For the last few tours, we've been to see Sting in the Bay Area, Oakland Coliseum, Berkeley Greek Theatre, and Concord Pavilion. We live in New Mexico these days. Sting has never played New Mexico as a solo performer, so when we heard that a date in Albuquerque had been suddenly added, we figured it was fate that we see him again. Wrong.
Tickets were handled by an outfit called ProTix. I got through exactly 90 seconds after tickets went on sale, and paid through the nose for what turned out to be garbage seats. I was told they were on the floor. Not true. Apparently these hosers put all of what they had designated as the "expensive seats" into a hopper, and when you place an order, the computer randomly generates the seat numbers - no picking. Might not have been so bad if they hadn't actually lied and said they were on the floor - if someone had said truthfully where the seats were, I could have bought cheapter seats instead and done just as well, without being pissed off. Can't blame Sting for this, of course, but it sure got the evening off to a bad start, after diving 180 miles to get there.
Concert was played at "The Pit", aptly named. It's a pretty good place to watch college basketball, but on this evening, it did a pretty good imitation of a steam bath. John Prine opened; kind of interesting, if only he'd lose the accordian player (the songs where the guy played keyboards or mandolin were fine).
Sting opened with a dull thud, singing Hounds of Winter like he had no intention of putting on a show at all - flat and boring. As time went by, we decided he wasn't all to blame; he was missing his guitar player. Dominic was on something and staggering around the stage like he was blind drunk; nearly fell _off_ the stage at one point. On Fields of Gold, Dominic dropped the last verse before the bridge and Sting had to jump in and sing over the wrong music until the band got back on track again. It seemed clear to us, anwyay, that they had to work around this the whole show. Through the first six songs or so, we were sitting there saying to each other "we've already got the albums, you're supposed to give us a reason to want to hear it live".
The show did pick up some energy towards the end, although the only thing this crowd really got into before the finales was Demolition Man (which I dislike). The horn section's scripted cheerleading didn't do anything, and when Sting tried to pump up the crowd, the event staff ran around with their flashlights and hurriedly sat everyone down again. He could barely get the people to sing back to Roxanne... Oh, as usual, the ladies in the crowd seemed to be heavily into Sting, but this time, it just didn't seem earned. Pretty low-energy show.
Having seen Sting many times before, and spent reams of money on tickets, and making a 360-mile round-trip drive, the conclusion was it wasn't close to be being worth it. He can do so much better; hope he delivers it in Austin (next stop). Didn't even complain that the show was too short; I think it was considerably too long, actually.
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