Caught by the fuzz

The Police have reformed for a series of reunion gigs. They recently visited the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. My friends Mohan tried to get tickets, he asked if I wanted to get one, but I replied that £100 a ticket was just too expensive.

In a bizarre twist of fate, I ended up going anyway - Mohan's companion for the evening pulled out at the very last moment, and so I was offered the ticket (which had already been paid for).

The support band sounded, well, just like The Police. I actually described them as 90% The Police, and 10% Foo Fighters. Actually not a bad combination! I heard a rumour that the singer/bass player is actually Sting's son, which would explain why he has a similar bass playing style and very similar voice.

Onto the main attraction, the three old fellas came on and started with the brilliant "Message in a bottle". They moved onto "Synchronicity", and then played a handful of songs that I didn't know. The higlight of the set for me was "Every little thing she does is magic", which is far from my favourite Police song, but was performed with real gusto.

Apparently, when introducing a record by The Police, Alan Partridge said, "And now a record by The Police, or as they are now known, Sting". This was the trouble with this gig - Sting dominated it with his ridiculous vocal crooning, stopping at least 40% of songs for a croon break which made said songs twice as long and made the set drag on. Sting and Stewart Copeland looked bored for the most part, Andy Summers did seem to be having fun, but also played his part by playing too many overly long and widdly guitar solos.

It seems ridiculous that songs as dark as "Roxanne" and the fabulous "Can't stand losing you" can be reduced to parody by the singer stopping the song to sing "Roxanne-ohh" or "Ee-ohh" for a number of pointless minutes. On top of that, the band committed what I regard as something of a cardinal sin - they used backing tracks for the additional vocals.

I hope other people enjoyed the gig more than I did - they paid enough for the tickets! If I had paid £100 for that, I would have felt cheated - the impression that band gave is that they were in for the £££.

As a footnote - my favourite story about the band dates back to the mid-1980s, when the feuding between band members was at its height. Apparently Stewart Copeland took to writing a single word on each of his four drum skins. From left to right, it read "STING" "IS" "A" ... and I am sure you can make decent guess at the fourth word (clue: it is widely regarded as being the worst word in the English language).