Toronto – I went to the Police concert. I bought the tickets ages ago despite the scrutiny of my friends who wondered if I was secretly stuck in the 70s or 80s – which I might be just a little. This was the third time they were playing in a span of a year as part of the reunion tour. The first two concerts had been sold out so I ended up at their 3rd of 4 shows. What’s interesting is that the first two shows were sold out when they performed earlier this year at the ACC but the shows in November were definately not sold out. The hefty price of $70 got me into the nosebleeds and had me considering selling the tickets and that’s how I found out that the tickets weren’t even sold out and that people were selling their tickets below cost. Anyway, I bribed my friend to come with me so I wasn’t going to the concert by myself.
I’m not a fan of the big venues as it compromises the intimacy with the band and the sound that I associate with a live concert but I gotta give it to Sting, he sounded amazing. The rest of the band looked a little tired and should definately consider lessons from their fearless leader and practise some Yoga. They played viagra no prescription a solid 2 hours and that’s probably reason enough for me not to be scrutinizing those old men. I was really impressed and surprised – I used to think that Sting is a bit too showy and having read interviews with him and seen some on TV as well, I thought he was cocky but he proved me wrong. He could have just stood there the entire night and he would still have given off an aura of cool not to be mistaken with my initial impression of cocky or arrogant. He really has an amazing voice that sounds fantastic live and I hate to admit this but he’s hot for an old man.
In case you are wondering, there was an opening act – Sting’s son performed with his band, Fiction Plane, which my friend and I had an argument about. I thought it was lame that his son was riding the coattail of his daddy’s success and she thought that if she had a kid and she was as successful as Sting and that kid was aspiring to be like her, she’d help the kid out. Lame! In case you wonder, Joe Sumner (Sting’s son), fronts the band and sounds and looks a heck of a lot like Sting. I foreshadow another Police Reunion in 40 years but this time with Joe Sumner performing his fathers music.
Back to the Police performance – They played all their classics and I really feel that “King of Pain”, which was the first encore song was the best performance of the night. It must be amazing to perform infront of a crowd this large and have the audience sing the entire lyrics to you with you just stringing your guitar. I was a little disappointed with Roxette. From what I know the reviews of their show earlier in the year had people complaining about the fact that they were trying to go too instrumental with their classics and I’m pretty sure that 60% of that audience was anticipating the performance of Roxette, which unfortunately was the one classic that they performed differently than the orginal. Sometimes reinventing yourself isn’t all that smart …
The night prevailed with what was the weirdest audience – the two of us in our late 20s + random cougars + teenagers that I suspect also attend the Britney Spears concerts and some oldish (50+) type people. We witnessed an old man getting kicked out for smoking up (not the type of guy you thought would smoke up or get kicked out for it) and another dancing without rhythm and playing air guitar (for sure he sings in the shower).
When we left the concert I had a random thought – what if Sting, Bono, Richard Branson and Keith Richards hung out and had a round of drinks and for the sake of allowing someone young to hang – Prince William – what would they talk about? I think Richard Branson probably wouldn’t stop talking about himself, Bono would try to pitch his charity involvement (which after some research I realized Sting and Bono did the Conspiracy of Hope tour for Amnesty International), Keith Richards would be strung out and Sting would be telling young Prince William about Kama Sutra – all this over several pints of beer of course. When I shared this random thought with my friend she said … “just for the fun of it, what if Michael Jackson joined in?”. What if ….