Say something interesting about sting/police

Watched and enjoyed the Andy Summers focused documentary "Cant Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police" last night off the Amazon.

Got to say how it was put together does show why they came apart even from the reunion angle and some of Summers photographs were really pretty amazing.

Loved the reunion clip of him in Japan and happening on the Karaoke bar with the customers singing "Every Breath You Take". I sure hope it was not staged, did not look like it was.

Couple good lines and pictures about his early bands and Eric Burdon too. Worth checking out if a fan of the group.

I met a guy a few years back in western Mass. who is a close friend of Sting's, and the young daughter who was with him kept referring to Uncle Sting which I thought was very cute.

the post by fritz upthread is amazing.

stings cousin bernard can not sing!

the post by fritz upthread is amazing.

^ yes!

i had no idea until yesterday that andy summers won a grammy for 'behind my camel' - best rock instrumental performance in 1980

their only Grammy!

not quite - the police also won it in 1979 for regatta de blanc (the track not the album). the 'behind my camel' award is funny though as it's such a weird tune. apparently sting refused to play on it because he hated it so much?

it beat YYZ! fucking insane

btw I found the Klark Kent 10" at a shop the other day, just browsing some unorganized stack. thought it may have been fairly rare but apparently it's not (I paid a fiver). its an amusing record to me b/c once you listen to it you can tell that even though Sting was writing most of the songs the actual Police "sound" was very much Copeland's (at least on the first 3 albums). fwiw most of the best Klark Kent stuff isn't on it - the best 45 minutes of "Kollected Works" would be about as good as any Police LP really

when I was a kid I thought sting sung the way he does because he was French

apologies for the violent tense shifting there

their only Grammy!

Wait, the Police won 5 Grammys and, additionally, Sting, as songwriter, also won Song of the Year for "Every Breath You Take". (That song alone won two Grammys.)

https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/police/8039
https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/sting/10244

Haha:

xzanfar wrote this on thread Say something interesting about sting/police on board I Love Music on 2021-10-18

stings cousin bernard can not sing!

xzanfar wrote this on thread Vocalists whose voices are your own personal nails on chalkboard. on board I Love Music on 2021-05-21

stings cousin bernard sumner who can not sing and ruined songs by 808 state and chemical brothers too!

xzanfar wrote this on thread Getting Away With It: The ELECTRONIC Poll on board I Love Music on 2021-05-27

stings cousin can not sing so i like the songs he does not sing on or is not alone on!

xzanfar wrote this on thread songs that sound like other songs on board I Love Music on 2021-01-08

even the same marimba sound is used and stings cousin bernard can not sing either as he also butchered the songs he did for 808 state and the chemical brothers too so he needs to stick to his twanger from joy division days!

xzanfar wrote this on thread musicians material you do not like after their band broke up! on board I Love Music on 2020-11-16

sting lost me after 10 sumners tales but his cousin bernard like i said before sucks as he can not sing!

TS: Electronic with Sting vs The Police with Marr

That doc was OK, thanks for recommending. I read his book and probably thought the film was ultimately more revealing, at least as far as the Police experience goes. You really get the sense that, a la Fleetwood Mac, they just don't like each other that much. There's not enough room for all the egos involved. And yet, those three egos came up with some cool stuff as a unit. Reminds me a bit of Pete Townshend's quote about how strange it is to be thrown together with these random guys at the right time at a young age, and have that group of random guys becomes linked to you for the rest of your life, no matter what happens next.

And yeah, Andy is a good photographer.

Stewart Copeland's new band "Gizmodrome" apparently has a live album coming out pretty soon? cool tracklist...

LP1
Amaka Pipa
Zombies In The Mall
Stay Ready
Miss Gradenko
Summer's Coming
Sweet Angels
Elephant Talk
Does Everyone Stare
Man On The Mountain
Excesses

LP2
Ride Your Life
I Know Too Much
Darkness
Zubatta Cheve
Young Lions
Strange Things Happen
Don't Box Me In
Spin This
Thela Hun Ginjeet
Bombs Away
Don't Box Me In feat. Manuel Agnelli (Bonus Track)

band line-up is pretty nuts:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0056/8043/1219/products/51uzPxu6WBL_480x480.jpg

(first guy is a jazz fusion keyboard dude who started off in the italo prog band PFM)

I actually like the album fine, if you dig Copeland's stuff as Klark Kent you'd probably enjoy it (in fact I believe both Stay Ready and Strange Things were unreleased KK tunes). I do think the lineup suggests something a bit more proggy and technical though. also the fact that Copeland does most of the vocals when Belew is right there is kinda strange

do they do any level 42 tunes?

doesn't look like it, most of the material is from the studio album

Yeah, I've seen some live clips, and it's ... fine. More or less what you expect, but you do get some deep cuts. Any band with Copeland and Belew is, imo, just a little too perpetually "on."

Interesting Sting thought: pretty good bassist, oft overshadowed by luminous cohort.

Another thought: "All This Time" is a lovely song.

And speaking of which, a very rare video of Sting playing that song with Mark Brzezicki (Big Country) on drums, during the brief window before Vinnie Colaiuta was brought on as his full time drummer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFSTIu2O0LE

I've just been made away of the "I'm So Happy That I Can't Stop Crying" video and uh, what the fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI8khooPyJk

oh wow that brings me back. Forgot all about it.

The new Sting album is good. I like it more than his last one...less focus on "rocking" (never what Sting was best at IMO) and closer to his early 90's/Ten Summoner's Tales style which is what I want from him anyway lol

Ooh that sounds great I didn’t know there was one out

nothing like the sun, dream of the blue turtles, summoners tales and soul cages were heavy listening in high school/college; wonder if they hold up.

mercury falling/brand new day era put me off him until now i guess

Beato's been doing more interviews, it seems. And this is a good one with Sting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efRQh2vspVc

Oh, and xpost, I think "Nothing like the Sun" is an impeccable and diverse adult contemporary album, some of it beautiful, some of it silly.

As ever.

I've heard parts of his new album. the main impression I get is that his voice sounds remarkably good for his age. he's one of the few megastar singers who actually figured out how to adapt to his new voice

This new one is quite lovely, in the mold of Fragile and Shape of My Heart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx5moNrPKpk

It won't convince anyone who thinks he's a bore, but it has the Sting hallmarks (tricky chords, evocative melody) and the singing and lyrics sound almost like Leonard Cohen.

Roxanne takes you down
To her place near the river

Did I saw Andy Summers memoir One Train Later was really interesting. Had me wanting to hear the early days of teh police when he was still playing guitar washes and things.
Definitley would love to hear him with the Soft machine where he was supposed to be playing raga guitar but not sure anything ever got recorded. certainly never heard any.

He's in some ways still underrated, because it's kind of hard to convey all the cool things he does. Like, the Edge, it's pretty easy to distill what he does because he's so simple, but even in the early days of the Police Summers was doing some pretty sophisticated things.

Re-recommending that Sting interview, it's really perceptive.

does he have unnaturally big hands or something? I've heard those looping guitar riffs on songs like "Bring on the Night", "Message in a Bottle", and "Every Breath You Take" are really hard to play

I don't know if his hands are big but he does stretch them waaaaaay wide, and if you have smaller hands (like me) it takes a lot of pain and suffering to get there. You need to do that on at least the latter two songs. "Bring on the Night," that's some dexterous fingerpicking.

An observation my guitar teacher has made is that he really figured out just the right chords to use with a flanger/delay, creating pretty cool overtones and the like that fill up space in interesting ways.

okay what the fuck does that "deadly now for 12,000 years/is Carbon-14" line in We Work the Black Seam mean? does Sting just not understand some scientific thing?

yeah i think so

carbon-14 is a radioactive form of carbon that has a half-life of ~5700 years, but it occurs naturally in very low amounts that isn't harmful to humans, and half-life doesn't mean 'it lasts the length of two half-lives'. nuclear weapons testing in the 50s increased the levels of it in the atmosphere but still not to anything resembling dangerous levels, and is produced by nuclear power plants too. think it's just a not very good attempt to link nuclear power with the coal miners' strike?

if "Lazarus Heart" was an 80s Peter Gabriel song people would've gone gaga for it. that little jazz break is pretty dumb though and obviously something Peter Gabriel would not have done

Every day another miracle!

On the evidence of a photo I saw in the Telegraph, Sting isn’t actually very good at all at yoga - despite all those private lessons.

I suspect it’s a bit like Elvis’s karate skills.

think I've watched this 20 times straight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGi7bwu8SHM

yep, that's a classic!

This reminds me: you know how music documentaries typically leave you feeling either better about the artist, neutral / the same about the artist, or worse about the artist? I always liked The Police, but man, the documentary really bummed me out. All three of them, for various reasons, seem like people you really wouldn't want to know.

Remember this exchange from that interview with Revolver?

Copeland: Andy, since we're here, I'm going to back you up on this. You should stand up right now and say, 'I Andy want all the Puff Daddy money. Because that's not Sting's song he's using, that's my guitar riff.' Okay over to you Andy, Go for it...

Summers: (meekly) Ok, I want all of the Puff Daddy Money.

Copeland: There you go, you feel better now don't you?

Sting: Okay Andy here's all the money. [pours some change on the table] Unfortunately, I've spent the rest of it.

Summers: I'll tell you what, Stewart, I'll take your share, I know Stings' not going to let me have his.

Copeland: So Sting's making out like a bankrobber here, while Andy and I have gone unrewarded and unloved for our efforts and contributions.

Sting: Life... is... f***ing... tough. Here I am in Tuscany.

Copeland: And don't we know it! You're in Tuscany in your palace with wine being poured down your throat and grapes being peeled for you. Sting can you buy me a castle in Italy too? With the proceeds from the longest running hit single in the history of radio? Just a little chateau somewhere?

Sting: We don't have f***ing chateaus in Italy, They're called palazzos. I'll lend you a room. (laughs)

I guess Andy really did carry a grudge over that.

Andy is 80. Probably a bit late to start hinting.

The Shend finds him a great imaginary foil. Continual point of humour on his FB feed.

He appears to be a lousy dancer if Quadrophenia is anything to go by. For a bassist does he have a sense of rhythm?

John Constantine came out of wanting to depict someone that looked like him in a couple of panels.

Sting: Life... is... f***ing... tough. Here I am in Tuscany.

looooool

I’d be interested to know how Summers could possibly have a claim after all this time has passed.