We caught The Police 2007 Reunion Tour last night at Staples Center.
It was a lot of fun, but the band was rusty and the crowd was, too. Almost immediately, Sting asked for patience and tolerance by reminding the audience that they hadn't played together for 24 years. The rust showed. Nonetheless, we enjoyed it, and frankly they could have really blown it and the fans wouldn't have cared. The Police left us in 1983, at a pinnacle of commercial and artistic success, and their fans have missed them ever since.
Aside from the surrealism of seeing the Police on stage together again, and all looking like aging ex-Beatles or something, the thing that struck me the most tonight was how old and quiet we -- the crowd --were. We were mostly between about 35 and 45. We sat most of the time. We had fat, bald and just plain old looking folks all over. It didn't seem concert-like. We were calm and quiet. For myself, I didn't even have so much as a single beer, and I wasn't alone. As a group, we clearly had no recollection of how to party at a concert. For the first time in my life, I understood why my parents and all their old friends blew their money on Righteous Brothers and Neil Diamond tickets two decades ago when they were clearly too old to qualify as bona fide concertgoers, and too old to really party. They just wanted to hear some of their favorite old music again, performed by the original favorite old artists.
Few people in our section (a 200 level ticket across the floor from the stage) danced, and the few who did, did so very poorly. We had one freak to our left, flopping around like Janis Joplin on acid, and another one to our right, who moved like Barney Rubble, but constantly had his left hand down near his crotch. There were times when we couldn't actually tell whether he was dancing, jerking off, or scratching crabs off his nuts. For most of the show, that was it. It was enough, though. There should be a rule at concerts that says
If you can't dance, you can't dance.
Sadly, there is no such rule. Yet. There is, however, a rule that says you can't smoke weed at a concert anymore. Right next to us was a really fat dude who sparked up a joint full of skunk bud that was bigger than a regular cigarette. He and his buddy each took one or two huge hits that stunk up the whole section right away, prompting Staples Center security to come down and tell him to take it to the smoking patio or put it out.
The set list was:
- Message in a Bottle
- Synchronicity II
- Walking on the Moon
- Voices Inside My Head
- When the World Is Running Down...
- Don't Stand So Close to Me
- Driven to Tears
- The Bed's Too Big Without You
- Truth Hits Everybody
- Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
- Wrapped Around Your Finger
- De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
- Invisible Sun
- Walking in Your Footsteps
- Can't Stand Losing You
- Roxanne [end of first set]
- King of Pain
- So Lonely [end of first encore]
- Every Breath You Take [end of second encore]
- Next to You [end of show]
I put the ones I enjoyed the most in bold, for whatever that's worth. In general, I thought they got stronger as the show progressed, both in the selection of songs and in the playing itself. They skipped Murder by Numbers and Spirits in the Material World, which, from what I had read, they performed at some earlier shows. Tonight, they play the Honda Center in Anaheim (fka the Pond), and on Saturday, they play Dodger Stadium. If you want to see some previews, check out the Police2007Tour blog and then go get some tickets.
The OC Register Review of the show can be read here.
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