Best Weekend Ever? pt. 2

Riddle me this. Three riddles with the same answer.

What has the combined age of 177 years?

What wears a spandex shirt, a Hawaiian shirt, and two golf gloves?

When do three musicians sound like eight musicians?

If you answered The Police, you're right!

July 19th, 2008

So Lesley and I were still just a bit stoned the next day from 'The Dark Knight'. We feared that going to a concert after such a film would be some sort of a let down (wow, what nerds we are.) I was really ready for a great concert due to the fact that I'd had a real stinker of a day at work, let's just say when you're manager is younger than you, not as smart as you, and has little idea what they're doing, sooner or later...BAM! Like a powder keg!

We had intentions of eating somewhere nice before the concert, but that darn USANAAmphitheater, out in the middle of nowhere, I never know quite where to go. Lesley and I always end up at a big mall complex just off the Bangerter Highway. I remember eating at Quiznos there with Les and Jed before Radiohead, and Les and I ate at a crepe place before Prince...so this time...Crepes it is!

I got an ominous email from the amphitheater saying to 'arrive early due to construction and avoid disappointment.' We were about 5 minutes away from the venue, but it took us twenty five to actually get in and park. I was relieved that it was 7:25 when we got out of our car, and to our horror we heard...

THEY HAD ALREADY STARTED!

Now let's back up a second, One of the reasons we were so jazzed about this concert, and we were excited about The Police, was that Elvis Costello and the Impostors were the openers. I've been wanting to see Elvis live since High School, so the fact he was playing with The Police made it a must see event. Most concerts if you miss the openers (like Liars, who played with Interpol) It's no big loss, but the fact that we were missing freaking Elvis Costello sent us into panic mode. Lesley was positive that they must have started at 6:30 and we were screwed. We raced down the dirt parking lot, got through security when he started playing "Pump it up" and while it was obnoxious we had to listen to it while we were running to our seats anytime I hear that song I'll remember our mad dash during the concert.

We only missed two songs, only one we knew, but it still couldn't believe they started early! IT STILL BLOWING MY MIND! AHHHH!

Elvis and the boys sounded great, not just great FREAKING GREAT. The guy has about 24,000 songs in his catalogue, so it's stupid for me to think that he'd play ALL or even some of the ones I wanted to hear, but still it would have been nice to hear "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea", "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", "Spooky Girlfriend" or "Tear Off Your Own Head", but they only played for 45 minutes, so I was a bit buggered.

On the bright side it was cool to hear "Radio, Radio", "Watching the Detectives", "Allison" (sung with Sting no less, that brought the people to their feet!) and "What's so Funny 'bout Peace, Love and Understanding", which finished the set. The songs that they played that I didn't know where quite good, but I was hoping they'd play at least eight more songs that I knew...

It was a bit of a sin that they went on at 7:30 RIGHT INTO THE TEETH of the sun. They all were wearing sunglasses, but EC looked beet red on the jumbotron. I just hoped he wore some sunblock.

During the break Les and I got some cool Elvis T-shirts and got some water, and BANG! The Police were on. It was refreshing that they got ready, and came on, they didn't make us wait too long, but their old, maybe they wanted to go to bed or something.

I remember when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 they sounded like a shell of themselves and looked grumpy to be around each other, but they sounded amazing and looked happy and smiley on stage. Sting, in a spandex shirt mind you, looked like he could pound out 200 pushups at a moments notice. Stewart Copeland didn't miss a beat (must've been the golf gloves) and Andy Summers, all 65 years of him (that's older than my dad), made that guitar sing. Doing all kinds of crazy crap with that guitar.

Even the songs I don't like (do do do da da da anyone?) sounded great. The highlight for me was 'Don't Stand so Close to me' where Andy actually sang harmony, or at least appeared to. Les's favorite was 'King of Pain' which I thought they may not play, but did in the encore. All the songs I wanted to hear were played EXCEPT synchronicity #2.

Just a fantastic concert. It was interesting how it seemed to cross all gender, age and class lines (not race though, just white people ya'll). Lots of old and young, rich and poor, men and women there to rock out that joint.

So how do you top such a weekend? I don't know, we joked that we'd boo the church speakers because they'd be so horribly boring in comparison, but luckily better sense prevailed. We had weathered the perfect entertainment storm.