So, how has the much hyped The Police reunion tour been going? Well, let's ask the band's drummer, Stewart Copeland, who wrote about it on his website last week, shortly after the reformed band's second show in Vancouver. "This is unbelievably lame," Copeland said of Wednesday's show, "we are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea".
Describing the concert, he reported that he tripped as he walked onto the stage and then banged his gong at the wrong time so that "the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib". Then, he says, he missed bandmate Andy Summers' opening riff to 'Message In A Bottle', and Sting misheard his drum intro, so that "we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho".
They recovered but, Copeland says, Sting then got his footwork wrong as he jumped into the air at the end of 'Synchronicity II' so that "The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. And so it goes, for song after song".
However, for those of you with tickets to upcoming reunion shows, the good news is Copeland seems to be putting the cock ups down to "just a bad show" rather than fundamental flaws in the reunited band's show, and he adds that the mistakes haven't led to any tensions between bandmates, as they might have done in the past. He says: "It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're the Police so we are a little ahead of schedule", while adding that after the show the three bandmates fell into hysterics, concluding: "Screw it, it's only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it's time to get out of Vancouver".