Stayed at Tampa Hyatt Regency. Nice pool on 5th floor outside. The view of the city was great from there. Anyhoo...
The crowd was alive and loud at Tampa. They seemed louder than Miami but probably because it was indoors. My wife actually enjoyed the show after months of complaining about my Police and Stewart habits, etc. I did miss 'Footsteps' because my wife asked me to get her a beverage. It took me the rest of that song and the beginning of CSLY to get back. I told her she was damn lucky I didn't miss Regatta!!!
Andy was at the top of his game again. The arrangements are set up for him to just go off all guns blazing on a few songs and he nailed it again at Tampa. He is really providing an equal portion of the magic at the shows. I can't wait to see him blaze again in Atlanta. 64 years old and still on fire. If you play guitar and want to see a legend perform, you better catch this tour! On the "welcome to the Andy Summers show" Andy looked at Sting surprised, pointed to himself, and humorously gestured "ME?" He probably does that at most shows but it was the first I really noticed it. It made me laugh!
Stewart played great, of course, but was not quite as spontaneous with the fills as he was in Miami. Not as many fills and perfectly timed phrases as Miami in my opinion. He did have a few really nice double handed shots on the snare at just the right moment. Those send chills down my spine. Stew was way more enthusiatic with the crowd (esp when not drumming) especially with the people behind the stage. He was really communicating with them. I think it was EBYT intro, he smacked the snare on beat four and let the stick fly way up and behind him towards the people back there. He looked around jokingly as if to say "what happened? where'd it go?" Then whipped out another stick without missing a beat and added the hi hats. At the end of the show he was going back and forth with a fan pointing at him and saying "No, YOU da man! No YOU da man!" That was funny. A highlight for me was when Stewart sang "It's my soul up there" on King of Pain. He sang it completely by himself and you could hear his voice. The jumbotron was on him during this and he smiled the whole time probably because he got to do it himself. He did a great job on this.
I had left the flag back at the hotel to have a nice evening with the wife because I thought that 's what she would have wanted. She has been dealing with this whole Police fiasco thing and my hours of blogging for the most part. It wasn't until I saw Stew really scanning the audience the last few songs (as if he were looking for that wonderful green flag of ours) that I felt I screwed up. Stewart didn't look at the audience that much the night before. My wife said she thought he was looking for it too. I instantly felt guilty for leaving it in the hotel. Damnit. DM said it was there in spirit so that made me feel a little better. I am not sure stew would have seen it from our seats anyway though unless I timed it perfectly with the lights.
SORRY STEWART AND SC.NETERS. FORGIVE ME!?
Sting said to the people in the back, "You people in the back get to see Stewart's ass hang out!" or something really close to that effect. Funny. Of course he did the mainstream thing comparing Tampa to Miami and a bunch of other Florida cities. He said something like "Tampa I hear you're better than Miami, Jacksonville, and Pensacola wherever the f**k that is!" The crowd went wild of course.
They switched up the encore order. I didn't keep track of the setlist but you can look on tpt.com for that of course.
I have only a few fone pics that I will post a link for soon. One is a really cool video of sync 2 with full lighting effect going on. It opens with quicktime I think.
What a hell of a week I had. Miami and Tampa back to back. I will be ok until Nov 17th now. I think.....
