Bring on the night.

It appears that my favorite band of all time, The Police, are going to reunite and go on tour. My affection for this band is equaled by no other band, with perhaps the exception being R.E.M. who run a close 2nd. I love The Police. I've listened to them since the early 80's when some girls I rode horses with introduced me to them by allowing me to borrow their cassette Walkmans while we cleaned stalls. It was at this same time that I was also introduced to The Talking Heads and U2's War album (these were very influential girls in my life as you can imagine). I would never be the same after that. I spent hours replicating the bands name on my school desk, I listened to their recordings over and over and over and over, I wore thin the Police t-shirt I bought on clearance at Spencer Gift's for 49 cents (I was thrifty even in my teens). I loved (and still love) all of their songs. Unfortunately I was never able to see them play live. For those of you who didn't grow up in Portland you might not realize that the Northwest was not always the hotbed for music that it is now. Before the explosion of grunge and the erection of the Rose Quarter, Portland rarely had big bands come here to play. The coliseum was just too small to make it worth their time and being that The Police broke up in 1986 when I was only 17, it wasn't as if I was able to travel out of state to see them.

In the mid to late 80's, after The Police had broken up, I became absolutely obsessed with Sting (consider yourself unique if I haven't forced you to watch Brimstone and Treacle with me giving audio commentary throughout). I must have listened to Dream of the Blue Turtles more than I've listened to any other recording (other than perhaps Berlin's Love Life when I was 15 or maybe Billy Joel's Glass Houses when I was a pre-teen). To this day I still think that the most amazing concert experience I ever had was seeing Sting during the Blue Turtle tour at a sold out concert in the Memorial Coliseum. The crowd was filled with more devout fans than I've ever seen (or heard) replicated since. When Sting would start to sing the crowd just took off in an amazing group chorus to the point where Sting would just quit singing and let the crowd continue for the duration of the song. It wasn't just for the "one" pop single kinda thing which happens at concerts all the time, it was for every damn Sting and Police song! It was absolutely amazing. Not too long after though it seemed that Sting did the whole Bono thing and let his ego get way too inflated. I prefer humble musicians, the introspective, wounded, soulful, tortured artist is what I enjoy...not the cocky, bare chested, sunglasses wearing rock star. So my fondness for Sting waned and I moved on.

Despite my lack of appreciation for Sting's new demeanor I never lost my affection for The Police. For the year and a half that I took drum lessons (with my dream of someday being a rock drummer permanently squashed by my lack of rhythm) my instructor and I poured over the talents of Stewart Copeland. I've owned the box set for years which has their entire catalog for years (one of only two box sets I own, the other being Nirvana). You can probably now imagine that I am more than enthusiastic about the idea of finally being able to see the entire band perform.

"There's a hole in my life. There's a hole in my life. Yeah."

"I can't stand losing, I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing you."