Punk Reggae Rock From 'The Police'...
The Police. The music comes in waves, then spurts, with transitions from passage to passage that only seem to make sense after they have whooshed past you.
The three-man band playing electric reggae rock with a punk twist displayed a knack for true innovation Tuesday night. The immensely popular band played before more than 3,500 people in a concert at Kiel Opera House.
A good part of The Police's music was defused rock. The best of the songs almost seemed to proceed from back to front or upside down. Sometimes it took only the drummer to create a pleasant anxiety by lopping off the back-beat and concentrating only on the cymbals and the bass drum.
With only three players, the members of The Police created a sound that filled the hall with more than sheer volume. During the reggae-like passages, the bass of Gordon Sumner, the guitar of Andy Summers and the drums of Stewart Copeland seemed to merge into one instrument. It was a musical Milky Way. Summers let his guitar chords ring out on the slow parts and then clipped their wings on the fast ones.
The band opened with a song off its latest album, 'Zenyatta Mondatta'. The tune 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' was typical for its charm and use of contrast. The band made the audience swim in reggae complete with unpredictable accents and then brought it all into focus with a refrain that had a sing-song quality to it.
This formula worked even better on a current Police hit, 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da'. The genius of the "hook" on this one was its simplicity. The temptation to sing along was irresistible so no one did, resist that is.
Sumner handled the lead vocals extremely well. He could make his voice sound small and pre-teen.
The evening opened with a set by Tom Robinson and his Spector 27 band. Robinson sang the tunes and the lyrics were darn clever. Instrumentally, though, the set was a study in dissonance. The players achieved their goal of creating musical sandpaper, but one wondered if it was worth all the trouble.
(c) The St Louis Post-Dispatch by John S. Cullinane
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