THE POLICE TOUR AND WHY IT SUCKS: STING(K)

My brother was really sad that he couldn't go and see this, tickets begin at $200.00 USD--that's the shitty seats. When Stewart Copeland says the tour and their playing suck, you just know it's true. The reason, however, is simple: Sting/Stink. He's lost it so long-ago that he doesn't remember he had it. If the rhythm-section isn't in-synch with each other, forget it. It's sad, but you would think that they had adequate time to rehearse and understand where the problems were. But how do you solve the problem of someone like Sting, who literally has one of the biggest egos in music? Yet, the articles don't appear to express anger between the band members--it's just that the shows have sucked, and Copeland has described them so far as "absolutely lame."

Sting's ego is so big, he alienated his solo-career audience with lame-assed pseduo-jazz pop. It's awful, and it's uninspiring. Perhaps the Police should just be remembered for how good they were back in the 1980s. This tour was supposed to right-the-wrong of their terrible Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance, but all it seems to have done is cement the fact that they don't have it anymore. It's sad, but there it is. I still love all the albums--especially "Ghost in the Machine," and "Zenyatta Mondatta," but that was 25-27 years-ago. You know, when rock was really and truly, finally dead as a mass cultural movement.

What really must be sinking the whole thing is that Sting is probably insisting on a specific swing and tempo to the arrangements, and that his sense of music and Summers' and Copeland's have utterly diverged. They just cannot communicate musically anymore, and one could assume that they don't get-along...not that they ever did. Maybe even that doesn't matter anymore, and they just don't have the concentration. This, then, is the result of empty egoism and the cult of personality, and the notion of "forever young," spawned by the splattering of James Dean on September 30th, 1955. Rock exploded after that. The albums of the Police stand as terminal-artifacts of the late-1970s, early-1980s. They speak-for-themselves, and they are exceptional. Maybe that's good enough. It should be. It's OK if things don't last forever, as they were never supposed to. It's better to remember and appreciate what once was.

From Vancouver: http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=b1904405-7fe7-4445-9bba-01e2c9b6623c&k=35189