Review: Police at Wrigley
Every little thing they do is not magic
By Greg Kot
The members of the Police are now multimillionaires, men of leisure who
played leisurely versions of many of their hits Thursday in the first of
two sold-out concerts at Wrigley Field.
"Sold out" is a relative term, as scalpers were dumping tickets at well
below face value outside the ballpark. Inside, the Police occasionally
played as if they were mentally counting up the $100 million they will
pile up on their current tour, the band's first in 23 years, rather than
focusing on the task at hand.
Older and grayer, but still looking fit, the band flashed lots of chops
and not enough of their usual discipline on 20 songs stretched over two
hours. During their five-album, 1977-84 prime, the Police were at their
best when their terse, skeletal songs were delivered exactly that way: No
fat, no filler, no fooling around.
The show took a trip down Nostalgia Boulevard with no new songs, and
reprised all the top-40 hits with the exception of "Spirits in the
Material World." Drummer Stewart Copeland pounced on his
aircraft-carrier-sized drum kit with cobra-like ruthlessness. Andy Summers
affirmed his status as one of the more unique guitarists in rock history,
his vocabulary of chiming, reverberating tones and exotic colors almost
entirely free of blues cliches. And though he didn't reach all the high
notes, Sting remained a supple vocalist and pliant bass player. The trio
played without noticeable backing tracks or any backing musicians on a
no-frills stage. The message in this particular bottle was that the Police
didn't need any props because their songs are that good.
I had thought Sting learned his lesson when he broke up from the POLICE
originally and went on to have a very non-descript solo career. He trys to
reinvent the wheel and add obscure additions and speeds to the songs just
enough to ruin them. The Wrigely Field crowd was great..I wish sting was
as enthusastic as the crowd was....If Wrigely Fields does not pump life
into you nothing will. This concert was frustrating because they would
play a few songs just as they were off their greatest hits disc, which
would get the crowd reved up to only slow down, butcher, and ruin the
spirit of the majority of the songs they played....Stings voice is
great...if they could only get the guitar out of his hand and allow the
band to play the music as it should be and have him sing to it would be
great...I almost went to see sting when he toured on his own because I
heard he played the POLICE hits...when I saw and heard the footage from
one of these concerts..I passed as he slowed the songs up, went on
tangents..could not recongnize the song I loved...This concert was more of
the same except more irritating because they charged you through the roof
for the tickets and would show you glimpses of the old POLICE to only be
pulled down by Sting forcing his revisions...I was paying to see the
POLICE not STING and the police...it seemed Sting had to show who is boss
and force the other 2 poor slobs to follow what he wants,,when what
where..I was hoping Sting could have just been the POLICE for one
night...just as when he broke up from the group he wanted to make a bigger
statement that fell on deaf ears so does Sting in this concert it is about
him and his eago instead of the POLICE and the fans of the Police...Sting
did just enough to ruin the night for me...I am glad I went as I got to
hear 1 or 2 songs played as they were originally intended but did have to
endure the tease and torture of the what could have been with the other
songs posted by Matt
