At some point in your life, Dear Reader, you must have said to yourself — and you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog if you didn’t — you must have said to yourself, This is my favorite band. That band was The Police, back in 1983, at the tender age of [don’t even ask], when I saved up my allowance to buy my very first album on cassette, Synchronicity, which was followed by a voracious rifling through their back catalog, beginning with Outlandos d’Amour. In hindsight I can see, even back then, the obsessive quality of my consumption: it wasn’t enough to get the five studio albums; I had to go buy a bootleg Synchronicity T-shirt, and even that volume of The Secret Policemen’s Ball, on vinyl for crying out loud, where a solitary Sting sings “Roxanne” without his fellow band members. (But my incipient critical faculties didn’t cling to The Police for too long, fickle as they were; they were supplanted, in too-quick succession, by Talking Heads, U2, and The Cure (1984, 1985, and 1986 respectively) as my Favorite Band Of All Time, but no matter: The Police were the very first.
Just a few hours ago, with Son and Eloise, I finally fulfilled something of a lifelong and impossible dream of mine: to see The Police in concert. It feels odd to report that the highlight of the concert was Sting making a surprise appearance to sing a duet with Elvis Costello on “Alison”, but the element of surprise gets me every time. (Costello also played “Pump It Up”, “Radio Radio”, “Watching the Detectives”, “Everyday I Write The Book”, “Clubland”, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”, and I swear they were playing “Accidents Will Happen” during the soundcheck, but he didn’t play it.) But again, no matter: The Police gave a fantastic concert from start to finish, with my brain completely fried from what was technically 25 full years of waiting.
So, the setlist, as far as I can remember, below:
- “A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.”
- “I hope my legs don’t break.”
- “I’m a walking disaster.”
- “Echoes things that you said.” / “Same tape I’ve had for years.”
- “Just like that old man in that book by Nabokov.”
- “Shame wells in my throat.”
- “I shake like an incurable.”
- “I resolved to call her up a thousand times a day.”
- “I will turn your face to alabaster.”
- “And no one’s jamming their transmission.”
- “Looking like something that the cat brought in.”
- “And my LP records and they’re all scratched.” / “Rio riay riayo.”
- “I won’t share you with another boy.”
- “There’s a skeleton choking on a crust of bread.”
- “I always play the starring role.”
- “I keep crying baby baby please.”
- “I sold my house I sold my motor too.”