CONCERT: Sting

Live at Masonic Temple Theatre | Detroit | Feb. 19. 1988

I had no older brother who turned me on to The Police at an early age. I knew singles, and they were on my confused teenage radar at the time. But, I became a huge Police fan with the release of Synchronicity in 1983.

I think that was the summer before we moved to Port Huron where I would finish high school. It was in Sarnia, Ontario.

Every Breath You Take.

It was ubiquitous all summer, it seemed. I honestly remember thinking that I’d never heard anything like it since the summer of 1979 when I was in Canada and EVERYTHING was You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone.

Anyway, we moved to Port Huron, just across from Canada. I brought with me Outlandos D'Amour. I liked the punk simplicity, but that was not me. Zeppelin. Beatles. Floyd. Complexity and production was my thing.

I was pretty hit when Dream of the Blue Turtles came out. It had a quasi-jazz background, enough to make me really get into the direction. And at the time I was watching Night Music on NBC and half the cast of the show was on the album.

This was really cool to me. I mean, there’s nothing but segmentation now, but things were different then, and it felt like individuality.

So, of that Dream album came a concert film and a live album. Bring on the Night. That double disc was one of the first things released in “DDD” which meant some kind of purity that was probably bullshit. But, man, was it a big deal to me. Kenny Kirkland on piano, Omar Hakim on drums, Branford Marsalis on sax. I BLASTED it through tower speakers and thought it was hearing the best thing ever.

It wasn’t long until Sting released Nothing Like the Sun — on the whole, a much better album than Dream. That was my first trip to the Masonic. It was different and I don’t think I’d see an artist on that main stage there again until Sufjan Stevens decades later.

As much as I liked the new Sting album, I wanted the jazz work out of the live album. I didn’t get that, but it wasn’t far away. It was a Top Ten concert. I say this looking back at the setlist. I mean, the songs I “didn’t” want to hear are giant classics.

That’s below the video of the entire show that was virtually the same that I saw.

I do remember being moved by Message in a Bottle.

In just a year or so Amy and I would see him open The Palace. The jazz at that point had been stripped out and toned down to a minimum.

Masonic was a nice concert — somewhere right on the edge.

I’ll post the YouTube concert and the same tour and a setlist.