ON SUNDAY night I was one of the crowd at SingTel's product launch featuring American pop singer, Lady Gaga.

We were all there, including the star – who is signed to Universal Music, one of the major sponsors – to, learn all about a new music service the Telco is providing.

Although the bulk of the audience were there just to see the star, SingTel also had a bunch of products set up in a separate area showing off how AMPed worked.

After waiting around for what felt like hours, the star of the evening eventually came on stage – her open set included a pre-recorded mini-movie of Lady Gaga doing a semi-Warhol inspired scene with lots of odd dialogue about 'Candy Warhol'.

But Lady Gaga's performance, once she finally reached the stage was pretty fantastic. Sure, it wasn't Kylie, and the early Madonna references probably made the older punters in the crowd cringe, but hey, she held the stage.

PHOTO: Joe Nair

The Lady and her three backing dancers made the most of the very plain stage helped along by some super professional lighting and a great sound system.

Before moving into Beautiful Dirty Rich, she quipped – "After travelling around the world I realise the most important thing is my fans; and the least important thing is money." She then dutifully thanked SingTel and AMPed for bringing her to Singapore. Ironic?

Lady Gaga also subjected the audience to three costume changes – her disappearance from the stage a jarring note in the show. The first time the crowd wasn't entirely sure she was coming back and the following breaks were noticeable with the music coming to a complete stop once and the tracks being un-synced in the second break.

The middle set featured the Lady in thigh-high boots and a suspiciously Madonna-like bustier, on the electric piano no less. The slowed-down tempo of the opening bars of Poker Face had the crowd in a frenzy and Gaga's performance – first squatting on the piano stool, then sticking her bum in the air – got them screaming.

She eventually moved into the up-tempo version of Poker Face which everyone loved – getting the crowd to scream and wave their hands in the air.

Lady Gaga's closing set saw another costume change – this time into a bright yellow number (again, echoes of the 80s) and her biggest hit so far, Just Dance. And the crowd did just that, jumping up and down in time with the singer, making the temporary floor bounce in time – but thankfully it was stronger than it first seemed.

Throughout the show, Lady Gaga did her utmost to interact with the audience, calling out at one stage 'scream for me Singapore' and 'sing, sing, Singapore'. She also thanked the crowd and described one punter as 'sweet'.

One jarring note was the bantering between Daniel Ong and Young from 987FM. First there was the weird story about a marriage proposal to Lady Gaga, then they made four punters get up on stage and 'dance' before saying some very strange stuff about the winners of the lucky draws – two brothers – and Lady Gaga being involved in a threesome.

Now it could just be me; maybe I'm too ang moh to get their sense of humour, but it did seem rather juvenile and a bit crass. Mind you, the pair did manage to get in an inordinate number of references to SingTel and AMPed, so on that count they did thier job.

However, despite the fact that Lady Gaga gave her all during the showcase, there was a problem with the event as a whole.

Perhaps I got the wrong end of the stick, as they say, but I was surprised by the way SingTel treated their punters, the members of the public who had been invited to the showcase.

When I, like the other 1,000 or so ordinary punters who lined up to get into the Dome on Merchant Loop, got my invitation, I assumed that I was special. It even said so on the ticket... 'You're invited to experience the launch of SingTel's new service and attend an exclusive showcase by Lady Gaga' it told me.

Wow ... I was amped! I was an exclusive guest; along with the other 1,000 or so punters who also got an invite.

So, imagine my surprise when I was corralled with the bearers of this 'exclusive' invitation first in a dome, then syphoned through weird corridors that looked like either airlocks for a journey on the Space Shuttle, or quarantine at an infectious diseases hospital.

While standing around for about 15 minutes or so, I thought ... oh, maybe this is to stop swine flu? So I asked one of the security guards. No, he told me, all this was so they could protect the air-conditioning.

Oh, right.

Once we finally made it into the 'concert' area I thought great, I'm early, I'll be able to get a great view of the stage.

Ah, no: I couldn't get anywhere near the stage because I was wearing the wrong colour wristband. Apparently I wasn't important enough to get a front row seat.

Along with the other 1,000 or so 'exclusive' guests, I got to stand on the side of the stage for approximately three hours while we waited for the star to arrive and watched hungrily as the real 'exclusive' guests got free wine and food.

Yep. Turns out that if you were an ordinary punter, someone who was lucky enough to get an 'exclusive' invitation but not either a member of the press or a VIP, you didn't get zip.

Well, I suppose you did get a free Red Bull from the nice Red Bull girls if you hung around at the back of the crowd. Only, if you did that then you lost your place at the front of the crowd, where you kind of got to see something.

The sight lines for the wings were shocking. If you were short you saw absolutely nothing except the back of the person in front of you. If you were late, ie. at the end of the line, you had a snowball's chance in hell of getting to the front of the crowd.

If, on the other hand, you were a VIP or a member of the media, you were slap bang in front of the stage.

Now, I'm not actually apportioning blame here. After all, this was a product launch, and those things are generally dedicated to industry insiders, clients and press. So, in some ways, SingTel was doing a nice thing for punters and fans, giving away free tickets to see a very popular act in an exclusive showcase.

Still, for the poor wee fans – quite a lot of them seemed very young – it was a bit of a disappointment. When you receive something with 'exclusive' on it, you kind of expect to be treated a bit better.

After all, the blurb on the back of the tickets said 'Only SingTel AMPed can get you into her (Lady Gaga's) posse for one night only and give you an experience beyond music.'

While I feel that the ordinary punters didn't exactly get their 'experience beyond music', they certainly got their music thanks to Lady Gaga's great performance.

So, maybe, it was all worth it.

But some of the guests I spoke to after the event were still disgruntled that they only managed to see a bit of the show, and most of that on a video screen. As one of them said: "If I could have paid, I would have, and I would have spent the money to have a front row seat."

Just so you don't think this review is entirely one person's view of the event, one of the lucky 'media insiders', who was given a precious centre stage pass had this to say...

"I only discovered Lady Gaga was coming to town two days before her gig. A friend who works at an entertainment magazine told me she had an extra ticket and asked me if I was interested. I said yes immediately.

"But I must confess, I only know two of her songs – Just Dance and Poker Face – so I don't think you can exactly call me a big fan.

"I didn't know how many guests were invited for the showcase and I was surprised and irritated to see an extremely long queue of people when I got to The Dome on Sunday evening. I thought we had to join the queue, but my friend pointed us to the media queue which was way shorter.

"I was given a pink tag – to indicate I was from the media - and managed to get in without any sweat, literally.

"That was the beginning of the different treatment I got. Other media friends managed to get us prime spots in front of the stage and during the show I was so close I could see the tear in Lady Gaga's black fishnet stockings.

"Waiters moved in and out of the area I was in, feeding the crowd with finger food and wine.

"Another friend, a big fan of Lady Gaga, later messaged us to say she was stuck in an area where she couldn't see the stage and she couldn't get into the media area because she didn't have the right invite.

"She, like many other true blue fans it appears, was stuck on the sidelines and the only access many of them had to the show was via a white video screen.

"But I only learned all this after the gig – I had an awesome view despite the fact that I'm not even her greatest fan – and I have to say, I feel kind of bad.

Still, at least SingTel was cool enough to realise that acts like Lady Gaga are what Singapore wants to see. And if you missed out on the show – in whatever way – you can see exclusive Lady Gaga clips on AMPed, which is kind of cool too.

Pop singer Lady Gaga with her Singapore poster.
PHOTO: ST