Synchronicity: 1983/84

Police collar their audience with arresting performance...

For years now, Sting and the boys have been getting together every summer for a little picnic.

This year's version, its third incarnation, featured the most eclectic line-up yet. Though a few of the bands didn't seem to click with the younger fans (I'm sure I heard someone ask, "But which one's James Brown?"), no one was disappointed by the main event.

At exactly 10.05 p.m. rock's slickest, best-selling trio arrived to deliver a solid 100 minutes of slick, best- selling rock, beginning with the title track of their latest album, 'Synchronicity'.

Actually, with the stage flanked by two massive video projection screens, it was more of a Police Drive-In than it was a Police Picnic.

After sound problems foiled an at- tempt to run MTV videos during the final intermission, the screens sprang to life at 10 o'clock with the projected Police, their every movement blown up to billboard size.

The cameras, expertly manned by Nocturn Video of San Francisco, followed the flow of the concert in the manner of a light show, never missing a beat, tracking and cutting in perfect "synchronicity" (if there is such a word). They even followed the band backstage and out into a trailer for a three-minute tea break in the middle of the show (for which the boys donned top hats).

Sated by the "tea" (Sting later claimed it wasn't), they bounced back onstage and into their current monster hit, 'Every Breath You Take'. They played a lot of new material, as in previous years, overlapping melodies and slipping in the "greatest hits" at strategic intervals. Though their back-up gets more elaborate with each visit, Friday night's performance was undistinguishable from the first two Picnics. Which is really the whole point.

Frontman Sting was his usual chatty self, charming the fans with one-liners and wicked smirks, the latter being most effective when magnified a thousandfold.

"I have a confession to make," he said at one point, feigning schoolboy embarrassment. "Uh... two nights ago, we played another city - Montreal. But we did it for one reason, and one reason only. We just wanted to compare them with you." They were putty in his hands.

(c) The Toronto Star by Rob Salem

 The Police hold sway at Picnic...

The astonishing thing about the headline group, the Police, at last night's Police Picnic '83, is rather than stagnate in its success, The band gets better and better. The performance this year was incomparably superior to the performance of last year, enough to raise the question of whether there is any band in the world more accomplished live and on record than the Police.

Sting, dressed like one of Robin Hood's merry men in russet britches, boots and a white blowsy shirt, is every inch the rock star these days, a rival for Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart in his distinctive physical bearing and talent. With his image cast 30 feet high on video screens on each side of the stage, he effortlessly had the audience of 30,000 hanging on his every smirk and wave of his hand. Within the first three songs he had the audience singing along with the Police's seemingly endless string of hits.

The Police started with the opening cut of its new album, 'Synchronicity', and spent the first half hour alternating between old favourites from previous albums ('Spirits In The Material World', 'Message In A Bottle') and new songs such as 'Wrapped Around Your Finger' and 'Walking In Their Footsteps'. There is no tighter, nor fuller sounding trio in rock, with Andy Summers', slick, jazzy guitar arpeggios, Sting's melodic bass lines and Stewart Copeland's astonishingly subtle and authoritative drumming holding the audience in thrall.

The Police are not always especially loveable on vinyl - there are elements of mannerism that creep in and rob the band of its sense of spontaneity - but in concert, Sting in particular is so clearly in love with performance that the band projects a mesmerising combination of accomplishment and pleasure in novelty.The tumultuous reception that the Police received from its young audience - especially on its current hit, 'Every Breath You Take', harkened back to the days of (oh blasphemy) The Beatles. And it almost overshadowed some of the, other solid acts of the day.

The Police Picnic '83 offered the greatest cross-section that the annual picnic has had so far in its three-year existence. The principal strength was from the three internationally acclaimed black acts on the bill - King Sunny Ade, James Brown and Peter Tosh. Ade, especially, offered an immensely warm and engaging hour of music, characterised by the poly-rhythmic, African ''talking drums,'' call-and-answer response choruses, and sweet and stinging electric guitar work. James Brown offered his famous no-holds-barred show, with anguished melodramatic renditions of such soul classics as 'Please Please Please' and 'Try Me'.

Typically in these sort of all-day concerts, the audience picks one act to be the sacrificial lamb, and for a while it looked as though Brown was the one they had selected as he was pelted with refuse and generally ignored. After a half-hour, though, the extraordinary intensity of his performance won over the crowd, many of whom were undoubtedly not born when he first began doing this routine. (Among the staunch fans, though, were the members of the Police, who were dancing enthusiastically to Brown's music.)

Peter Tosh also offered an immensely professional set, with the crown prince of reggae dancing in a long robe, his Rasta locks flying about his face, in front of a crack band. In no time, he had the audience dancing en masse to the intricate and seductive rhythms. The other two bands on the bill, Toronto's Blue Peter and The Fixx, an English new-wave dance band in the mode of Flock of Seagulls and Simple Minds both offered creditable performances and were well received. However, more than any other year of the Police Picnic, 1983 belonged to the Police.

(c) The Globe by Liam Lacey

30,000 'arrested' by Sting's talents at Police Picnic...

Over the taped strains of 'Voices Inside My Head', a familiar English voice emerges from the darkness of the CNE Stadium stage and playfully enunciates, "Hi Toronto!" The 30,000- strong crowd roars its approval. After seven hours in the steamy heat, the long wait is finally over. The Police are back.

For a while it seemed like not even the Police could save the day's festivities. When Simple Minds backed out of the show, organizers were left without a big-name draw to complement the Police, and although Peter Tosh did eventually get the crowd up and dancing with some fine reggae ('Don't Look Back', the Wailers' 'Get Up, Stand Up' and a reggaefied 'Johnny B Goode' were the best of his colourful set), the rest of the support groups ranged from pleasant (Toronto's Blue Peter; King Sunny Ade) to inappropriate (James Brown) to abysmal (The Fixx).

But once the Police jumped onstage and bounded into 'Synchronicity I', it was easy to forget all that had gone before, as attested by the mass of swaying, dancing bodies.

If there's an inclination to see this Police Picnic business (this was the third in three years) as just a little predictable, it was obvious the band was doing its best to make things different. Sure, they trotted out the hits that fans expected, from 'Don't Stand So Close To Me', to 'Message In A Bottle', to 'Every Breath You Take', but in the excellent new material they played from 'Synchronicity', there's a distinct sense of change, of moving forward.

Both guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland everybody's favourite goofy older brother - are getting away from the less-is-more school of thought and playing a few more rock'n'roll licks. As musicians, they're more adept, more versatile than ever before.

But if the Police are changing musically, one of the constants of a Police concert is Sting's confident but light-hearted stage presence. A chronic over-thinker, Sting obviously finds as much of a release in playing as the fans do in singing and dancing. He makes the most of the absolute power he has for two hours, teasing the fans, prancing about, hamming it up, becoming one of the crowd. He has enough charisma to ask "How are you? It's been a whole year!" and make it sound like something more sincere than the stock rock cliché it is.

The standard show biz phrase about having an audience eat out of your hand was tailor-made for Sting. One only had to hear the nonchalant way he said "You know what to do," when it came time for the audience to a sing a chorus to realize the hold he had on the crowd, and he used it to pick them up and put them down again at will.

One of the reasons the show went over so well was because the trio made use of a pair giant video screens on either side of the stage. For the Police, video is an obvious move. Sting is as videogenic as he is photographable, so besides allowing everyone to see Sting exorcise his personal demons in songs like 'King of Pain', the screens allowed the fans to see him do a little hotdogging too, and that contributed a lot to audience rapport.

One of the cleverest uses the video equipment was put to was to follow the band on what Sting called a "tea break". With the blonde bassist beckoning us to come along, the cameras followed the band backstage, where they donned silly hats, horsed around and did indeed partake of a spot o' tea. For lip reading fans, the comic highlight of the night was Sting's reply to Andy Summers' question of "How is your tea?"

Far from being a compromise, the way the Police used the videos screens allowed them to have it both ways: it gave their fans the intimacy of a small hall without sacrificing the power and the spirit of togetherness that only comes from a huge crowd. It was an innovative idea that worked well enough to suggest that Police Picnic number four wouldn't be an unpleasant experience.

(c) Waterloo Region Record by Jason Mitchell