New love for Synchronicity

[animal]

DirtyMartini & nathanarizona

Now I'm going to have to dig out my old Queen Vinyl.

I also rememeber a quote from Freddie saying he was a "musical prositute."

I remember listening to a Sting concert on the radio. Sting dedicated Fragile to Freddie after his death.

"How Fragile We Are!"


OMG I just looked at the date. I can't believe It's nearly 15 Years and that I was at Wembley Stadium for The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

[DirtyMartini]

Oh, animal. You're going to make me cry. I really miss Freddie's balls-to-the-wall over-the-top fuck-you-all-and-a-bag-of-crisps Drama-with-a-capital-D-ness. Plus his vocal range was positively inhuman.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

I dunno, guys (& gals). I think I can make a case for Ghost, for the simple reason that the Too Much/Rehumanize/One World trifecta may be one of the best consecutive triple headers in modern rock history.

(You know, I really hate writing sentences like that one, because there's so much rock writing that's pure wankery - and in which everything is the biggest, or best, or most classic. I have no time for a lot of that stuff, mostly because it never seems to explore many horizons outside the obvious possibilities - usually the Beatles/Stones classic rock genre. Not that there's anything wrong with that - since two of my alltime favorite albums are The Beatles (white album) and Exile on Main Street - but I do think that folks who write sentences full of hyperbole often have not explored some newer or international music that they ought. But I digress.)

I'll grant you, there is some heavy production on this thing. "Too Much" opens with a horn section over Stew's snare (which sounds like it's in the back room), but fairly quickly Sting starts absolutely screaming OH! over Stew's beat....then howling about his mind in a muddle, which somehow fits perfectly over the pounding rock and roll racket in the background.

I'll posit this is almost a classic punk/rock theme. And this was back in the 1980s - before 24 hour cable news and the Internet. Nothing specific is mentioned - has Sting been reading about an armed conflict? It's just an observation about the world, in the same vein as a lot of classic Clash songs (Lost in the Supermarket, et al).

The horns would bother me more if Stewart's drumming weren't mixed so far forward, almost as noticeably as Sting's vocal. (I've always thought that a greatly underappreciated aspect of Stewart's contribution to the band has been his talent at production. Don't believe me? Go listen to the Klark Kent LP.) At 2:42 into the song, the snares are very nearly louder than the vocal. The atmospherics, in the form of the brass, sound to me like the kind of dischordant "information" Sting's talking about.

And after the classic fadeout, we go SPANG right into another really rollicking rant also punctuated mightily by the snares...and I sure don't agree you can't hear Andy in this. Again, the horns sound like they're intended more as background noise....Immediately Sting's singing about pulling out a knife. Then a policeman with a gun to keep him warm...

(Disclaimer: I LOVE this song. It's been one of my all-time favorites for two decades...so maybe my objectivity is failing...)

It almost seems more melodic to me than some other Police material, with Stewart's drumming holding everything together. There's a lot more Stewart in the mix at this point than on some other records to me.

Just a classic, classic rock/pop song, but here again the lyrics are about alienation. Nothing about love and sunshine and flowers in this one. Sting works all day in a factory building a machine, and yet the music is rollicking along in the background, making us have a terrific time and all of a sudden we're clapping our hands and dancing our asses off, and the guys have us doing it with a song about how terrible everything is...which is part of the sneaky glory that is the Police.

Another fade, and then we are immediately treated to one of the best drumming performances in Stewart's pantheon. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! like the sound of gunshots (does anyone seriously think this would be the same band without its definitive rhythm section?) And we're hearing even more about alienation, only this time it's amongst poor folks who are overlooked by the overweening media Sting was just talking about.

OK, so maybe my love for this sequence stems greatly from Sting's lyrics, but Jesus, Stewart is just resplendent here. And he's got some cowbell and strangeness going on behind the first chorus...then back to him just keeping the groove together...then BAM! BAM! BAM and a self-deluding trick...At 2:40 the song is almost entirely Stewart, way up in the mix, and with the horns sort of accompanying him. Then we build way up to the last chorus in the song and everything is a million miles away! And Stewart really lets loose, and my Lord I Can't! Wait!! to see this live...

OK, this sequence in its entirety probably really encapsulates why I have loved the Police for 25 years. We can all sink, or we all float, and here we all are nigh two decades later talking about a slew of reunion performances and it's darned near too good to be true.

[DirtyMartini]

Tee hee. I so love the enthusiasm in Copelandia.

I hear ya, Dive, and while I understand and appreciate your feelings for your trifecta, I'm afraid I just don't share in them. It's all a matter of personal preferences. (And no worries about the hyperbole. Everything with a grain of salt. And then maybe a shot of tequila. And some lime.) I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, if I may retort . . .

"TMI" I simply dislike. (There are only 2 songs in the Police catalogue for which I can say that, and you've pegged the 2nd one.) I find the lyric to be lazy, the melody average, and the production bloated. "TMI" has no white space. Yes, form reflective of content -- I appreciate the effect (and were I a fan of the song, I would no doubt emphasize it), but it doesn't make it sound any better to my ears. (Plus, I find the mix to be muddy from the very beginning, so the crescendo is a minor difference at best.) But mostly it's that back-and-forth late-night-talk-show conga-line horn riff that repeats over and over and over that, well, drives me insane. It feels like Andy has been stuck in the corner, working hard but straining to be heard over the arrangement. Although to a lesser extent, I find a similar problem with the drums. While we get some hi-hat at the top, SC then does little more than keep time for almost 2 minutes straight. There *are* some subtleties that he throws in, but they can barely be heard over that mind-numbing, bile-raising, Stingo toot-toot-toot. And even after he gets mixed forward, there's very little that really strikes out from the basic beat. There's some variation -- a few cymbals here, some 8th-notes there -- but not much distinction.

But those missing nuances are the elements that I adore, the details that distinguish a song and make it unique, both in general and to a particular band or musician: that rimshot crack that stops your heart or that sudden caesura in the middle of a full-on rush or that unresolved chord that makes you unconsciously hold your breath or that one lyric delivered in such a way that you can hear the singer's jaw clench. I live for that stuff. Even if the horns on "TMI" didn't physically hurt my head, the song has nothing to grab onto; it's noisy but generic. For me "TMI" is too much a house-band song. Only The Police could write "Regatta de Blanc"; I don't think the same could be said for "TMI."

[In the last couple days I have listened to that song more than a dozen times, trying to find the love; I really have. But alas, it's just not there. Some people don't dig "Murder"; I don't dig "TMI." It happens. But although I agree that SC's production skills are under-appreciated, I would caution you to speak softly about them. We don't want to see him disappear from Can of Beans into Producer Land too quickly.]

I LOVE "Rehumanize," so I'm with you there. It's got SC blasting away, keeping the song rollicking and spontaneous; it's got a lot of the airiness that I miss on many of the other tracks; as you said, it's got the brightness of the melody in contrast to the heaviness of the (fab) lyric (though I do wonder what SC's original lyrics were); Andy is front and center; and I dig the horns-as-sirens wail. (While I agree that the horns here are more background, I disagree with the suggestion that they were only background in "TMI": in "Rehumanize" they punctuate but in "TMI" they are forefront and incessant.) I'd prefer some more Andy in lieu of the hornsy bit at 1:58, but that's very minor. I like that the tune brings in newer Police elements while still having a bit of the older Police energy. And it has that wonderful, slightly off-kilter quality that distinguishes SC's compositions. Would be INCREDIBLE to hear during the (*gasp*) tour.

But after the energy and playfulness of "Rehumanize," "One World" feels like a let-down to me. The lyrics are okay; I don't mind the verses so much as the one-line chorus, which lists a bit cheesy to me after the fourth, fifth, tenth go-round. But I like the sentiment and understand why people love it. Musically, though, of the many one-chord riffs they've put together, I just don't find this one to be terribly interesting, especially since the arrangement leans so heavily on that repetitious loop of horns. (It's not in-your-face as in "TMI," but it is another continual presence from beginning to end. And it has a particular sound quality that I just don't like.) To me "One World" is solely about SC's brilliance. Although at the beginning he feels a bit constrained by the tempo, Stewart carries this tune: take out the drums, and there isn't much of a song left. (To quote Spec A! a million pages ago, "It's the drums, man! THE DRUMS!") Even though it's not my fave as a whole, I do hope to hear this one live: I'm curious to hear what Andy would do with it in the absence of the horn riff and would love to see SC beat the bloody daylights out of it.

To each his/her own, of course -- it's all a preference thang. But it really is such a kick to see how people's preferences shape what it is about the sound that they love, how what for one person is quintessential to the experience of The Police is in such contrast to what someone else finds to be quintessential. Crazy and so cool.

And of course, if Stewart just wants to rip up phone books this summer while Sting and Andy hum OK Computer for 2 hours, I'll be there. Cuz Holy Hecate, yes indeedy, we're going to see The Police.

[Wait and See]

I'm afraid I may have started this trend of writing very long posts-- I apologize.

Like I said...I think Spirits, Magic, Invisible, Omegaman and Darkness are among their better songs, but the rest of the album doesn't do much for me. Truthfully, it doesn't seem like they put much thought into a lot of it. I don't dislike Hungry for You, Demolition Man or Too Much Information, so much as they just don't stand out. They all kind of sound the same. One World does have great drumming, but otherwise there's not much there. Secret Journey has interesting music, which kind of foreshadowed some of Sting's later style, but the lyrics are pretty poor.

[DirtyMartini]

You influenced me to open my big mouth, W&S. So I apologize as well. Again.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

All right DM...pick a trifecta you think is just swell, and say why. Not piqued, just curious. It's interesting to me which elements folks pick out of things, although I gotta say I'm fairly mystified how anybody could not love TMI.

Especially you! (TMI? Get it? Oh brother...I'm losing my touch...)

Just don't say you don't love 'Everyone Stares,' or I might have to rend my garment and weep....

[DirtyMartini]

Tee hee. Honey, I adore "Does Everyone Stare." And I adore how you get the title wrong every time.

I'm not trying to piss you off at all -- hope I didn't. I just enjoy the conversation. (And I just don't dig Sting's blatty horns.)

I'd have to think about a trifecta. I know that I could pick three songs in general, but I'm not sure if there's a specific three-in-a-row that makes me weep . . .

[Divemistress of the Dark]

No, you didn't get a burr under my saddle at all. Partly why I like hanging out over here is that people have interesting, and sometimes challenging, idears...plus, reasonable people can disagree, as always.

Guilty as charged on the "Stares" confusion. What can I say...It's almost like I type the same things so many times that my fingers go on autopilot...(I type pretty fast, too...which runs in my family, oddly)...and we all did a lot of talking about that movie last year!

[DirtyMartini]

OK, whew. Just making sure. Though I can't pretend to always be reasonable.

And as for ES/DES, I think it's charming.

I'll go digging this weekend to see if I can craft a trifecta, though I can't guarantee the best results. The three-in-a-row bit is the tough part. But I'll absolutely try.