Ghost In The Machine: 1981/82

The Police experiment with Rupp crowd...

Few bands have combined new- wave music with the accessibility of pop as successfully as The Police.

Granted, calling the Police a new- wave band in light of its recent chart- topping albums and singles may be misleading.

When applied to The Police, the term "new wave" encompasses reggae, soul, a touch of jazz, and several other musical styles.

But most important is that no rock band at Rupp Arena in recent memory has attempted experimenting with these styles. That alone made its show before more than 17,000 people last night very special.

The Anglo-American trio of drummer Stewart Copeland, bassist-vocalist-keyboardist Sting - yes, that's his full name and guitarist Andy Summers are all very talented instrumentalists, as their albums prove.

With the addition of a three-piece horn section though, the group is able to toy with its songs, providing constantly shifting tempos and alterations of its studio recordings.

Unlike most popular bands, though, The Police began its concert with three of its most popular songs, 'Message in a Bottle', 'Every Little Thing She Does is Magic' and 'Spirits in the Material World'. The latter two songs are from the band's top-selling 'Ghost in the Machine' album.

Both 'Magic' and 'Spirits' were performed without the keyboards that dominate the studio recordings. Instead, Summers' guitar work and the horns were used to provide the melody.

Performances by Summers and Copeland demonstrated their extraordinary capabilities. Summers used numerous electronic hookups and drew the most he could out of the sparse guitar chords that added to a very full, constructed texture so important in songs like 'Shadows in the Rain' and 'Secret Journey'.

In contrast, Copeland's drums fuelled most of the rhythm shifts, filling spaces within songs intelligently, as in the furious tempos of 'Demolition Man', which Sting referred to as "a tender love song."

As a frontman for the group, Sting is a peculiar performer. While the other two changed tempos and musical styles often within the same song Sting obliged by altering his singing. He made use of an impressive variety of voices: from a high- pitched shrill during 'Roxanne', to a lower, blurry quality in 'Bring on the Night'.

It was as an ensemble, of course, that performers were at their best. Using the horn section freed Sting and Summers to do whatever they pleased onstage, from impromptu dancing during 'One World' and 'Hungry for You' (sung in French) to more key- board music during 'Invisible Sun'.

As may be expected with such a complex array of musical styles, the concert's sound quality suffered at times. The band had performed several songs before the sound was adjusted to accommodate the horn section.

The Police's performance was opened by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, who recorded the hit album and single, 'I Love Rock'n'Roll'.

In contrast to The Police, Ms. Jett is a very routine performer whose 45-minute set was predictable.

In fairness to Ms. Jett, her backup group makes far more sense as performers than does her clumsy record. The Blackhearts (bassist Gary Ryan, drummer Lee Crystal and guitarist Ricky Byrd) maintained a reasonably tight and clean sound.
Ms. Jett, on the other hand, is not a commanding leader. Her voice is thin and never wavered from middle-range.

That doesn't matter, as most of her songs don't require any tremendous vocals, but when the group takes on alien material like Tommy James' 'Crimson and Clover', the Rolling Stones' 'Star Star', and the Isley Brothers' 'Shout', their limitations came across clearly.

The Blackhearts neither redefined these songs within a context of 1980s rock music, nor attempted to capture any subtilties of the different time periods these songs represent.

Aside from the Blackhearts' more obvious music, The Police's challenging stands apart from nearly all the rock acts to appear in Lexington in some time. While some seemed as though they would have preferred something more accessible, the size of the crowd was impressive for a band with ideas as new as those of The Po- lice.

(c) The Lexington Herald by Walter Tunis