Police Concert, Oakland 06/13/07

Intro

I wanted to start writing about more than complaints from my mundane life. I went to The Police concert a few weeks ago and always wanted to write about it. Too bad I haven’t got the chance until now. Anyway, this is not a review of the concert although I may have some comments on concert itself.

The Police announced the reunion tour at the Grammy’s after breaking up for more than twenty years. Looks like everyone is trying cashing in on the 80’s remake/reissue. The tour is sponsored by Best Buy and Best Buy’s rewards members got first dibs at the tickets a day earlier that fans club members. Btw, the fans club charged a whopping $100 for membership. Fortunately, a friend of mine was a Best Buy’s Rewards member and I was able to get a pair of tickets. In retrospect, I could’ve resold those tickets for good profit.

On concert night

We were almost late because we spent more than an hour in traffic trying the get away from the venue. Parking was full and traffic jammed from hundreds of cars trying to find parking elsewhere and other cars pulling in not knowing the parking was full with a dozens of trucks and eighteen-wheelers thrown in for good measure. This was a complex that hosted many concerts and NBA, NFL and MLB games through out the year for so many years. You would’ve thought they could’ve arranged things a little better. Maybe putting electronic signs on both highway directions indicating traffic and parking status on the stadium would help. To be fair to them, I’m sure they tried and maybe it’s just impossible to make it better. Maybe bureaucracy held them up. Maybe I’m jusy a little whiny bug.

Just as we stepped inside the stadium looking for our field seatings, The Police appeared on stage and kicked off with Message in the Bottle. When we got to our seats, a guy looked at us and promptly pulled the arm of his lady friend and jumped over the new row of seatings. When I looked at our seat numbers, there were actually 4 empty seats. Two were ours and the other two empty. So were the couple before seat squatters? Maybe they saw a few good and empty seats and occupied them hoping the real holders couldn’t attend or were they the owners of the other two seats and decided to leave just as we got there for unknown reasons. What a mistery.

The concert itself, while not great, was good. The main point was that The Police is playing together after twenty-some years and everyone should just be happy about that. I have to say that most if not all were quite content with that. They performed all of their hits although they rearranged most if not all of them. I appreciated the effort although the result had a few misses. The stretch of De Do Do Do De Da Da Da, Invisible Sun and Walking in the Footsteps was too drawn out for me. The high point was Wrapped Around Your Finger where Steward Copeland played back and forth on the drum sets and on some chimes instruments that to me looked to be hanging metallic barnacles. I was waiting for King of Pain and it finally came on the first encore. First? yes, there were two encores. I wonder when are concerts going to bore surprise us with even more encores.

Aftertaste

So the concert was ok. Was is worth the troubles and ticket price? Yes. The concert itself is good enough to worth the ticket price. It was not great in terms of performance. The date was one of the earlier on the tour so the was a few but noticeable rusts. Sting sang a little like the solo Sting and he didn’t hit the octaves like he did twenty plus years ago. The drum, base and guitar ventured out of sync a couple of times. However, for fans of The Police music the concert delivered big time. They answered prayers of their fans who had been wishing that this would happen. This is obviously apparent from the fact that their concerts were (are, as some dates are being added) sold out within hours worldwide. They also make it relatively affordable especially in contrast to news of Genesis concert costing $225 for the cheapest tickets.

So to in closing: Would I pay the same amount of money again to see them the second time around? No. Did I regret not selling my tickets for big profit? No.