaga is the better musician. It's a good thing for Madonna to play a couple of songs at least on the guitar. Gaga was wrong to imply Madonna does not compose, produce and play instruments. As a matter of fact, Madonna's got nine sole songwriting credits, while Gaga's only got three. Madonna confirmed in SongTalk decades ago that she does co-compose her instrumentals (in addition to writing lyrics and composing vocal melodies).
 

On 11/16/2020 at 10:00 AM, PWCCA said:

THIS!!!!!! After over 20 years of playing it, she still sounds like a beginner. Those 'oh look I'm a musician too' guitar segments on tour are rather tedious. Use real guitar players.... use a real band!!

Even then! Gaga does not sound any better on the guitar (she mostly plays the piano), so... I love Gaga, by the way, but I was scandalized when she claimed Madonna does not write nor produce at all!

Was she ever a real fan, she would have known Madonna's always been very involved in songwriting (lyrics, melodies, instrumentals) and production. Yes, Madonna often receives tracks she then adds top-lines to, but as mentioned in SongTalk, in such cases, she will still rewrite or at least rework them, and Madonna's written plenty of stuff from the scratch. And she should have known Madonna plays several instruments.

Edited by Arckangel (see edit history)
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2 hours ago, Fighter said:

I dont know if anyone thinks Stuart Price was god but i think people miss things being so polished and professional and even though some versions weren't that inventive, he still made some really incredible versions of songs and the shows flowed flawlessly. Her shows were THE shows in the industry in the 2000s. Recent years pale in comparison, and I do agree that the quality of her shows has suffered and perhaps that has affected her live reputation, but the late starts and albums that didn't do so well also didn't help. Still waiting to see Madame X though. 

Her shows are still the best shows in the industry, but she's not 40 or 50 anymore and she did 7 tours (8 with the second leg of S&S) in the last 20 years after a 8 years gap. She did more tours in the last two decades than in the first two. She's also almost 63 so I really don't understad how can people expect her to be still the biggest tour artist in the world at this point. A Madonna tour is not an event like it was 20 or 15 years ago because she did tour a lot and of course she's not the best selling female artist of the year anymore, and we all know quality has nothing to do with it.

I'm glad she's not giving a greatest hits tour like a legacy act, I love that she loves every album she does that most of the material is present in the actual tour named after that particular album.  Also blaming Kevin for the lack of interest doens't make sense. The general public doesn't care, they go to see Madonna and not her musical director. The "classics" song were well recived on Rebel Heart and Madame X.

Late starts are probably the main reason for the lack of interest in last two tours, tours that were still among the best selling tours of the year. 

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I would say Madonna did that herself, she’s the one that’s hired him and continues do so every tour. He’s the one that’s going to give us candy shop right up to the farewell tour when we could be having Hung up and other classics remixed by Stuart price if her ego wasn’t so big. 

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On 1/28/2021 at 5:14 AM, NowRadiate said:

janet jackson GIF

When did this thread turn into a “let‘s trash Janet thread“?

Janet’s last tour was pretty good. She remixed a lot of the songs - finally - and started performing deep cuts and songs she never did live before. I wish Madonna would do something like Kylie’s Anti Tour. Tears of a Clown could have been amazing if it wasn’t simply the entire American Life album. There are so many great songs that weren’t singles she could do. 
 

Stuart Price’s version of Vogue sounded cheap to me. I never liked what he did with that one. 

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I'm torn up on Kevin Antunes. While I do think his sound is a bit "flat" for some reason, the fact is that thanks to him we got some of the best song reinventions like Vogue and Like a Prayer S&S or Candy Shop MDNA. I think he's a great "mash-upper" which work on some songs, but not on others. Either way, he made justice to Madonna's premise which is reinventing.

While Stuart did a good job on the Confessions Tour, I think it was because it was his work anyway and the songs were very DJ-ish to begin with, because if you dissect the other ones they weren't actually that original:

- Ray of Light as a very generic rock version
- Drowned World/Substitute for Love was a monotone beat over an acoustic guitar
- Music wasn't even him, it's the Disco Inferno instrumental
- Lucky Star was basically the Hung Up beat...

Erotica was his one true gem, but other than that, nothing really stands out as original or "his" reinvention, unlike Kevin who made some real good mash-up reinventions. He also did an amazing job on Madame X, because Human Nature and Frozen were next level. In the end I think they both have their merit and I would love to see them both as musical directors of a tour, to balance things out. Kevin would rework the classics while Stuart would do the current songs.

Oh, and let's not forget Madonna also has a say in this and she pus a lot of input as well. So if a song comes out bad, it's also her fault.

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1 hour ago, Dito said:

I'm torn up on Kevin Antunes. While I do think his sound is a bit "flat" for some reason, the fact is that thanks to him we got some of the best song reinventions like Vogue and Like a Prayer S&S or Candy Shop MDNA. I think he's a great "mash-upper" which work on some songs, but not on others. Either way, he made justice to Madonna's premise which is reinventing.

While Stuart did a good job on the Confessions Tour, I think it was because it was his work anyway and the songs were very DJ-ish to begin with, because if you dissect the other ones they weren't actually that original:

- Ray of Light as a very generic rock version
- Drowned World/Substitute for Love was a monotone beat over an acoustic guitar
- Music wasn't even him, it's the Disco Inferno instrumental
- Lucky Star was basically the Hung Up beat...

Erotica was his one true gem, but other than that, nothing really stands out as original or "his" reinvention, unlike Kevin who made some real good mash-up reinventions. He also did an amazing job on Madame X, because Human Nature and Frozen were next level. In the end I think they both have their merit and I would love to see them both as musical directors of a tour, to balance things out. Kevin would rework the classics while Stuart would do the current songs.

Oh, and let's not forget Madonna also has a say in this and she pus a lot of input as well. So if a song comes out bad, it's also her fault.

Price was the Musical Director of both Drowned World Tour and Re-Invention as well, let's not forget that. He was the one who brought her old songs to the new century, there's no way one could deny it. 

His work wasn't live but it did not sound karaoke-ish and he found a way to make Madonna sound amazing on those 3 tour without using lowered vocals from the steams straight from the 80's, that alone saves his sound. Plus, Re-Invention, although not perfect, was very inventive with the new versions and was the seed that bloomed as Confessions on a Dance Floor.

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I think Stuart Price did fantastic versions of Like A Virgin, La Isla Bonita, Paradise Not For Me, Drowned World, Ray of Light, Erotica  (confessions) holiday, nobody knows me, burning up, material girl, Deeper and Deeper, Papa Don't Preach (Re-Invention), Secret, Holiday, La Isla Bonita (Drowned World)

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10 hours ago, Arckangel said:

No. Putting it down would be one more reason for some to say Gaga is the better musician. It's a good thing for Madonna to play a couple of songs at least on the guitar. Gaga was wrong to imply Madonna does not compose, produce and play instruments. As a matter of fact, Madonna's got nine sole songwriting credits, while Gaga's only got three. Madonna confirmed in SongTalk decades ago that she does co-compose her instrumentals (in addition to writing lyrics and composing vocal melodies).
 

Even then! Gaga does not sound any better on the guitar (she mostly plays the piano), so... I love Gaga, by the way, but I was scandalized when she claimed Madonna does not write nor produce at all!

Was she ever a real fan, she would have known Madonna's always been very involved in songwriting (lyrics, melodies, instrumentals) and production. Yes, Madonna often receives tracks she then adds top-lines to, but as mentioned in SongTalk, in such cases, she will still rewrite or at least rework them, and Madonna's written plenty of stuff from the scratch. And she should have known Madonna plays several instruments.

I never mentioned Gaga.

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1 hour ago, diegolcl said:

Price was the Musical Director of both Drowned World Tour and Re-Invention as well, let's not forget that. He was the one who brought her old songs to the new century, there's no way one could deny it. 

His work wasn't live but it did not sound karaoke-ish and he found a way to make Madonna sound amazing on those 3 tour without using lowered vocals from the steams straight from the 80's, that alone saves his sound. Plus, Re-Invention, although not perfect, was very inventive with the new versions and was the seed that bloomed as Confessions on a Dance Floor.

Oh, I didn't know he was on DWT as well. To be honest DWT and RIT are the modern tours I like less :cryin:  I find them a bit... dull. The musical arrangements don't spark anything for me, either. But this is now more of a matter of personal taste.

Either way, my point was that I don't think Antunes is a devil and Price is a god. I think they both have different approaches and are good in their own ways.

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On 1/29/2021 at 11:42 PM, nito84bcn said:

Dramatic is how cheap is his sound, not our proclamations. 

Thanks. 
#reallyexpensivetickets

Exactly. It’s karaoke. She needs live drums, a proper band. It’s that simple really.

But is it Kevin Atunes or is it her choice? Because if you look at his work with other artists like Justin Timberlake it’s a different story....

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11 hours ago, Arckangel said:

No. Putting it down would be one more reason for some to say Gaga is the better musician. It's a good thing for Madonna to play a couple of songs at least on the guitar. Gaga was wrong to imply Madonna does not compose, produce and play instruments. As a matter of fact, Madonna's got nine sole songwriting credits, while Gaga's only got three. Madonna confirmed in SongTalk decades ago that she does co-compose her instrumentals (in addition to writing lyrics and composing vocal melodies).
 

Even then! Gaga does not sound any better on the guitar (she mostly plays the piano), so... I love Gaga, by the way, but I was scandalized when she claimed Madonna does not write nor produce at all!

Was she ever a real fan, she would have known Madonna's always been very involved in songwriting (lyrics, melodies, instrumentals) and production. Yes, Madonna often receives tracks she then adds top-lines to, but as mentioned in SongTalk, in such cases, she will still rewrite or at least rework them, and Madonna's written plenty of stuff from the scratch. And she should have known Madonna plays several instruments.


Gaga is a more skilled musician when it comes to playing instruments. That doesn’t make her better or more talented, it’s just one aspect.

And she was being bitchy when she said that because she was still butt hurt about the “reductive” comment and a little bit defensive with the comparisons. I think deep down she really must have great admiration for Madonna or otherwise she wouldn’t have spent her entire career referencing her.

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17 hours ago, PWCCA said:

I never mentioned Gaga.

I never said you did. I told you (and other members) what would happen if Mo put down her guitar. 

Note: Madonna did not play the guitar on her first four tours. That did not take anything away from her artistry or credibility as an author/composer. But (having already played live guitar in her early years) she chose to incorporate it again to her live act, starting from the Don't Tell Me promo tour in late year 2000, followed by the Drowned World Tour the following year. It's been a great addition, IMO, as it gives her a bit more cred and gives a lil' rock element to her concerts.

Edited by Arckangel (see edit history)
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