Ghost In The Machine: 1981/82

Crowd Finds Police's Mellow Sound Arresting...

The combination of hard and mellow rock rarely mixes well. Usually, it's the mellow rockers who come out on the short end of that kind of a program. That, however, was not the case Thursday night at the Checkerdome, where the rock trio Police shared the bill with Joan Jett, now rocking hard with the No. 1 song in the country, 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll'.

Both acts did a good job, but there was little question that the packed house was a partisan Police crowd.

The trio features Sting on bass and vocals, Andy Summers on guitar and Stewart Copeland on drums. It was backed by a three-piece horn section. So despite the trio's basic limited instrumentation, the band had an incredibly full sound.

Sting doesn't take the normal roll of a bassist, which is a sideman who is heard and not seen, or at the very least, not noticed. He is a mover who always seems to be doing three things at once: singing, playing one of those unusual basses of his and dancing. He has many of the same fluid moves as K.C. of K.C. and the Sunshine Band.

The band opened with 'Message in a Bottle' from its platinum album of 1980, 'Reggatta de Blanc'. That song, with its Caribbean beat, was a particularly good introduction, setting the mood of the set.

They moved from that to 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' and 'Spirits in a Material World', both from their current Top 10 album, 'Ghost in the Machine'. It also has received a platinum award.

Even when the music of Police got hard, it was done with a degree of class. A listener never got the feeling that they were playing technical material to overcome the lack of good songs.

The group also has a number of particularly catchy numbers as in 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da', 'Bring on the Night' and 'Demolition Man'. But it was the pretty things such as 'Shadows in the Rain' and 'Secret Journey' that received most of the response.

The crowd, however, really got into the program when Sting sang the group's first hit, 'Roxanne'. The crowd went vocally wild when Police came back for its encores and did 'Don't Stand So Close to Me'.

Joan Jett, who has taken on kind of a tough image, opened with 'Bad Reputation', the title track from last year's album that Jett hustled herself when no record company would offer her the deal she demanded. She had such success with the album that Boardwalk signed her. The company, of course, got a major winner with 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll', which is both a hit single and a hit album.

Jett moved across the stage playing guitar and singing with the same kind of direct determination that won her that record contract. She sang 'Run Away', 'Victim of Circumstances', 'Bully Bully', but it wasn't until she sang her current hit that the crowd began to warm up to her.

Then she did 'Crimson and Clover' and a number of other songs. Just before leaving the stage, she performed a stylized version of 'Twist and Shout', and the crowd got turned on. But it was too late, and she may not have known that she finally got the people shouting for her because she didn't return for an encore.

(c) St Louis Post-Dispatch by Dick Richmond