Blue Turtles: 1985/86

Sting Gets Hit No.1 At Riverbend Show; No Police Necessary...

It was a nice night for hitting. The air was crisp. The sky was clear. Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's record at Riverfront Stadium. Meanwhile, upstream at Riverbend Wednesday night, Sting, aka Gordon Sumner, the guiding light of the Police, had a good night at the plate, too.

Sting's show, before an audience of 7,712, marked a beginning and an end. It was his first area appearance minus the Police. It was the last concert of Riverbend's second season. Either way you look at it, it was a fine way to say hello or goodbye.

Before Sting could say either, however, he had to get a frog out of his throat. He thought it was out when he cleared his throat after saying hello to the crowd. Then he started to sing his first song, 'Shadows in the Rain', and his voice cracked. It was just like he was 13 all over again.

After some more croaks, Sting had everything under control. His voice soared over the heavily jazz-flavoured tones of his sextet, four men and two women.

Although he devoted much of his show to selections from his recent "Sting-meets-jazz" solo album 'The Dream of the Blue Turtles', Sting also did several songs from his work with the Police.

On the material from his past or his present, Sting was superbly accompanied by the jazzmen in his group: drummer Omar Hakim, bassist Darryl Jones, keyboardist Kenny Kirkland and reedman Branford Marsalis. Of the four, Marsalis, the underrated brother of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, merits special notice. His work on soprano and tenor saxophones emphasized the haunting tones of Sting's spooky melodies.

Sting's voice, as well as his compositions, go well with jazz. He sings like an instrumentalist. His voice can cry with a bepop trumpeter's lonely blues, as it did on 'Moon Over Bourbon Street', or it can scream like a tenor sax in overdrive as he did on "Love Is the Seventh Wave."

As for his melodies, Sting's tunes had a built-in freedom factor. They skipped from phrase to phrase like an ad lib solo. This enabled them to paint musical pictures with colours seldom heard in the art world of rock and roll.

(c) The Cincinnati Enquirer by Cliff Radel

Sting breaks away from fan typecasting...

Sting played sportscaster for his 7712 fans at Riverbend Wednesday night, announcing that Pete Rose had gotten his hit. He even dedicated his first encore, 'Roxanne', a duet with Branford Marsalis on soprano sax, to Rose.

Baseball announcer was just one of the many roles the former Police bassist has been adopting. In addition to his film appearances, he left his pop star role to become a jazz-rock guitarist, fronting a crack six-member band that includes four of jazz' hottest young lions.

But despite the presence of Marsalis, drummer Omar Hakim, bassist Darryl "the Munch" Jones and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland, Sting's teeny- bopper crowd kept him typecast as a pop star.

It didn't matter to the crowd that the new band played the Police's 'Shadows in the Rain' with the streamlined power of a locomotive.

His sidemen played brilliant solos and his two female backup singers provided sweet harmony, but the crowd only had eyes for Sting, cheering every breath he'd take, every move he'd make.

He asked them to quiet down for his moody song about vampirism, 'Moon Over Bourbon Street', jokingly counting off the rules, "No screaming, no clapping, no talking, no fun."

Sting is a far better actor in his songs than he is on the wide screen, but while he subtly became the vampire, the crowd paid little attention, because the song was a slow one.

Despite the popularity of so-called fusion, jazz and rock rarely mix well. To its credit, the band never played like jazzmen slumming in rock'n'roll. Rather than just show their chops, they underplayed, keeping the airy minimalism of the Police, but adding more complex harmonies and rhythms.

It was a very special evening of music.

(c) The Cincinnati Post by Larry Nager