by VancouverCanada on 03 Jun 2007 03:49
Reuters picked up Stewart's post here & it is all over the newspapers now. It is in today's Vancouver Sun. Section F, Arts & Life, has on F1 a photo at the top from the show saying "LAME VANCOUVER? F6".
On F6 it takes up half a page with some black & white show photos, with the headline "Sting, the 'petulant pansy,' and other Police flubs".
"SELF-REVIEW - That was a disaster says band's drummer after second show at GM Place."
Here is a cut & paste, I found it online:
Sting, the 'petulant pansy,' and other Police flubs
That was a disaster, says band's drummer after second show at GM Place
Reuters
Saturday, June 02, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing?
Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it's a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio.
A philosophical Stewart Copeland unleashed his vitriol in a posting on his website on Thursday, a day after the band played its second show in Vancouver, the city where it began its first world tour in more than 20 years on Monday.
"This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea."
Most of the 20,000 fans at the venue might not have noticed a series of small flubs, but Copeland, singer/bassist Sting, and guitarist Andy Summers were painfully aware of them.
Copeland started the show off on the wrong foot, literally. He tripped as he took to the stage, and then banged his gong at the wrong time so that "the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib."
He did not hear Summers' opening riff to Message in a Bottle, and Sting in turn misheard Copeland's drum intro -- "so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho."
They quickly recovered, but then Sting got his footwork wrong as he leapt into the air to signal the end to a shambolic version of their rat-race rant Synchronicity II.
"The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock," Copeland reported.
"And so it goes, for song after song," he wrote, with tunes such as Every Little Thing She Does is Magic and Don't Stand So Close to Me reduced to ruin.
"It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're the Police so we are a little ahead of schedule," he said.
Fortunately, no fists flew backstage as they did back in the Police's heyday. The threesome fell into each other's arms laughing hysterically, Copeland said.
"Screw it, it's only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it's time to get out of Vancouver."
The band's next show is set for today in Edmonton.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007