The Police make a tuff little island out of the Hollywood Bowl...

The Police hit a sweet spot in about the middle of their Tuesday night show at the Hollywood Bowl when they fell into a fierce locomotive reggae jam on the song 'Driven to Tears'. The island rhythms came way out front and you could feel the change; that's better than all that 'Roxanne' and 'Every Breath You Take' stuff, n'est-ce pas? Andy Summers was losing himself in huge, prog-jazz guitar texturing, Stewart Copeland was beating his kit to pieces in a grimacing tirade of Caribbean drum nerd triumph, and then there was Sting, loving his minimal role as the provider of a bouncing, rising reggae bass line. That 'Zenyatta Mondatta'-era meditation was followed by 'Hole in My Life' - jam continuing - and into Summers fingering a calypso or even Afro-pop opener for 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic'. Once the meat of that radio hit kicked in, the spell was broken, but it was there for a sustained moment with this gorgeous, unbeatable band.

Now that Sting looks a little ridiculous singing such paeans to self-obsession as 'King of Pain', maybe that tuff island sound will give the Police a new lease on life. The threesome never wrote anthems, so the big, bold arrangement of 'Don't Stand So Close to Me' doesn't make it, no matter how they try, a chance to rekindle a youthful, generational statement. And when the band is too literal - like the photo-montage of big-eyed Third World children that accompanied 'Invisible Sun' - it's almost painful, even if Summers, Copeland and Sumners do care a lot about children, having, what, 17 children between them?

The charged reggae flow picked up again when they stretched out the boisterous lament, 'So Lonely', the pre-encore show closer. The form seemed to give it more impact. They didn't have to reach for the point. Sting wasn't even trying to swallow the meaning of the lyrics, which he seemed to be doing with other songs (some of those literary allusions just come back to bite you). He just let them be poignant. If this band plans to record new music in the future, someone please get them back to that studio in Montserrat where they once discovered a new world, just so we can all spend a little more time there.

© The Los Angeles Times by Dean Kuipers

Other Recent items