Thurs. July 31 

Welcome back, my friends, to the tour that never ends. The Police - singer-bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland - will be among us once again, after circling back to TD Banknorth Garden last autumn, that after two summer shows at Fenway Park. This summer, they're at the Tweeter Center Thurs. July 31 at 7:30 with - and here's the really good part - Elvis Costello & The Imposters. Ticket prices range from $40 (somewhere out on the lawn) to $225 (up close and personal). We saw one of the Fenway shows, and it rather rocked. And here's a little story from my encounter with Sting the day before the show ...

So, there I was, last summer, at the Paradise writing about the band Fictionplane, a band that happens to feature Sting's son, singer-bassist Joe Sumner. The show was over, Sting had caught the last bit of, and, by coincidence, he and I were sharing the downstairs men's room. Yep, just the two of us, doing our business (one urinal apart, men maintain some degree of privacy, you know.) "What," I asked him: "No rock star pissoir?" No, he laughed, he was content to be wizzing with the commoners. Sting and I exited the loo, hands washed - all four! But there was more chat. We got  talking about the last time we were both at the Paradise, in 1979, when the Police had, he said, "ten minutes of material, and played too fast." They had to encore with "Roxanne" (also played at the beginning) because they had nothing else. Backstage, then, I remember him explaining how the Police weren't a punk band, really, but how punk had kicked down the doors, allowing new wave bands like the Police to rush in. That could have cost him street cred - like it mattered? - but he was honest about the Police then, and seems so now.

 "It's not a nostalgia trip," Sting said of this improbable Police reunion. "It's fresh, it's volatile." He likes the mischievious Bob Dylan model for re-arranging the classics. Songs change every night - just like they always did, he said. The Police were not a jukebox, then or now. Say what you will about reporters rhapsodizing about stars being human after all, but, ah, well, that was the case, here. One time, when he'd been given an honorary doctorate by Berklee College of Music - where his son briefly studied - I'd asked him - yes, ironically - as if this Dr. Sting thing might just make his head swell. He responded that it was probably imposssible for it to swell any more than it had, given his success. Cool answer.

There are no plans for recording together, but Sting said, there are no plans period. Everything's up for grabs. I mentioned one of Blondie's farewell tours, when the band members hated each other so much they were chucking drumsticks and debris across the stage at each other, sans smiles. Sting laughed, and said, no, this was not like that. We took in the Police's show the next night and it was a-level on sound and visuals, true to what Sting said about volatility and re-invention (Grateful Dead influence on jamming the hits) and thoroughly entertaining without being a long throw back to Nostalgialand. This still felt vital, some 25-30 years after that fact. Go figure. But rock 'n' roll's a mystery, isn't it?

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