Sold out (13000 people)
At exactly 20.00 Paul Carrack came on stage. I was really suprised about the good performance he gave. Everybody feel very enthusiastic after his show and the audience were ready for STING. At a quarter past 21.00 Sting came on stage, we all waited so long for this act. The soundmix was very good and I was really excited about Sting's strong voice. Two years ago I saw him in my hometown Saarbr|cken and his voice was very hoarse at that time. But he seems to be in a very good shape at the present tour. He was in a very good mood I think, he danced with the trombone and Saxophone player. It was a great pleasure to watch his performance. He wore his really sexy leather pants and the long leather jacket. After half an hour I take off his jacket, but unfortunately he didn't take out his zebra striped shirt.
I really missed some songs of Mercury Falling: La belle dame sans regrets e.g. I would really like to hear this song live on stage, it's terrific. The duet with Paul was unexspected, but fun. The rap part in between this song was inspiring. I like also the jazzy version of When the world is running down. Kenny Kirkland played extraordinary good. It was nice to hear some songs with saxophone again. His two friend with Trombone and Sax make quiet a difference to the other concerts in the last years. I like when Sting integrated more jazzy and soulish sounds in his music. And He proved once again that he surprises his audience with new arrangements and new version of his songs. And he gave a very good live performance which you don't often see from other great musicians.
It was a great evening and I will remember this concert very long. I hope the other concerts on the current tour are as well as this was. Have fun and enjoy it. Excuse my bad english please.
I was at the Stuttgart concert (Tuesday, May 28th). Paul Carrack (of Mike and the Mechanics) opened with 45 minutes of great music. Absolutely perfect! There could only be one musician to top his performance, guess who...
Sting opened after a 15 minute break with Hounds of Winter. He continued with some songs from Mercury Falling (I think the set list was the same as at the other concerts reviewed in "Fields of Gold") He even played some softer songs, that I didn't expect to be played. I liked the up-tempo songs more. He also played some songs from the older albums (I liked Englishman in New York best) and unfortunately just a few Police songs (e.g., the one and only ROXANNE, of course!). Sting's band was just great, everybody played their instruments and the result was a perfect work of art. Especially Kenny on keyboards did a phantastic job though he didn` have much opportunity to show his jazzy abilities.The rapping sax-player and the dancing trombone-man added the necessary soul and funk to the show. Some words about the atmosphere: the Hans-Martin-Schleyer-Halle was almost sold out (about 10-12000), the sound was perfect (I was standing right in front of the stage and don't know how the sound was elsewhere), the light show was wonderful, especially the pictues on the screens behind and above the band. To put it in a nutshell: I think the concert was very good, although Sting played for only 90 minutes. Anyway, perfect night, perfect music.
In some reviews of the Sting-concerts at this Web-Site one could read that the quality of the current shows can be compared with that of the "Bring on the night"-tour.
The sound, so it was written, is a mixture between Sting's current sound on "Mercury Falling" and the one on "Bring on the night". This is not true, even not a little bit!
I will prove this in the following, but at first I want to give some comments on the support band: Paul Carrack, a former member of "Mike and the Mechanics", did a great job on his first evening with Sting. Together with his band he showed a groovy performance and the sound of the band was very clear: The highlight of this show was the Mechanics' hit "Over my shoulder", where Paul was singing the chorus of the song together with the whole audience!
Afterwards, when Sting began to play his first song "Hounds of Winter", one could realise the sound becoming louder, but even much worse: The single instruments sounded very diffuse, Vinnie Colaiutas drums were widely overpowered, the Horn section could not be heard and keyboarder Kenny Kirkland as well as guitarist Dominic Miller sounded very dull.
The first four songs of the show were identical with those on Sting's current record "Mercury Falling". On the record these four songs were arranged brillantly, but in the live-versions of that evening they were a real disaster. "Let your soul be your pilot", for example, could not be played much worse than it actually was played with Sting' s voice being in a pretty bad and hoarse condition, the horns being much too weak and - what is most- the missing background vocals. Really disastrous!! (The "Bring on the night"- band has surely never played in such a bad way.)
Fortunately the sound and the performance of the songs became better in the further course of the show, but it has never become really good! One of the very rare highlights of this evening was the marvellous Kenny Kirkland playing a great piano solo in the medley "Bring on the night/When the world is running down": There he showed, that he is the best musician of this band by far and also one of the best jazz-pianists in the world.
But again one can compare this version of the song with that one on the "Bring on the night"- record, where Omar Hakim's drum-playing grooves far more than Vinnie Colaiuta's, where Branford Marsalis' saxophone parts are irreplaceably virtuous and where Sting himself is not too lazy to sing the beautiful "Bring on the night"- chorus! (He doesn't sing it in his current concerts!)
Almost the same applies to "Set them free": The drums have much more groove in the version played on the "Bring on the night"- video, and the female background vocals are really necessary for this song.
Now it's time for a final conclusion: By the above critic one could think that Sting plays really bad concerts at the moment. This is, of course, wrong, but it's a matter of perspective: If one compares Sting's current gigs with other current gigs of other popgroups, then one can say that Sting has perhaps a rather good live performance, because there are no really brillant live performances in pop-business at the moment.
But if one compares Sting's current live performance with his own one from the "Bring on the night"-shows, then it must be conceded, that Sting's current shows have at most an average quality! Sting's new studio record "Mercury Falling" is again very brillant, but "live" he seems to be without ambition and enthusiasm any more.
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