With no support act to tolerate, the great man strode casually onstage to the strains of 1000 Years. The intro was overtaken by the rapturous welcome back to Belfast after 14 years. Set Them Free was sublime as was a much improved Perfect Love - complete with "Monsieur Manu Katche" hamming up the rap, if that's possible!
After The Rain was merged with We'll Be Together and Dominic came to the fore. "It's nice to be back in Belfast - second generation Belfast, anyway" said Sting before launching into a tight All This Time, quickly following it with a wonderful Mad About You.
"What will we play now, Dom?" he said, "Whatever you wanna play, we'll play it!" My cries of "Ghost Story" went unheard as they launched into a brilliant Seven Days.
What came next was a huge surprise as I have been following the tour thru the newsgroup. I'm So Happy That I Can't Stop Crying appeared in all its glory, quickly followed by Fill Her Up. Seventh Heaven!
There was a short pause as Dominic changed guitars and threw plectrums at us, and then Sting counted "1 - 2 - 3 - 4" Every Little Thing - and off went the roof! The whole band were grinning for the entire song - Joyous is the only word I can think of. Next up was a beautiful Tomorrow We'll See - a much softer version than the album and with Sting camping it up - a real highlight. Chris Botti shone but it turned out that he was only warming up for Moon Over Bourbon Street. What a version! The ghost of Louis Armstrong took over in the second verse and we were all smitten.
Fields Of Gold was the perfect follow on and then Dominic began the intro to Brand New Day - a storming version - oh, and for those of you in any doubt - I was never more than 8 feet away from Sting the whole night so you can take it from me - he wasn't faking the bass! Brand New Day proved that 'cuz I love that bassline and was watching intently - rest easy - the boy done good!
Roxanne took us by surprise - at first you think Dominic's just tuning up but the Sting starts to sing it and the band don't kick in until "...Put on the red light..." - a very different version but damn fine all the same.
Up stepped Desert Rose and even without Cheb, I think he bettered the original. As it ended Dominic threw more plectrums at us and began to pick Bring On The Night - the band caught up with the roof!
Kipper was on form - Chris Botti made it look easy - Dominic, what can I say? - but Jason Rebello - oh my - I loved Kenny as much as anyone but I didn't miss him then - even Sting was grinning.
A huge bow, much handshaking and they were gone - but back they came and Lose My Faith had begun before we even realised - then came Every Breath and he played it at Police speed which pleased me so much - in my opinion it re-injected the urgency and menace that it lost when he slowed it down on previous tours.
Off they went - and back he came armed with his acoustic and so began Message In A Bottle - we sang it all as we thought he'd earned the break!
The show ended with Fragile - every line took on a whole new meaning and poignancy here in Belfast where so many times in the past "...flesh and steel were one". When we all sang it sounded like a prayer to me - I think Sting felt it - we certainly did - and the sending off we gave him showed we did - a real jersey dude!
P.S. I'm writing this to kill time before I go to tonite's show! I'm so happy that I........
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