Police Live CD

The Police: Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland.
Additional personnel: Tessa Niles, Dolette McDonald, Michelle Cobbs (background vocals).
Recorded live at The Orpheum, Boston, Massachussets and at The Omni, Atlanta, Georgia between 1979 & 1983.
This is a Super Audio CD playable only on Super Audio CD players.
The Police: Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland.
Additional personnel: Tessa Niles, Dolette McDonald, Michelle Cobbs (background vocals).
Engineers include: Eddie Offord.
Recorded live at The Orpheum, Boston, Massachussets in 1979, and at The Omni, Atlanta, Georgia in 1983.
1995 finally saw the release of the Police's long-rumored first official live album, the two-CD Live!. The first CD was recorded back in 1979 in Boston, for an FM broadcast during the tour for their second album, Reggatta de Blanc, while the second disc is from their final tour in 1983 during a tour stop in Atlanta. While the first disc is excellent -- it captures the Police at their most frantic and energetic -- the second disc is pretty darn uninspired (Sting's vocals in particular), as evidenced by the unnecessary and annoying backup singers that are detected throughout. Highlights abound on disc one, including early faves like "Next to You," "So Lonely," "Bring on the Night," "The Bed's Too Big Without You," "Roxanne," "Walking on the Moon," and "Can't Stand Losing You." And while disc two contains a few standouts ("Tea in the Sahara," "Every Breath You Take"), those dastardly backup singers make most of the songs sound like blah lounge versions ("King of Pain," "Synchronicity I," "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"). Still, the first disc of Live! makes it a recommended purchase to the serious Police fan. ~ Greg Prato
By the time The Police broke up in 1984, they'd already traveled the world and played before millions of people in hundreds of countries. Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland had come a long way from their first American visit, when they drove across the continent piled into a van and played in any dive that would have them.
LIVE chronicles The Police at opposite ends of their career. Disc 1 was originally recorded for Boston's WBCN-FM in November of 1979; REGGATA DE BLANC had come out months before and the band was still raw, a full year away from cracking the American Top 10. The stripped down sound The Police displayed shows a group not far removed from the evolving new wave movement, which dominated the charts in their native England at the time. The versions of "Walking On The Moon" and "The Bed's Too Big Without You" point to the heavy reggae undertones--whether in the dub-like dynamics of Summers' guitar playing, or the rhythmic interplay that Sting and Copeland tease each other with--that made the band's sound so unique. Rare versions of the band's first two independent singles, "Fallout" and "Landlord," are part of a set that was as close to punk rock as The Police ever got.
Disc 2 is from The Omni, a hockey rink in Atlanta, recorded four years to the month from when the WBCN show took place. By now The Police were huge, having graduated from clubs and theaters to arenas and stadiums; "Every Breath You Take" and SYNCHRONICITY, their first and only chart-toppers, ruled the airwaves. Any remnants of the first tour's gritty feel was gone in favor of a pristine sound, and a trio of back-up singers doubled the number of musicians on stage. Predictably, newer songs like "Tea In The Sahara" and "King Of Pain" dominated the set list, alongside older standards like "Roxanne." The upside of all this time spent playing together was that the unit could incorporate different textures into their music, attracting new fans without alienating die-hards.
LIVE shows The Police as a band able to leap the chasm separating the studio and the stage, with a brand of genre-hopping music that spawned imitators while defying categorization.Rolling Stone (8/24/95, p.101) - 3 Stars - Good - "...In Boston, the Police made bracing music because they bristled at the constraints of punk; in Atlanta they were taking on the limitations of pop itself..."
Q (6/95, p.140) - 3 Stars - Good - "...a memento and a reminder of why The Police were one of the great performing acts of their day. LIVE is better late than never."