Every Little $100 I Don't Spend On Concert Tickets is Magic?

I thought I was past the days where the results of a sporting event affected my mood for more than an hour after a game had ended, but I'm in a foul mood this morning about both the Pistons' loss to the Cavaliers and the Tigers' loss to the Indians. (I didn't have the energy or inclination to type out 900 words on that one.) This morning, Detroit is Cleveland's sports servant, and that really pisses me off.

So before I take out my anger on some defenseless, inanimate object, I'll try to console myself with the relief that I didn't spend $100 on tickets to see The Police in concert. I was really excited for the band's reunion, but according to Stewart Copeland, the tour's not off to a very good start. Or is there a different way to interpret a forum posting titled, "OUR FIRST DISASTER GIG"?


They're just two shows in, folks. Any band is sure to have some coughs and sputters to work out as it gets going, but usually gets tighter as a tour progresses. Surely, The Police will be no exception. But for now, it's just fun to read Copeland's blistering self-criticism. Candor: You gotta love it.

[...] we are professionals so we soon get sorted, but the groove is eluding us. We crash through MESSAGE and then go strait into SYNCHRONICITY. But there is just something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never Mind. Next song is going to be great…

But it isn’t. We get to the end of the first verse and I snap into the chorus groove – and Sting doesn’t. He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off kilter that Sting counts us in to begin the song again. This is ubeLIEVably lame. We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.

Dude should've punched Sting, just for the hell of it. At least the fans are much more forgiving. (Naturally.)

I will now return to my regularly scheduled seething.

"Ladies and gentleman, we're The Police, and we are back!"

Since I expressed my excitement over The Police's reunion at the Grammy Awards (and used the occasion to indulge some nostalgia), I suppose it's only natural to follow up on that with a reaction to last night's performance.

On some level, of course, I was going to be happy with it, no matter what. A band I loved as a kid reunited on stage, and I loved seeing them playing together again.

But Adult Ian tries to brush aside whimsy and look at things more objectively. First and foremost, they weren't going to sound at their best playing "Roxanne" because it's not their best song. I'm not even sure it's the most familiar one, but "Every Breath You Take" wasn't going to rock the house.

I also winced when they started to go soft and jazzy after the first verse and was afraid we'd get a quick medley of The Police's greatest hits. (I hate medleys; they just reek of Vegas lounge act to me.) Once it became clear that they were still doing "Roxanne," however, any thought I may have had of overdrafting my checking account for triple-digit ticket prices were probably killed for good. Because if that's what they're going to do, I'm not interested. (Even if I understand that they need to keep a song they've played thousands of times interesting to themselves.) I'll never get to see The Police in 1983, and should probably just accept that.

I would've liked them to rock out a little bit more. If they had come out and just pounded through something like "So Lonely," I would've been thrilled. And I'd probably be pestering Ticketmaster for tour dates right now.

I also wish Sting had seemed less pompous on stage, of course. I'm not talking about the tai-chi looking vest that took the ladies to the gun show. No, I mean that "You think I'm #@$%ing great, so here I am - with the bloody bass guitar I never thought I'd pick up ever again" aura he gives off.

But after they left the stage, I found myself wanting much more, even yearning for the medley I'd dreaded just minutes earlier. It wasn't enough. So if that means Sting has stuck his dreaded tantric fangs into me, then so be it. I'm okay with that. All things considered, I thought they sounded pretty damn good. And that's really all I wanted.

Message out of the bottle: The Police are back!

With rumors that The Police might reunite gaining heat and smoke over the past few weeks, I'd been meaning to write something about the possibility. I love to tell the kids that Sting wasn't always a lute-playing douchebag who exaggerated stories about his tantric sex marathons, while essentially becoming a younger, quirkier (and, well, less gay) version of Elton John.

No, Sting used to be cool. And he was the frontman for maybe the coolest band on the planet.

At least that's what The Police was to Young Ian. I don't think "Spirits In the Material World" was the first single I ever bought on a 45 (I am sooo giving away my age here), but it was definitely among the first.

And it was like nothing I'd ever heard. The pounding synthesizer beat, with Sting's bass notes dancing around it, and Andy Summers' guitar slashing underneath. Even the record's sleeve stood out, with what looked like red digital Japanese characters against a pitch black background.

Then there was that video. Who the hell were these guys jamming around with their instruments in a barely lit studio? Sting slapped the neck of his bass guitar like he was taunting anyone who dared to watch. Summers hopped around in a torn-up t-shirt that would've gotten me yanked back into the house by my mother. And Stewart Copeland. Damn, was he a bad-ass. Hiding behind sunglasses, lower lip jutting out with determination, he whipped at his drums like he was trying to hurt somebody. When I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to be a drummer. I wanted to be Stewart Copeland.

Their sound eventually smoothed out as Sting started on the path toward the musical wet rag he is today. Less of the reggae-type guitars. Less energy. Less defiance. More arrangements. More craft. More ego. It's hard to argue with the results when you consider how successful "Every Breath You Take" was. But it's also not difficult to see how The Police eventually broke up after that. The band just wasn't the same. And Sting was ready to move on musically, to songs with which he could take all the credit.

I've been reading Andy Summers' recently published memoir, titled One Train Later, about his musical career through the last days of The Police. And as you might imagine, he goes into some detail about the band's deterioration, largely due to Sting's ego-tripping and the resentment it caused. You've probably heard the stories about Copeland taping insults and rants directed at Sting to the skins of his drums. I love that! No wonder the guy pounded those drums so viciously.

As a kid, I didn't understand that, of course. I just knew that one of my favorite bands was breaking up. How do you do that when it seems like you rule the world? I blamed Sting, and it's probably a large reason why I never warmed up to his solo stuff (though I like The Dream of the Blue Turtles), and continue to hold something of a grudge, as silly as that might be.

But to this day, there's not another band that sounds like The Police. Within one or two notes, you know exactly who's playing when you hear one of their songs. The sound they created is still that distinct.

And now it's official: they're getting the band back together again. 30 years after they released "Roxanne." More than 20 years after they shut the whole thing down. After rehearsing in Vancouver, The Police will reunite at the Grammy Awards in less than two weeks. (They performed a one-shot gig at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in 2003.) Appropriately, they're opening the show. So on February 11, I'm pretty sure I'll be watching the Grammys for the first time in about 15 years.

Will a reunion tour follow? My guess would be no, because of all the hard feelings that have been expressed. Of course, huge money has a way of healing such grudges. Maybe this has been in the works for a long time. Is it possible that Summers' autobiography was an insidious plan to whet the dormant appetites of Police fans around the world?

No, that's being cynical. I can't let that stand in the way of possibly blowing $100 on a concert ticket. 26 years later, long after I gave up those rock drummer dreams, I might finally get to see these guys live in concert.