The Police! In Concert! I Was There!!

I have just three words.

Stewart.
Fucking.
Copeland.

Forget Sting. Stewart was truly the star of the show. My god, can the man play drums!! He played like he was 20 years old! He played like he’d played those songs every day of his life since 1983! He is so fast, so precise, so incredibly talented. He had an enormous drumkit on stage as well as a secondary one behind him that included all manner of interesting hand percussion, xylophones, little hanging bells, and a full sized gong. He’d switch back and forth between the two sets during some songs, and it was fun to guess whether he’d make it to the other set in time. (He always did!). He also looked amazing, in white pants and a tight black and red shirt.

The concert was FREAKING AWESOME. It was such a cool experience to see one of my favorite bands in concert, a band that initially broke up before I was even old enough to go to concerts.

My only real complaint is that it wasn’t six hours longer. 🙂 My voice was trashed last night and this morning from singing at the top of my lungs.

Andy Summers was also in top form, and although the guitar solos seemed a bit shorter and slightly less energetic than maybe I remember them being, he still kicked ass, especially considering he’s quite a bit older than the other two.

Sting can’t sing as high as he used to, which makes sense considering that he’s in his mid-50s. He did take some of the verses of some of the songs down an octave to accommodate, which was a little disappointing since I think a lot of the power of the original songs lies in that high yell.

He looked amazing, too, in tight black pants, knee high buckle boots (hello, 1980s!) and… well, what looked like an old white t-shirt full of holes and with cut off sleeves. Like maybe he’d rolled out of bed and forgotten to change his shirt. But shirt, schmirt, whatever; sometimes he doesn’t even wear one! I hear tell that in some cities (sadly, not Dallas), Stewart comes to the front of the stage and announces “And now, Sting is going to take off his clothes. And if he doesn’t, *I* will!”

Of course, most of what they played were the radio singles (almost the entirety of Every Breath You Take: The Singles), but they threw in a couple of gems that made me very happy.

Overall I was very pleased with how they performed most of the songs. Some were a bit of a disappointment, such as Walking in Your Footsteps: one of my favorite songs but it seemed like they just mangled the performance of it. It was too slow, and a little weak. This was also an example of a song where Sting didn’t go up to the right octave (like the verse that begins “Hey, mighty brontosaurus, don’t you have a lesson for us”), and it just seemed a little low-key and powerless.

They completely ROCKED on most of the songs, though, especially So Lonely, Synchronicity II, King of Pain, Driven to Tears, and Next To You.

I found it kind of amusing that they slowed down the tempo of a couple of the songs, most notably Truth Hits Everybody, which is supposed to be just lightning fast. Don’t know if it’s because one or more of them has difficulty keeping up with that pace, or if they just wanted to do something different. At any rate, it was a little strange.

Here is what they played, although not necessarily in order:

Message In A Bottle
Synchronicity II
Can’t Stand Losing You
Bed’s Too Big Without You
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
When The World Is Running Down
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Walking on the Moon
Walking in Your Footsteps
Voices Inside My Head
Truth Hits Everybody
Invisible Sun
Roxanne
King of Pain
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
Every Breath You Take
Driven To Tears
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
So Lonely
Next To You

Every concert you go to, there are always a handful of songs that you are just hoping and praying that the artist will perform, but they don’t. I really was hoping to hear I Burn For You, Tea in the Sahara, Secret Journey, Synchronicity I, and Murder by Numbers. And beyond that, it would have been great to hear the little-heard Omegaman, Hungry For You, No Time This Time, Man in a Suitcase, and Bombs Away.

I was really glad to see that it looked like the three of them were having fun onstage. At one point after they’d left the stage, Sting and Andy came back and Andy started in on the guitar part (wish I could remember which song it was!). Stewart came flying out onstage, leaped at his drumkit, and began playing JUST in time… and Andy grinned at him and Stewart grinned back and pointed one of his drumsticks at Andy like “JUST in time, buddy!” Almost like Andy had started the song before Stewart was ready just to see if he’d make it in time.

A couple of times Sting either forgot the lyrics or sang the wrong ones (such as in Don’t Stand So Close To Me), and what was really great was that he cracked up as the audience sang the CORRECT lyrics back at him.

And, of course, the E-yo’s were everywhere!! My friends and I used to call that “The Mating Call of The Police.” E-yo-oh… e-yo-oh…. e-yo, e-yo-yo-yo… and it’s variant “Rio… riay… riay-oh!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listed to Regatta de Blanc or the end of Walking On The Moon.

I do also have to mention that the opening band, Fictionplane, is fronted by none other than Sting Jr. Doc and I were calling them the Little Police. He’s blond, looks just like his dad, sings and plays bass for a 3-man band… hmm, sound familiar? I think that if my dad were that famous, and I had talent in the same area, I would do everything in my power to differentiate myself from him (different instrument, at the very least) to try to be taken seriously as a musician in my own right. I’m not saying that they were awful or anything, but it was quite forgettable mediocre rock.

All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had at a concert since… well, I can’t remember when. I’ve seen some amazing shows in the past few years (especially Aimee Mann, Peter Gabriel, and Elvis Costello), but none of them had the insane energy that this one did. I was bouncing up and down in my seat the entire time and singing as loud as I could.

Good times!