Geek Boy's blog: I see old people. They're everywhere. They don't even know that they're pushing 40!

Major thanks go out to my good friend Jeremy! A couple months ago, Jeremy said "The Police are doing a reunion tour, and they're playing at Dodger Stadium. The show is just about sold out, but I've got two tickets. If you can get yourself here, you can have the second one."

Well, after (more than) a bit of negotiation with my wife, arrangements were made. I flew out saturday morning, and Jer picked me up at LAX a bit after 11:00. After a bit of lunch and a house tour, we went kayaking around in Alamitos Bay harbor, and around Naples Island, for a couple hours. Jer's friend Jeff joined us just before five, and we were off to the show.

There was all sorts of traffic going up into Dodger's Stadium, and after we parked, we had to cross two streets worth of active traffic to get from the parking lot to the stadium. Jeff said "so - are you any good at Frogger?" Turned out that we were, and we made it across the traffic to the stadium. Our seats were way way off to stage right in the first balcony, basically at a 90-degree angle to the front of the stage. We really should have brought binoculars! There were big monitors up on either side of the stage, and so we could see the band on the screen.

The first band was named something like Fictionplane, and they basically sucked. 'nuff said 'bout them. Next was the Foo Fighters, and they did a very competent set. In one song, Dave Grohl ran through the audience. They also did a great version of Everlong, starting with just Dave and then the rest of the band joined in. The Dodger Dog wasn't that good, even with ketchup and relish, but Jer and I did enjoy our drinks. Jer had a beer, and I had a cuervo "margarita"... I'm not sure they remembered to put in the tequila, but it was tasty anyway.

Then it was time for the main act. After getting the stage set up, the sound system started in with Bob Marley's "get up, stand up". Then, all the lights went down, Stewart Copeland hit a big gong, and the fun really kicked in. Stewart Copeland had expressed some concerns on his blog that the guys were a bit rusty when they first started playing together again, but they seemed to have tightened up their act. The only ugly spot in the first set was "Don't Stand So Close To Me," which was nothing like the version on Zenyatta Mondatta. It seemed slow and off-rhythm in a bad way. Here's a bit of Invisible Sun for your enjoyment...

They proceeded to power through a tour of the Police's greatest hits (and some of the more obscure stuff as well, such as Wrapped around your Finger), in two sets and two encores. Maybe the most amusing part of the show was in the 2nd encore, when they played So Lonely. "...all made up and nowhere to go, welcome to the Andy Summers show!" The camera guys then quickly flicked over to Andy's face, and he looked a little surprised. I'm sure it was scripted, since in the next pass through that verse he replaced it with "the Stewart Copeland show", but it caught me off-guard.

I was really impressed by Sting's bass playing - he had some really impressive grooves going. A lot of his post-Police work hasn't been that rhythmically interesting, but this stuff was good. There were some really good licks that fit nicely with the songs but aren't on the records. There was similar evolution with the other musicians' interpretations as well.

Of course, they've had some time to refine their thinking on the material, given that the Police's last album was Synchronicity, which came out in 1983. So, all the material was nearly a quarter-century old! And most of the people in the audience seemed to be people who, like Jeremy and me, really enjoyed the Police as part of the soundtrack to their high school experience. There was amusing people-watching in the audience - not all of us have aged well...

I don't remember the order of the setlist, but here's what they played: