July 15, 2008: Here Come the Police!

Mountain View, CA
Shoreline Amphitheater

Spending the morning recovering from last night's Police gig at Shoreline. What a fun night!

When this final leg of the tour was announced, I shot an email off to my Police-obsessed cousin in LA to see if she wanted to come up here or me to head down there to catch the show as we'd chatted about catching them together should they come back to California. We decided to do the Bay Area gig, and I picked up a pair of tickets through the Fan Club. Wound up with pretty good seats -- about 15 rows back on the far aisle (stage left). When we got to our seats my cousin was totally thrilled. I done good!

So my cousin arrived yesterday afternoon and we hung out and visited until it was time to head down to Shoreline for the show. We timed everything perfectly, arriving in our seats a few minutes before Elvis Costello took the stage. He actually came out a few minutes before the 7:30 start time and played for about an hour alternating between familiar hits that I knew and other tunes I wasn't familiar with. When he started up, we were nearly blasted out of our seats. Shoreline did something to their sound system about two years ago and now the low end of the sound is just physically assaulting. You can feel the bass and drums in your spine. I'd hoped they'd fixed it since I was last there, alas they hadn't so it was a bit of challenge to sit through. He put on a pretty good show and I was impressed with his guitar playing, though there were a few points when the sound system just made it hard to listen to. When he got to "Allison" there was a sudden rumbling in the crowd and I looked up and out walks Sting to sing along. Took a moment to recognize him as he'd grown a beard since I'd last seen them. Uh... not a good choice!

We ducked out after that for a break between sets and to meet up with a good friend of my cousin's. We stood around chatting for a bit thinking we had a while before the Police took the stage, so we were caught by surprise when at 8:45 we could hear the opening of "Message in a Bottle," and it was a mad dash back to our seats to make sure we didn't miss anything else.

After seeing the Police reunite last summer and catching two of their earliest gigs, I was really curious to see how the show had changed in the intervening 13 months. Add in that the two shows I saw last year were extremes in size (about 4,000 people at the fan club show and about 60,000 people at the Oakland Coliseum) having a more "normal" size of 20,000 people was something I was looking forward to. The crowd vibe was average, and at least everyone was on their feet throughout the show. The guys, however, wow... could really see the difference a year's worth of touring had made. While both the shows I'd seen at the start of the tour were excellent, there was still a little bit of that "well, it's been 25 years since we last played together so let's see what we're doing" vibe. There was a lot more conscious interaction. This gig... it just flowed from one thing to the next.

As with the previous two shows, I was completely blown away by the sheer musicianship and that such an incredible sound can come from just three guys. Amazing. The set list was slightly different from the ones I saw last year, but I think only "Demolition Man" was added. There were a few missing, but I'd have to look at the set lists from last year to remember what the differences really were. Trying to pick a highlight of the evening is tough because, honestly, there wasn't a bad song among them. It was a real treat to get to see this band again and worth every penny of the ticket price I paid (and ouch what a ticket price!)

The show ended much too quickly -- about 10:15 or so -- and it was time to head back out, tired and stone deaf. Totally worth it! I brought my camera in hoping that 15 rows back would allow for some decent pictures. Eh, they've turned out so-so (and no where NEAR as good as the ones I took at the Fan Club show last year.)