The Police
Testra Stadium
Wednesday January 24

In the week during which Sydney played host to The Arcade Fire, The National, Rage Against the Machine, LCD Soundsystem, Bjork (and if you care, Bon Jovi) to name only a few, will not soon be forgotten. So in amongst a summer week in which we were seriously spoiled for choice, you may be forgiven for forgetting that the hottest ticket (just about, Led Zeppelin not withstanding) in rock was coming to a stadium near you also: the reformed Police, playing their first shows in Australia in roughly 20 years.

Say what you like about Sting; wife's toe sucking exhibitionist, most pretentious person with one name (thankyou, Conan O'Brien), rainforest loving, car commercial soundtrack provider, rocking a Fisher King beard. All of these are true. But none of them prevent Sting from hitting notes at the top of his range as though he were still 25, while moving around the stage on legs the envy of any dude who IS 25. Sting is a beautiful man, still. Let it be said. All that yoga and tantric whatnot has preserved him, somehow – probably thanks to things none of us really want to think about too deeply.

Forget Sting! This is the Stewart Copeland show! Clad in his Ghost in the Machine shirt, the drum hero demigod of the last three decades was there, resplendent, beating out those unholy, complex rhythms with that straight-armed intensity at warp speed – when he wasn't hitting that gong the one time, or dashing from kit to one man percussion orchestra and back. But wait – it's the Andy Sumners show! Another freakily ageless rockstar, there he was screaming out solos, back to back with Sting, cracking ever so small a smile at the roar that greeted him as he rang out the first unmistakable notes to 'Message in a Bottle.' You'd smile too, if you were responsible for such indelible riffs, be they from 'Every Breath You Take', to 'Walking on the Moon,' to all he wrote between.

That was the genius of the Police – essentially the three shit-hottest session players in the land at the time – joining forces, dyeing their hair blonde and marrying a perfect pop sensibility to that incredible musicianship. It was a recipe for nothing less than their globe conquering rock which brought reggae rhythms to a wider audience who might never otherwise of heard them before. And though Sting's lyrics have at times been the most thoroughly awful in the history of rock (see: 'Don't Stand So Close To Me', also known as 'Lecherous Old Man Pedophile Anthem'; or 'Every Breath You Take', also know as 'Staggeringly Terrifying Stalker Anthem'; or 'Can't Stand Losing You', also knows as 'Psychotically Unable To Cope With A Break-Up'), I would defy any one person who was in the stadium to resist the pull of belting "Rrrrrrrrox-AAAANNE!" at the top of their lungs with 40,000 other people. You couldn't.

Just having the three members of the Police sharing a stage without getting into a fistfight is a sight to behold in itself. This was far from nostalgic, rote, going through the motions: this was the band who were in the 80s the Biggest in the World, showing everyone exactly why that once was the case – and proving they could still take all comers right now, should they want to. Apart from a strange interlude during which Sting played pan-pipes (it could have been worse) over an animated montage of a dinosaur skeleton (stay with me), it was nothing but balls to the wall hits from start to finish. There may never be another Police album, but with this much back catalogue gold, does it really matter? Showered in applause as they were, taking their bows joined at the hand two encores later, witnesses would have to say not.

[Originally published in The Brag]