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The Police’s First New York Show in Twenty-Four Years: A Trio Playing In Sync

It was obvious from the opening crash and sprint of “Message in a Bottle” — the first number of the Police’s August 1st show at Madison Square Garden — that two ingredients missing from Sting’s solo life for the past two decades have been a drummer that plays too fast and a guitarist with elastic ideas about harmonics and an aversion to conventional chords. There would be no Police reunion this year if Sting had not willed it. The band made him a superstar, and he has never been embarrassed to wield that clout, even as his own records have explored worlds far away, and even a few centuries back, from the lean power-trio dynamics of the Police’s Econoline-van years. But at the Garden, the group’s first New York City show since 1983, Sting was not the main attraction. He was, with drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, one-third of an extraordinary rhythm-and-hit-chorus machine. Copeland and Summers needed Sting to say yes to this tour. But Sting needed them to make his greatest hits — “Roxanne,” “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Synchronicity II,” even that maypole-dance hook in “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” — boom and glow like rock again. Frankly, it was hard to tell how much of the new minutaie I saw Sting drilling into the old arrangements, during the Police’s Vancouver rehearsals three months ago, had survived the first two months of concerts. Two songs from early set lists, “Spirits in the Material World” and “Murder by Numbers,” didn’t even make it to New York. But there was no missing the transformative drama of Copeland’s tom-tom bombs in “Driven to Tears” and Summers’ shivering-Hendrix screams in the Jamaican galactica of “Walking on the Moon.” There isn’t much of a song in “The Bed’s Too Big Without You,” just white-reggae anguish and the unison gunfire of

Published: 2007-08-03
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News

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Flip-Flop Weather

Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP Citizens left the city in droves as August began, apparently fleeing the cloud of uncertainty that seemed to have settled over the city. Governor Spitzer called the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Joe Bruno investigation “unnecessary,” then offered to testify under oath. The families of 9/11 victims were told that this year’s anniversary would not be marked at ground zero, but then it was announced they’d convene at a spot overlooking the site.Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid was either staggering (one set of polls showed Barack Obama’s numbers surging in New Hampshire and South Carolina) or swaggering (another showed Clinton with a two-to-one lead over her rival). Fellow senator (and regular guy) Chuck Schumer took a stand against raising taxes on hedge-fund billionaires. The Jamaica Bay marshlands were reported to be on the verge of extinction, perhaps because of smog emitted by Mayor Bloomberg, who was busted hitching SUV rides to his morning subway commute. The city, pushing breast-feeding, removed baby food from the goody bags given to new moms at city-run hospitals. In other family news, Elmo and Big Bird’s Fisher-Price likenesses were recalled after having been found to contain lead. So were two alleged Albanian extortionists; when they came to the doorstep of a Queens man who said they were threatening him, he shot them. The Mets failed to land reliever Eric Gagne (he went to the Bosox), who might have helped Tom Glavine get his 300th win; in his first shot at it, Glavine left with the lead, but the bullpen blew it. Whoopi Goldberg signed on to chew the fat on The View, while Star Jones finally confessed that stapling was the magic behind her adipose disappearing act. Nicole Richie plopped down on Good Morning America’s Times Square couch to admit that she has a bun in the oven. Metaphorical bantamweight Jimmy Fallon was rumored to be the next Conan, while onetime Tomorro

Published: 2007-08-03
Provider: New York Magazine