Thursday, May 05, 2005

Sting Is Driving Me Crazy

According to rollingstone.com, Sting is considering being good again:

On April Fools' Day, Sting walked onstage at San Jose State University's Event Center in California and kicked off his Broken Music Tour by performing the Police classic "Message in a Bottle." In the next eighty minutes, he and his stripped-down backing trio shocked the crowd by dusting off eleven Police songs, including deep cuts like "Demolition Man" and "Invisible Sun," which Sting hasn't performed since he was in the band.

...Regarding his decision to play campuses, he adds, "I thought it was an interesting idea, to play to general-admission houses and a younger demographic. It's been exciting -- it's brought out a side of me that's been buried for a while."

...In addition to the Police songs, the band throws in a cover of the Beatles classic "A Day in the Life." "People think that the Beatles broke up after that song because they couldn't play it live," he says. "So we get a lot of satisfaction showing that they could have, if they'd tried." Is he surprised about the rave reviews on this tour? "No," he says, laughing. "I think they're right."
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As many of you know, I can't quite figure out whether Sting is Advanced. I thought that perhaps he was always boring but happened to be in a band that made him look good. I thought that his departure into smooth jazz showed that he didn't believe in rock'n'roll, which is a prerequisite for my kind of Advancement. But now I'm thinking that maybe he's Advanced after all. Playing "A Day in the Life" to show that it can be played live sounds pretty Advanced to me, and it sounds like he is committing himself to rock again. What we might be seeing is his development into being a Second Stage Advanced Weirdo, where someone who has become Advanced suddenly becomes good (in the traditional sense) again. Most Advanced artists go through this phase. I have to say that if Sting is Advanced, and I'm not totally convinced that he is, he was very Advanced because the music he has been making the last fifteen years or so is painful. But is it painfully Advanced? I guess I'm going to have to listen to it all again to see.

1 comment:

synthincisor said...

I saw his tour in Eugene, OR. He said something along the lines of "We're going to play some stuff I haven't played in 20 years."

It was the perfect Sting concert.