Tag Archives: Police

Synchronicity, too: The Police at Wrigley

Music,

Initially, I thought I wasn’t going to end up seeing The Police when they came to Chicago. Tickets were too far out of my price range, and attempts to parlay my Time Out employment into a press pass, failed (though I did manage to get us a photo pass). But last night my sister called and said she had an extra ticket in the set her work had been given by a vendor (think about that what you will).

In any case, it was a great show. I’m going to resist going on about it for my usual 1000 words (especially since Greg Kot is pretty dead-on here). But a few thoughts:

* I need to pull out the Live disc from a couple years ago*, but the set (full list after the jump) was pretty similar to what they played on the Synchronicity tour. The difference here was that the horn section and backup singers they brought with them then were left behind. Best I could tell, they weren’t playing to backing tracks, and still kept a full, muscle-y sound. **

* Sting isn’t hitting the high notes anymore, and this has led to new arrangements. Some are good (“Every Little Thing…” and “Roxanne” really cook in a way they don’t on record), but a lot of them rob the originals of all their fire (I would rather have not heard “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” than listened to the run-through here). Some of the song were a bit limp, but almost everything from “Can’t Stand Losing You” until the end of the show was spot-fucking-on. For some reason, I have no memory of hearing “Every Breath You Take” even though my notes say they played it, which leads me to believe it wasn’t very memorable or was lost between the amazing bookends of “So Lonely” and “Next To You.”

* People who say The Police don’t seem to enjoy playing together onstage haven’t looked at old footage recently. They were never particularly chummy as a live act, and the perfectionism that shows up in the studio manifests itself as a stern concentration in a live setting.

* Stern concentration does not mean boredom though. Holy fuck, Andy Summers was on fire. Stu was hot, too, but Summers left both he and Sting in the dust.

* Kudos to The Police for not stretching out the audience applause during encores unlike some bands I could name (Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1991 prior to coming back out and playing “Freebird,” I’m looking at you).

* Seeing a concert at Wrigley is a lot like going to a Cubs game. Same people, same level of interest in what’s going on in the outfield.

* Sting’s son’s band Fiction Plane opened. They led the crowd through a Harry Caray-style version of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and that tells you almost everything you need to know about their set except this: if you thought Sting’s voice was annoying, his son Joe will give you a new appreciation for his father’s skill, and you’ll also note that cheesy stage banter is genetic.

Here’s the set list from the July 6th Police show in Chicago:

Message in a Bottle
Synchronicity 2
Walking on the Moon
Voices Inside My Head/When The World Is Running Down
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
Truth Hits Everybody
The Bed’s Too Big Without You
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking In Your Footsteps
Can’t Stand Losing You/Regatta De Blanc (best song of the night)
Roxanne
ENCORE:
King of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
ENCORE 2:
Next To You

* A couple? This disc actually came out 12 years ago. God, I’m old.

** Tankboy notes here that they did use backing tracks. Frankly, the sound wasn’t that great from where I was sitting so I could be wrong about this.

New piece

Uncategorized, ,

My first feature story in TOC was published this week (I’ve written a couple reviews and sidebars for them in the past). It’s about The Police, and you can find it in the Summer Music Preview issue on newsstands now, or online here (note: it stretches across five pages).

Lots of people have been asking me about the tree frog story. I swear that’s true. I remember when that was announced, so I thought it was something that a lot of people knew. I mentioned in during a features meeting, and no one had any idea. So clearly I’m a huge geek.

Seriously, am I the only one who heard that story?

Reunionize Yourself

Music, ,

Sorry for the lack of posts. Lots of life change, what with the new job and the new place. Won’t happen again. Promise.

In the interim, reunion tours for both The Police* and Van Halen were announced, and it’s not possible to find two bands that are more indicative of the Goofus and Gallant school of thought when it comes to rock reunion tours.

On the one hand, you have The Police, who – with the exception of the occasional one-off gigs here and there – haven’t worked together artistically in the past 20 years. They’ve been offered scads of money before, but never saw the need. But at this stage in their respective individual careers, a reunion tour is a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. With Sting having recorded an album of music on the lute (!!!), it’s a chance for him to prove that old Onion editorial was correct. For Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, it’s to remind those who’ve forgotten that the band’s artistic success was built on the creative tension that existed between the three of them, and that no matter how things looked on the outside, the entity known as The Police required the efforts of all three. This house, often divided against itself, did stand. Take away any part of the whole … and you have an album of music played on the lute.

And speaking of removing part of the whole, there’s Van Halen.

The day after my Senior Prom, I – along with my date and some friends – went to Great America. In conversation with the acknowledged Guitar God of our high school, I derisively referred to the band as “Van Hagar,” a slight for which Guitar God took me to task. “C’mon, it’s not like they were ‘Van Roth’ before.” I had no retort.

I thought of this moment when I heard that VH bassist Michael Anthony had been unceremoniously (and if there’s a more apropos adverb for it, I don’t know what it is) booted from the band. Michael Anthony’s crime seems to be having toured with Hagar recently, which is ironic, since Roth famously did the same on the “Sans Halen” tour a few years back.

I thought of that moment again when it was announced that the brothers Van Halen were reuniting with David Lee Roth, with Eddie’s son Wolfgang on bass.

Talk about being careful what you wish for. Even the most strident Sammy Hagar defenders would admit that a tour with Diamond Dave fronting the band would be worth seeing. Since the Roth years of VH, in particular, depended on the thump-thump-thump and “Oooh baby baby” that Anthony brought to the party, this tour’s going to end up like the end of “The Monkey’s Paw,” where the departed relative you wished back to life turns out to be some weird zombie knocking at the door in the middle of the night.

When I see Van Halen, I want some dude (I’m not picky about who so long as he was not at any point affiliated with Nuno Bettencourt) in brightly-colored pants singing about ladies in some fashion. I want two goofy-looking Dutch cats hammering away on the skins and blowing my damn mind on guitar, respectively. And lastly, I want a dude in a mullet, crooning background vocals, and playing something that resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels with strings.

It’s hard to fault Eddie for wanting to spend more time with his kid, but I was pretty sure the rock cognoscenti agreed that making family members a part of the band was a bad idea ever since Paul wanted Linda to join Wings. Recent public appearances by the man seem to confirm that the dude is back on the sauce. He’s acknowledged that when he was heavily hitting the bottle back in the day, Roth would talk him into things he might not have ordinarily thought were a good idea. It’s also pretty clear from Ed’s foray into the world of adult film soundtracks that he’s got a base need to be making music in some fashion, whether or not such ventures have any artistic merit. The last time all three of these elements combined, the band produced “Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now” off Diver Down. So I can’t see how this is anything but a bad idea.

There are plenty of people who argue that nostalgia is the enemy of rock and roll. When something like this Van Halen reunion tour happens, it’s hard to come up with an effective argument. I’m hoping The Police are able to provide one.

Otherwise, we’re going to end up with another album of music on the lute.

* Check that quote from the guy at Pollstar at the end of the AP story. Is that the most depressing thing you’ve ever read in your life?