Synchronicity: 1983/84

Police arrest attention of 47,500...

The Police were the arresting officers and the audience was their willing captives in concert Friday night in the Orange Bowl.

Like an evangelistic preacher, lead singer-bass guitarist Sting stirred the audience into a communal spirit seldom matched at rock concerts since the days of Woodstock. It seemed everyone was singing along, or echoing the Police with its trademark chant, ''yo-oh.''

There's something magical about this trio, a sense of excitement that threads through its music, and an infectious energy that's released through the group's boyish antics on stage. Many of the band's songs are based on a basic jungle beat that stimulated most of the 47,500 fans.

The group has so many hits that it couldn't sing them all, though the Police played for more than one and a half hours. They played about half the songs from their current No. 1 album, 'Synchronicity', and hits and other popular songs from their first three albums, such as 'Don't Stand So Close to Me', 'Roxanne', and 'Message in a Bottle'.

The Animals and The Fixx opened the concert but the Police were the best act of the three. None of the music was as good as it could have been because the large stadium setting didn't do justice to a trio's sound.

The Animals opened the concert, three minutes earlier than scheduled -- which was shocking, considering that most rock concerts fall behind schedule. With the original members, including lead singer Eric Burdon, the Animals' sound was much like it was 15 years ago, though more raucous than was fashionable during that mellow, peace-loving musical era. They played mostly their best-known hits, including 'House of the Rising Sun' and 'We Gotta Get Out of this Place'.

The Fixx's four biggest hits - 'Saved by Zero', 'Stand or Fall', 'One Thing Leads to Another' and 'Red Skies' - were familiar, good to hear and well done, but otherwise the rest of their music was unexciting. The band also lacks stage personality; only the lead singer gestured or spoke occasionally.

(c) The Miami Herald by Linda R. Thornton

Police give an arresting concert...

The most popular Policemen in the world delivered a dynamic musical show of force to 50,000-plus adoring fans in Miami's Orange Bowl Friday night.

In doing so, the primarily English band led a British Invasion which included the Animals and the Fixx and captivated, if not recaptured, South Florida for Mother England. Though the Animals and the Fixx are both quite popular now and gave strong, but flawed, performances, there was no doubt who the out-sized crowd had come to see.

Thousands in the crowd, which ranged in age from about 10 to 40 and included the social spectrum from punks to preppies, wore Police T-shirts and clutched band souvenir books.

Still, it was Animal lead singer Eric Burdon who fired things up before sundown belting out old and new Animal tunes with determination and conviction. The rest of the band followed Burdon's lead and bashed out songs such as 'The Night', 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' and 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place', like a street gang in a rumble. Though this herd of Animals is in its 40s, it has still got a lot of musical fight and imagination left in it.

For some reason, however, the band cut short its set. Just when we were anticipating dessert, they stopped cooking. It was disappointing.

The second billed act, the Fixx, which is enjoying a lot of radio airplay and strong record sales proved to be more of a radio singles band than a powerful live act. Though everyone in the band, especially the rhythm section, seems to shine, much of the band's sound is repetitive and meanders aimlessly. The Fixx does, however, have several classy, memorable songs: 'One Thing Leads to Another', 'Saved By Zero' and 'Red Skies (At Night)'. Those songs, all performed at the end of the set, re-ignited an audience that grew in number by the hour. People were still buying tickets as the Police took the stage.

They literally came on like gangbusters opening with a relentless version of 'Synchronicity', the title cut from the band's current No. 1 album.

For the next hour and fifty minutes the trio proved it deserves the popular and critical acclaim it has enjoyed.

A dazzling light show and a pair of giant video screens flanking the stage were bonuses.

Police music, intelligent, dream- like, reggae-based, stands tall without the rock concert frills. As the gospel song goes, bassist and vocalist Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, easily had "da whole Orange Bowl world in his hands." He is a charismatic performer with a striking, haunting voice that cries for attention - and gets it.

Drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers complete the trio and appear to be the perfect partners in crime.

The trio makes simple but infectious music that is delivered with emotion and pent up energy. The trio was potent enough Friday night to keep more than 50,000 people standing, clapping and singing along to songs like 'King Of Pain', 'Walking on the Moon', 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da', 'Every Breath You Take', 'Roxann'e and many more.

One of the band's strengths is that they don't worry about sounding exactly like their albums. Their songs had fresh arrangements and extended vocal and instrumental solos. For a concert of this magnitude, things ran smoothly, acts began on time and there was relatively little trouble. The real police reported two arrests for ticket scalping. A Dade County Disaster Team spokesman early in the night reported 35 spectators, mostly female, were treated for drug and alcohol overdoses.

On the West Coast they would probably call an event this big and this good, "totally awesome." Perhaps Eric Burdon said it better when he introduced the classic' House of the Rising Sun'. "Memories are made of this," the gritty rocker paid. I think he was right.

(c) Fort Lauderdale News by Scott Bernarde

'PUH-LEECE' fans swarm for the Sting - 47,500 flood bowl for top rock band...

Jeanine Kenny and the gang of 46 from the Casa Gallardo restaurant in Boca Raton have rented a bus to get to the Orange Bowl so they can lay a blanket on the tarpaulin and just scream, quite effusively, "PUH-LEEECE."

Then, to make it perfectly clear, Kenny cries, "Puh-leece all the way! Sting me, please. Oh, Sting me all over."

Kenny and friends are, they would like you to know, Police groupies. They wear Police shirts, buttons, hats, stickers, even Police sunglasses.

And here, Friday night, they have helped fill the Orange Bowl with a crowd of 47,500 to welcome to Miami America's favourite rock band of the moment, The Police. What promoters say is the largest assemblage ever for a Miami rock concert has gathered to hear three blond men from England play mesmerizing rock music with a hard beat and a heavy message.

The fans are fed by 800 vendors, protected by more than 100 (real) police, entertained by three bands. They have arrived as much as 12 hours early to soak in the scene, smoke up bushels of marijuana and cough over cash for thousands of $14 T-shirts.

But mostly, they have suffered snarled traffic, paid $15 each and agreed to be patted down for beer bottles in order to see The Police and its lead singer, Sting, sing of alienation and world hunger.

Mr. Sting, an ex-jazz bassist, is one of your intellectual rock stars. He has read something of the works of psychologist Carl Jung and he has named his latest album after the Jungian concept of synchronicity.

This concept, dear to Mr. Sting's heart, is not what has drawn Ed Torres to the Orange Bowl. Ed, a 17-year-old Columbus High School senior, is here to, pardon the pun, "play the field. I'm looking for some action," he says.

At the 50-yard line, Ed sees Kelly McMechan, 17, a student at Boca High. She sees him. He chases her, to the 40. She skips ahead, to the 35. He tells her he loves her. She tells him to die. And to do something else.

Ed is hurt.

"Hey, why are you walking away from me?" he calls out.

"I just am," Kelly explains. "What'll you do without me?" Ed says.

"I'll make out." 

"You will?"

She won't. She is gone.

Ed turns to his buddies. "Who's next, man? Let's go."

Let's meet Frank: The crowd at the Orange Bowl is creeping closer and closer to the empty stage and, suddenly, Frank, "your groovy entrepreneur," is alone on the muddy tarpaulin. There he stands, feet firmly planted on the end zone, body swaying to the music.

Frank, a shirtless gent with shoulder-length hair, has set up shop for the evening. In his back pocket, a pint of Jack Daniels. In his front pocket, a piece of folded looseleaf paper containing the evening's supply of cocaine. In his boot, a Marlboro pack stuffed with joints.

"I am ready," Frank says.

Two hours later, The Animals, a regrouped band from the far reaches of time the 1960s have opened the show to no discernible response. Frank is halfway through his bottle of Jack. He has sold $35 worth of illicit material. His feet remain riveted to the end zone. He continues to sway, perhaps to the music.

Way up in the stands, Al Stoker, 41, Mr. Suburban Father, has drawn chaperone duty. He has taken 12 ninth-graders to the concert.

"I'm kind of soft," he says, drinking a Coke. "I'm the only parent who would do it."

Stoker's charges have promised him they will stay here in row Q, in a group. To Stoker's left now, an empty bench, dotted with crumpled jackets.

Fredda Levitt, a South Miami mother, volunteered to take daughter Nancy and friends to the concert.

"They're the group," she says. "I said it would be fun to see. It just kind of slipped out. I was done for."

Doug Baer, 13, had to work a little harder to get his father to take him to see The Police and another popular band, The Fixx.

"I said, 'Dad, if you don't let me go, I'm going to hold my breath 'til I turn purple.'"

They sat at the 40-yard-line. Geography Lesson: The closer you come to the stage, the more you see couples making out, the more you see people like Kaos, a charming young woman with electric blue tattoos running the length of her arms, and the more you see the prime of America's youth - you'll pardon the expression - vomiting.

If, however, you can get back- stage, you will find a much more civilized scene. Here, each band is housed in its own double trailer. The musicians kill time by posing for their personal photographers, answering questions from their personal reporters, accepting food from their personal aides.

It is as peaceful here as it is hectic in the visitor's dressing room, which has been converted to a makeshift hospital ward. Paramedics drag in the last of the collapsed kids. There have been more than 40 patients tonight and Gloria Dowling of the National School of Health says almost all of them passed out from drinking or taking drugs.

The real police made no arrests. Frank's final report: The Police are on stage. Most fans cannot see them because of the towering equipment stands. The band has thoughtfully provided two giant video screens for the crowd to stare
at.

The stadium is dark except for €60 purple and red lights on stage, but those who need to find Frank are having no trouble. He is, personally, on his sixth joint. He has dispensed about 20 more. He is a popular fellow.

"You're the greatest, man," says Mary, 13, of South Dade.

"Yeah," Frank says. "It's wild." He draws deeply from the last of his burning weed.

(c) The Miami Herald by Marc Fisher