Zenyatta Mondatta: 1980/81

All power to The Police...

The Police. Forget what the name hints at. Forget this band's reputation a solid, no-nonsense business sense which sees it out-selling the Rolling Stones in England and just about everyone else over here.

Forget its peroxide blond, icy look. Forget its ego, if you can. This is not a collection of sneering punks primed for untold nastiness. This is clean cut, the '80s version; an updated and frightfully modern Kingston Trio. This is very loud and very acceptable pop music for the white, middle-class majority the kids who jammed into Massey Hall last night for one of the purest, least complicated nights of rock 'n' roll in years.

This is also a band whose time has come after just the right amount of hype from its record company; about every 10 minutes some station plays a teasing bit of the trio's distinctive and almost skeletally spare sound with its references to back-beat reggae rhythm. After playing for only dozens of fans at The Edge and The Horseshoe just last year, "this time they could have easily played the (Maple Leaf) Gardens," said one local promotor on hand to see what the fuss and money was all about.

As it was, scalper's prices were sky-high. When I suggested I'd pay double for a top-price, $15 ticket, the scalper, a total snob as it turned out, merely chuckled. "You, buddy, have no idea of tonight's economics," he sneered, then promptly sold the ticket further down the street for $70. Elsewhere, other scalpers claimed to be getting $100 a single from what was an over-capacity crowd.

Inside, Police jerseys were going for $10 and everywhere you looked there were all the standard rock 'n' roll accessories, from T-shirts to rings, from sullen-looking groupies to music industry hustlers. Just 18 months ago drummer Stewart Copeland had predicted the band's success to date by suggesting that "there's a new generation out there that wants to elect its own set of heroes." Well, as it turned out, the Police are very traditional heroes, only styled in the current fashion. They have been solidly mainstream, psychologically as well as musically, right from the start.

So last night the crowd did every- thing expected of a mainstream rock'n'roll crowd. The women screamed whenever the bassist and lead singer, Sting (Gordon Sumner) did something appealing, from po-going around the stage to taking off his shirt (a sexual high point, that). The men smacked each other happily when a hit was played. 

Everyone cheered the best-known songs 'Don't Stand Too Close To Me', which opened the show, and 'Roxanne', which led into the first of two encores and waited patiently for the lesser-known pieces to go by. These included 'Shadows In The Rain', 'Man In A Suitcase' and others from the current album, 'Zenyatta Mondatta', and showed the band at its most musical: Sting's grainy voice contrasting completely with his fluid singing; guitarist Andy Summers dead-on, rhythmic guitar work, so perfect it almost went by unnoticed; and above all, Stewart Copeland's drumming.

The key to the trio was supposed to have been the presence of Ernie Smith, Chalawa and lots of real reggae to open the show. After all, don't The Police use reggae? Well, exactly; they use it, but only for their music's surface. In a broader sense, they're a part of the increasingly broad, all-white sound in pop today, a sound that's less fundamentally influenced by black music than anything since the late '50s, sound that can be dated with the rise of David Bowie.

The Police's adaptation of reggae is not an act of cross-cultural liberalism, but complete absorption of one style by another. This is why their synthesis works as completely as it does and why their sound needed the almost brutal level of volume it had last night. It has power but no punch. 'It's all surface, and in a way, like a Jackson Pollock painting, it's this surface that explodes, not something inside.

(c) The Toronto Star by Peter Goddard

Caught in the act...

There's an extremely fine line between a great concert and 'an event'. The Police succeeded in crossing that line though with a performance that reflected their status as 'the band of the eighties'. The lucky couple of thousand who shelled out fifteen dollars for those precious ducats were launched into orgasm of delight by guitarist Andy Summers, vocalist/bassist Gordon 'Sting' Sumner and percussionist Stewart Copeland.

Opening strongly with 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' and 'Walking On The Moon' and closing even stronger with 'Message In A Bottle', and 'Roxanne', plus two searing encore sets, The Police exude such a genuine, natural ambience on stage that it's easy to be swept away by their exotic, reggae-based rhythms.

Switching from stand-up bass to his regular axe, Sting hopped around the stage like a demented kangaroo, yet sang with such natural ease that his performance seemed totally effortless. Matter of fact, the whole band cruised through the evening with almost computerised perfection. Copeland, banging out those complex drum patterns, and Summers anchoring the sound with some textured, synthesised guitar work.

If there was one small criticism it would be based on the set's pacing. After a blistering opening segment, The Police almost lost the audience with a brief spell of self-indulgence before returning to the right patch for a breathtaking final flourish. The raw power of 'Roxanne' was spellbinding. Sting's voice sending shivers down the building's four walls.

'Zenyatta Mondatta' has sold 300,000 copies in Canada in a matter of weeks, ample testament to the trio's popularity in this country. The 2,800 fans who caught them at Massey Hall went home with the realisation that live on stage, The Police are world class - possibly even the world's next supergroup.

(c) Music Express by Keith Sharp

Police get down to reggae roots...

The Police show Monday night at Massey Hall was just about everything a rock show should be. It was paced like a good thunderstorm, with intermittent lulls in the fury - a constant pull between relaxation and involvement. There wasn't a mediocre song in the show, and there was genuine electricity in the crowd and a staggering unity of will on the part of the three musicians. It was tense, exuberant and blissfully artificial.

The first white band to fully incorporate reggae rhythms and phrasings into its music, The Police have gone in three years from oddity to mainstream, as pop expanded to drink in all the available influences. Their chart successes have relied more on a bright pop sound with suitably adolescent lyrics, but the adolescents at Massey Hall got a good sampling of the flipside of the band's music in straight reggae numbers like 'Shadows in the Rain' and 'Just Can't Live Without You'. They didn't cut it up the way they did the memorable singles like 'Message in a Bottle' and 'Don't Stand So Close To Me', but the response was solid enough to suggest that they were open to whatever the band would throw their way.

The reggae pieces were the low points in the show, the only spots where the band over-indulged itself- bassist Sting in his singing, and guitarist Andy Summers in his swing through the various sound-shapers attached to his guitar. Few guitarists could continually come up with novelty using this approach, but in all fairness to Summers, he had something different to say with his fingers every time he shifted the shape of the tone. His end of the show was masterful, a state-of-the-art look at the still-growing possibilities of the electric guitar.

Bassist-vocalist Sting transcended the rawness in his throat to give - between nosefuls of nasal spray - note-perfect renditions of the band's hits. He was the most visibly animated of the bunch, covering his side of the stage in leaps and bounds when he wasn't wound around his stand-up electric bass. The big bass opens up a whole new world for a bass-player, and Sting's swoops and his long sustains gave a fullness to the background that bassists don't usually: provide. Much more than a pacemaker, he was an integral part of the total sound.

Ever the athlete, drummer Stewart Copeland grinned and hyper-ventilated his way through the almost two-hour show. He took no real solos, but even without grandstanding he made as large an impression as a beat-keeper can make. He's adored, as was Ringo Starr, for his cuteness of face; and sociable look, and he's likely, over the next two or three years, to be just as rich.

(c) The Globe & Mail by Paul McGrath

Police concert provides both surprise and disappointment...

There was a feeling of anticipation in the air at Massey Hall last night which put a sensory stranglehold on more than one person's psyche.

Could The Police stand up to the musical demands of a live concert? Or would the reggae-rock new wave trio flounder without the safety of a studio to back them up? These were questions that came to mind as a sold-out house became impatient with a delayed start.

Unfortunately, yes and no answers could be given to both questions. The Police generally did things in person that haven't been transferred to vinyl. Conversely, in some cases, they weren't able to live up to their re cording standards.

The inconsistency made for an unsettling evening of entertainment. There were times when The Police out-did expectations. And then there were moments when they were noticeably lax.

Their strength - the quirky, catchy melodies that make great singalong tunes were juiced up by the combined energy of lead singer/bassist Gordon (Sting) Sumner; guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland. When they sank their teeth into the choruses of numbers like as 'Roxanne', 'Don't Stand Too Close To Me', 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da Da' or 'Message In A Bottle', there was a primal tension that hasn't been captured on any  of their three albums. 

They'd repeat the herky jerky structures and each time the neo-reggae stacca to would seem to tighten even more. When they found that kind of particular groove - which was often - the crowd would always be clapping along with the pulsating rhythms.

When those moments of abandonment came along, it would always be Sting who guided the intense interaction. His vocals, although sandpapery, were emotional and still controllable enough for him to easily take charge. His stand-up and shoulder-strap bass playing nearly always overshadowed the production of Summers on guitar.

And that's when you be came aware of the group's shortcoming - Summers. Not only did he fail to supply an acceptable standard of back-up singing, but his guitar let him down during crucial breaks in songs as well. He, more than the other two put together, showed an inability to transfer vinyl quality to stage quality.

However, with Sting pushing the others in even the most rudimentary tunes, the band was able to strike the kind of spark that was hoped for, if not expected.

Reggae for purists, from Toronto's Ernie Smith, provided the warm-up entertainment. Smith and his band played a mid-tempo, uncomplicated style that served as a stepping stone to the more innovative stylings of The Police.

However, they stayed on stage about three songs too long. The audience seemed to want more than Smith could supply.

(c) The Hamilton Spectator by Greg McMillan