Great article on the S&S Cold War.

[TOWOS]

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainmen ... 44709.html

I really enjoyed reading this one...hope the same goes for you all!

[TheEqualizer]

Sound Check: Sting runs away from the Police on his latest disc
By Jeff Miers / News Pop Music Critic

Stewart Copeland has been involved in a love-hate relationship with Sting for, what, something like 40 years now. As two-thirds of the Police, Copeland and Sting climbed the peaks of pop stardom, and at the same time, made music that demanded to be accepted as genuine art. You’d think it would have been worth it. But somehow, even after all this time, there’s a part of the former Gordon Sumner that remains unknowable — or perhaps more to the point, unreachable — to Copeland.

For the sake of full disclosure, it must be said that I feel about Sting the way I imagine Copeland does. I am blown away by his talent, his singing, his writing, his bass playing, his guitar playing. (Heck, the guy can even get around the lute pretty well!) At the same time, I am continuously frustrated by the way he uses that talent. It’s like he doesn’t want to part with it, or something.

This week, Sting released a new album, the pretentiously titled “If On A Winter’s Night . . .,” (Deutsche Grammaphon) and appeared on the “Today” show to promote it. If you were expecting to see the uber-buff, spiky-haired wunderkind with the electric bass strapped across his hip — the guy who led the Police onstage during a killer show inside HSBC Arena in May 2008 — you might have been shocked at the sight of the dude who showed up on the “Today” show Tuesday morning. This version of Sting looked like a cross between Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and the actor Malcolm McDowell after a particularly tough night at the pub.

The music was different, too. Not bad, at all, but different than what you might normally look to Sting for. As in, it’s presented as traditional English music, and the album it comes from is comprised almost solely of lullabies, spiritual pieces and seasonal songs from the British Isles, most of them not unlike Noel Paul Stookey’s “Soul Cake,” the very song Sting performed on “Today.”

Why? Didn’t Sting just release an album of interpretations of the songs of John Dowland, played on lute, no less, just a few years back? Didn’t the Police reunion tour remind him that, like it or not, he does his best work with guitarist Andy Summers to his left and Copeland staring at his bum? What is His Royal Stingness trying to prove?

Apparently, I was not merely asking these questions silently while “If On A Winter’s Night . . .” blared through my headphones, because a trusted colleague here at The News answered my irate queries with a succinct sentence that cut to the quick of my now twin-decade Sting conundrum.

“I think the problem is that he was never really the guy people thought he was in the first place,” quoth my colleague.

Ahh. So that’s what it is.

Come to think of it, Sting had been a schoolteacher prior to the Police, and was a well above-average jazz bassist in a few regional bands in the Newcastle area, as well. The Police started as a punk band, and Sting hated punk with a passion. First chance he got, he started injecting Police songs with sophisticated harmony, brilliantly brooding lyrics, the inflections of various ethnic music, and a complexity that made plain his musical prowess.

I’ve always been of the belief that these contradictory impulses in Sting — the desire to be both popular and brilliant — combined with the hyper-genius of Copeland’s drumming and the slanted eloquence of Summers’ guitar playing to make the Police one of the very best bands of their era (and a few other eras, to boot). The fact that Sting was never an “authentic” punk rocker never bothered me a bit, because I have no idea what an “authentic” punk rocker is. (I’m guessing he has no idea how to voice a minor 7th chord, though.) Punk rock isn’t authentic, anyway. It’s as contrived, for the most part, as any other idiom that places style and attitude above the music itself. That doesn’t make it bad, obviously, but it certainly doesn’t make it some sort of “authenticity barometer,” either.

“If On A Winter’s Night . . .” is an album of songs devoted to the season that Sting claims, in the album’s liner notes, to be his favorite. Naturally — it is, as we all know, far easier to appear brooding and intense in a turtleneck sweater and scarf than in a T-shirt.

It’s a beautiful album, but it might not appeal to you if you don’t own a vinyl copy with the words “Songs From the Wood” emblazoned across the top. (It does, and I do.)

If you venture into Best Buy, you can find a two- CD/DVD set capturing the Police in the midst of the band’s reunion tour. The revered trio is absolutely on fire, and Sting is in rare form. That, as soon as the tour ended, he’d choose as his next project a collection of songs as far removed from the music he was making over the previous 18 months with the Police as is “If On A Winter’s Night . . .” strikes one as brave, baffling, maybe even perverse. It is, to borrow from the lingo a few of my Police-loving pals share, a “total Sting move.”

It’s far from original to suggest that it’s high time for Sting to make a rock-based record. Simply visit any message board or “write your own review” section connected to a recent Sting release, and you’ll find plenty of comments suggesting as much. Sting has already put his boot into any potential future for the Police, too, claiming in the British press earlier this month that any further activity with that band would be “dreadful and gratuitous.”

Still, a guy can dream, can’t he? Sooner or later, you’ve gotta shave the beard, Sting. Winter is no match for the spring.•

[sockii]

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/844709.html

I really enjoyed reading this one...hope the same goes for you all!

Cheers, thanks for the link. Very thoughtfully written, IMHO.

[BongoBoy]

I'm confused.

So most people are angered by the "direction" Stingo takes with his music.

Maybe it's because I like to write freely, whatever song come out for me.

Isn't it HIS decision ? His craft ? his own challenges?

I would hate to HAVE to play a certain style.

I Love the rock shit too but this is like telling me what movies are good and what is bad. I decide.

Gets kinda tiring, everybody declaring what is right and wrong...it's ART.

Just my personal opinion.

I want a new Klark Kent album but I obviously see that Mr Copeland has advanced quite a bit with time. I look forward to anything he does.

(Sorry, this all just bums me out.)

Do what cha want Stingo, you've earned that right.

BB.

[plutonic]

I want to frame that article. Very eloquent, indeed.
I agree with BB, too, he has earned the right to do as he chooses.
I just don't agree with those choices a lot of the time.
*shrugs*

[sockii]

I don't think it's so much an issue of disagreeing with the choices Sting has made or not letting him make those choices. I mean, reading the article, the author does point out that he feels it's a "beautiful album". It's more that he's trying to elucidate why Sting can be frustrating to many, and why the album isn't necessarily going to appeal to those who love Police!Sting or Rocker!Sting.

And yes, I do think some of us nutters can be or at least come across as hypocritical in joking about or disparaging Sting for the lute album and this new one, while we gleefully embrace Stewart's own very esoteric work (Hello, opera. Hello, Ben Hur. Hello, tarantella. Hello, gamelan.) For me it's a matter of my personal taste - I just for whatever reason like the weird shit Stewart does. I like weird experimental instrumental stuff, knotty and difficult but playful tunes, happysad music that I can listen to for years, maybe kind of hate (or just not get) on first listen, but then I start to put it together in my head and it works, and every time I listen I pick out something new and totally Stewart about it (pretty much how I'm feeling about the Ben Hur soundtrack.)

But of course, that doesn't mean I don't pine to hear him rocking out with Oysterhead again sometime soon. Or that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the Police tour.

Sting's solo stuff has overall never done that for me, not the more rock/jazzy stuff, nor the classical/historical stuff. I'd like to think I give it a fair chance every time (haven't heard the new one yet, but planning on giving it a listen soon), but it just doesn't connect with me personally. So I don't criticize him for going that direction, if that's what deeply appeals, although I do find it curious that his last two albums have featured no new music whatsoever and it does make me wonder if writers' block of some kind is at play. I'd like to hear Sting do something instead of just reworking the classics. I don't care if it's rock or jazz or lute, just something new.

[TOWOS]

sockx,

you said it. Bravo!

[ltwoman]

Here, here, sockii! And thanks for the reprint, EQ.