“All you people I saw sleeping in the street last night,” she said, “this song is for you.”
It was Hung Up, about the agony of waiting. And as she finished the song, she added, just in case the message wasn’t clear: “Anybody who knows me knows how much I hate to wait.”

New York may be a city of the impatient, but for Madonna’s fans, Wednesday’s show proved that seeing her for free in a 2,200-capacity hall — minuscule by her usual touring standards — was something worth waiting for. And waiting for a very long time.

The line outside Roseland, on West 52nd Street, formed 60 hours before show time. By late Tuesday it had stretched around the block as the faithful stood and sat and slept and caffeinated themselves for the chance to score one of the 750 wrist bands that would guarantee free admission.

Erica Gabriel, a 28-year-old makeup artist, waited through the night on line with friends. Once duly wrist-banded some time after 6 am, she returned home to prepare the elaborate, swooping hairstyle and “stewardess-Madonna-tricky-tranny look” that she sported early Wednesday evening — as she waited on line again to receive a second wristband.

Crazy fans

“Gays don’t camp out,” said one of Ms Gabriel’s friends, as the group laughed, “but we’ll camp out for this.” Even those who joined the queue relatively late proved to be professionals of a sort.

“I’m not fanatical,” said Walter Sharpe, 36, an interior designer from Brooklyn. “But I do collect Madonna magazine covers, and I’ve got maybe 170 of them.”

There is something almost quaint about an overnight line for concert tickets in an era of Internet pre-sales and ordering by text message. But Madonna’s show, to promote her album Hard Candy was also part of a technologically sophisticated, 21st-century product rollout. It was broadcast live on the Internet and on cell phones worldwide.