Ever since Sting became a soft-jazz loser I new he would screw up any Police reunion.

Good show. But I didn't like how they changed a couple of the songs early in the set either. The rest of the show was quite good, I thought. Fiction Plane was very bland.

Poor Sting's son. His dad is a world-famous musician, and he has to go and try and start a similar band. And he plays bass and sings (a lot like his dad at times too.) Too bad his band not only rips-off the Police, but U2, the Fixx and a host of other 80s bands. But if you like that sort of thing, they're at DC9 next month.

The concert was overall pretty good, though the sound mix at Verizon was (suprise!) muddy. The drums and guitar were fairly clear, but all I could hear of Sting's bass was some muddy thudding, a shame considering how terrific a bassist he is.

The performance was pretty uneven, but there wasn't much (any?) of Sting's soft-jazz persona on display. On some songs - particularly Voices Inside My Head/When The World is Running Down, and Can't Stand Losing You, they were downright ferocious - especially for a trio of 50-yr-olds. In fact, their earlier material was the strongest all night, esp. considering it was mostly written and recorded as a power trio. Where I felt they were weak was the Ghost in the Machine/Synchronicity stuff, which really missed some of the backing vocals and other instrumentation. King of Pain was surprisingly pretty good, but Every Little Thing She Does, without a piano, is pretty weak. And I was a little disappointed to find how (kind of) conventional a guitar player Andy Summers has become, considering how adventurous he was in the Police years. Stewart Copeland was and is a beast, though.

Man, when a band goes around charging $100 and up for tickets to their shows you'd think they could do better than an undistinguished and little known band headed up by one of their kids as an opener!

I was a huge Police fan back in the '80s, and regret missing my chance to see them live back then. So far I haven't regretted my decision to skip this reunion tour, however.

Saw them in the eighties and was underwhelmed by the show--they replicated each recorded song precisely and didn't inject a lot of emotion into the show. Of course it was shortly before they broke up, so maybe they just hated each other's guts by then, but I'm not sure it's worth pining for the Police of yore.

We had the $100 tickets, which afforded us a great view, stage right. Well worth the money all in all. Frankly the only way to hear the show was wearing earplugs. From where we sat, the mix wasn't at all bad as long as you had something to block the overkill amplification (granted, we were sitting in the line of fire of an enormous amp stack.)

All in all, it wasn't a bad show considering that Summers looked like he wanted desperately to get it the hell over with and Copeland just looked like he was trying to breathe and not fall over. The only one who managed to look like he was having a good time was Sting-- the other two just looked labored.

The music itself was basically standard rehash of the group's hits, a little slower but pretty well executed. I really liked "Wrapped Around Your Finger" last night- yes, it was "Sting-ified" but it really worked. And I have to agree that on some of the tunes they were really fierce for guys that a.) still don't seem to like each other in a lot of ways and b.) are working with a half-century under their belts.