OK, let me take a few moments to gloat here because...
I MET STING TONIGHT! Yes! Got to shake his hand and talk to him for a minute. Definitely a thrill considering I've spent years worshiping this guy
Here's how it happened...
I attended tonight's (7/23) Sting show at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I was there with my nephew and a friend of mine. My nephew works with a girl who is Vinnie Colauita's second cousin (isn't it always someone's cousin or a friend of a friend?). The girl had backstage passes and promised to try to get us some.
Anyway, we never heard from her as the show drew near, and we figured she couldn't get any. But lo and behold, we're sitting in our seats tonight and she happens to spot us in the crowd between Lyle Lovett's set and Sting's show, and she hands us two "Sting VIP" stickers. My nephew and I took them and used them to get into an area near the side of the stage where cocktails were sold and supposedly important people could mingle. Unfortunately, the stickers themselves would not get us back to see Sting.
So we see the girl who works with my nephew talking to a Blossom security guard next to a flight of stairs leading behind the main stage building to a patio-type area. The guard tells us we'd have to have these special purple stickers in addition to the VIP stickers in order to get down there. The girl who got us the VIP stickers already had this purple sticker, as did the rest of her family who were with her.
Anyway, to make a long story short, after some begging and pleading, the security guard looks at me and my nephew and says, "OK, let's just say I didn't notice you didn't have the right passes. Go ahead." And he lets us go down to this patio area, where several people are relaxing and waiting for Sting to come out before the show and mingle a bit (this is usually done after the show, I guess, but Sting had to do it before hand because he was on a tight travel schedule after the performance.)
After a couple minutes of waiting, Vinnie comes out and hugs some of his family members whom we had accompanied. The girl my nephew works with introduces us to Vinnie, telling him we're both huge fans. Vinnie shakes our hands and says some real nice "how ya doin'?" kind of words.
So as Vinnie is talking to his cousins, my nephew and I are nervously looking through these windows into the building from which we assume Sting is going to come out. And sure enough, after about five minutes, there he is, looking a bit scruffy with a gray-tinged goatee and wearing a t-shirt and very baggy sweats. We almost trip over ourselves standing up to go over and meet him as he comes out the door.
He shook our hands and said some very pleasant hellos, being as polite as a man possibly can when he's trying to meet 25 people in a 3-minute space. He went over to the other side of the patio to meet some other people, and when he came back I struck up a 30-second conversation with him, asking him a couple of obscure musical questions about "Lazarus Heart" (one of my favorite all-time songs.) We then get pictures taken together with Sting and Vinnie's family, and as quickly as he appeared, he was gone back into the building to get ready for the show, which started about 15 minutes later. (He changed from the t-shirt and baggy sweats into the multi-colored shirt I believe Carolyn talked about it her concert review.)
Anyway, my impressions of the man were that he was very nice, very polite in a situation he probably faces everywhere he goes. He took time to look us each in the eye and say hello, making sure to answer any questions we had. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we weren't allowed to ask for autographs, but at least I have the memory.
Pretty cool, eh?
I'm not going to go into much detail because the reviews of his recent shows that have already been posted do a good job summing up the performance. Suffice to say, I've seen Sting play live five times in my life, and this was the best one yet. His voice was great, the band rocked and the crowd was very into it. Being a sax player, I was very impressed by the sax man Sting has with him on this tour (can't remember the name...Butch Jones, maybe?). He played some nice soprano on "Brought to My Senses" and "Englishman in New York" and did some great tenor work on the other tunes. He and the trombonist really hammed it up throughout the show, providing some added entertainment.
Here's the set list from the show:
Lyle Lovett opened the show with a really entertaining set. As mentioned in other posts, he also did a nice job singing a duet with Sting on "I'm So Happy, I Can't Stop Crying."
Looking over the set list, I believe it's pretty much the same as, for example, Sting's June 30th show in Charlotte, North Carolina, except Sting played two songs in Charlotte ("Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" and "Mad About You") he didn't play tonight. Oh well...
All in all, a fantastic show, well worth the $50 or so I paid to VH-1. And incidentally, my VH-1 seats were very close (16th row) but were all the way over to the far left of the stage, so much so that I couldn't see Vinnie or his kit at all throughout the show. The only disappointment of the night...
You are visitor
since this page was redesigned on December 1, 1997.
Index 
The Web's Too Big Without You!
Items For Sale Who
Am I? What's New?
Again, thanks for visiting my homepage. I hope you will come back and visit soon.
For questions, comments or information on this home page, please send e-mail to blueturtles01@hotmail.com.
This page hosted by 
. Get your own Free Home Page.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 , 2001 by blueturtles01@hotmail.com. All rights reserved.