Jueves 12 Jul 2007, 11:30

Wed 11 Jul – The Police, Fiction Plane

No one seems to have reviewed Tuesday night's Miami show, so you'll have to rely on my memory for the setlist. The first couple and the last plus all the encores I'm sure of; the ones in the middle are a little fuzzier (as to order):

Message in a bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking on the Moon
When the World is Running Down
Don't Stand so Close to Me
Driven to Tears
Wrapped Around Your Finger and
The Bed's Too Big Without You
Truth Hits Everybody
The only one that used any video effects, namely an animated T. Rex skeleton walking around (mostly the feet) superimposed on the normal video of the musicians:
Walking In Your Footsteps
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Invisible Sun
Can't Stand Losing You
And closing with:
Roxanne
Encore 1:
King of Pain
So Lonely
Encore 2:
Every Breath You Take
Encore 3:
Next To You

The opening act seems to have the distinguishing feature of being fronted by Sting's son, Joe Sumner. They're a former quartet trying to be a power trio ("Just like me Dad"), but to me they just sounded like Coldplay, only noisier. The bass seemed to be set on "stun". The Blonde (eternal gratitude to her family, who surprised me with these tickets on my fortieth birthday!) was able to make out some of the lyrics ("Put on your good shoes, we'll go out drinking" and "I'm in love with two sisters, I don't know wich bed I'll sleep in"), and said I was lucky I hadn't. But they were brief (under forty-five minutes); I really wish we'd had Maroon 5, who'd opened the night before in Miami.

We were seated at about 10:45 (if 12:00 is directly behind the stage), so we had a great view of Stewart Copeland's handiwork. There were only two rows behind us; we were up pretty high. But between my Bushnells and a video screen showing each musician in turn, I think we had a pretty good view. In fact, I could just barely make out the song name on Andy Summers's little computer cheat sheet (reminding him of what effects to use, etc.). That's how I knew what the opener would be about twenty minutes before most people.

I thought it was a good choice. In fact, the whole set was nicely ordered. From the start, Sting looked like he thought the whole thing was a hoot (although he blew the lines on Sync II, repeating "crawled to the surface" where he should have had "shadow on the door of a cottage on the shore" in the final refrain), and Stewart had a manic grin, mouth open, jaw thrusting forward like he was going to use it to play the ride cymbal. But Andy worried me. So much of The Police's sound depends on his odd style, his choice of harmonies, his mix of scales, and the sound effects he coaxes from his guitar, that if he's not on, the show's just dead. He didn't look happy (does he ever?), and when he finally got his first extended solo, it was just boring–but only for the first three or four eights. Then he seemed to wake up and find his groove, and I knew we were in for a great show.

Stewart had a whole platform of supplemental percussion for some of the numbers, like Wrapped Around Your Finger. He was running around like a madman. There was lots of audience participation (singing the high notes Sting no longer can, particularly). He's still got musicality in his singing; he just hasn't held onto his top end (like Geddy Lee has, for example). So he sang a sort of harmony to his original melody, and let the audience fill in.

Roxanne was great (except for the missing high notes, of course), but I'd like to hear them take a chance, like the tango version from Moulin Rouge (which is genius; go rent that movie now, if only for that scene!). They came back for King of Pain and So Lonely, and I could have gone home happy with that; but of course they hadn't done Every Breath You Take yet, so they had to come back again. But you can't end with something that slow, so they came back again for Next To You. It started slow, but they kept picking up the tempo, faster and faster, until Stewart was a blur, for an outstanding finish to a terrific show.

I'd been worried (and tried to keep my expectations low), but I was rewarded with pretty much all the hits plus several of my favorites. Then when we were leaving our chosen parking structure, no one was taking tickets or money, and the gates were up–free parking! Seconds later, this Chevy Suburb or Ford Excrescence was headed straight for our little Saturn, wrong way on a one-way street. I think they figured it out quickly, though, as they moved carefully around us until they could turn that rig around. That was the end of the night's excitement, luckily.