Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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The Police
Charted: #3 in October 1981
In England, Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols took rock and roll for a long walk off a short pier. With complete disregard for the pre-existing gentry and their pompous musical ideas, they tore into twenty years of rock-and-roll history and threw it into the dustbin. To be sure, music desperately needed a good, swift kick in the pants. Unfortunately, rock and roll as a genre had splintered so much that it became impossible for it to be patched together seamlessly. Common ground became a very rare thing on the pop charts, and no particular artist could be said to be representative of the genre. Styles veered all over the place, with impassioned fans of dance music despising rock music, and vice-versa. This left the field wide open, and punk rudely attempted to fill the gaping hole. The human aspect of music making was all but lost, and it fell into the hands of the Sex Pistols to drive home the point that anything, even nihilistic anarchy, was better than the status quo.
It’s funny, then, how a band as premeditatedly calculated as the Sex Pistols would almost destroy all that pre-existed. With a love for the outrageous and a sixth sense that told him a change was in the air, McLaren implemented a search for the correct personalities to enact his vision. In this sense, the Sex Pistols were about as authentic as America’s Monkees. England’s reaction to the Sex Pistols was immediate. At first, nearly everybody was horrified that the British nation could spawn such a disgustingly filthy, untalented, and rude bunch of slobs. Because of the controversy they kicked up, they went through three record labels in as many months. By offending practically every human on the face of the earth who had come to be familiar with them, the Sex Pistols attracted swarms of attention. Johnny Rotten (a.k.a. John Lydon) was the band’s mouthpiece, spewing blind rage and hatred in every direction, and Sid Vicious was the band’s hood ornament. With absolutely no musical talent whatsoever, Vicious’ job was simply to be as unpredictably violent as his natural tendencies dictated. His complete lack of restraint, and the unsolved murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, led to his early death by overdose.
By the time the Sex Pistols’ star burned out, the entire English music scene had changed irrevocably. Practically every dead-end kid with a desire to play an instrument was inspired by the fact that such untalented yobs could be so damned exciting to see and hear. Within months, England was awash in a blitzkrieg of punk bands bashing out a do-it-yourself style of adrenaline-fueled vitriol.
In America, the punk scene was much subtler. For starters, the music scene barely acknowledged the Sex Pistols’ existence, and knew of them only by their curious live appearances through the state of Texas (which were covered by the national media), until they rattled to a collapse somewhere on the West Coast. “God Save the Queen,” “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and “Holidays in the Sun” were wholly British in their subject matter, leaving America even more confused and indifferent, while “fans” who came to see the Pistols had nothing better to do than pummel them with debris. None of their singles came within a country mile of America’s Top 40, and their only legitimate album never even cracked the Top 100. Punk’s fight was left to its first wave of interpreters, and there were many. The Damned, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, and Generation X all fueled this first wave but, with the exception of the Clash, they fared hardly any better in America than the Pistols.
It took a band as moderately punky as the Police to break down the international barriers that held off punk music. Talented musicians who decided to adopt the do-it-yourself ethic of punk, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland, and lead vocalist Sting (adopting stage names was common among punk’s early bands) trudged around England in a broken-down van, playing gigs virtually anywhere that they were welcome to set up. With their bleached hair and high-energy, reggae-inspired rhythms, they were welcomed into the European punk fold, but America still maintained a safe distance. A telling incident occurred on a New York radio station when the Police were beginning their assault on America. Dave Hermann, a popular deejay who was on WNEW-FM at the time, brought a clairvoyant psychic into the station and asked him if he could predict the future of popular music. Quite assured that he could, this prescient poser proceeded to remove his watch so as not to interfere with the “signals.” Hermann then played “Roxanne” by the Police, followed by some now long-forgotten track by a group known as Desmond Child and Rouge. Without hesitation, the clairvoyant stated that the Police track was doomed because the singer’s voice was much too grating and the music was too simple-minded (or some such thing). Desmond Child and Rouge had all the ingredients of typical late-‘70s corporate pop, and he predicted great things for them. Ahem. Hermann politely dismissed the phony and stated that the rest of us would have to wait and see.
Well, we didn’t have to wait too much longer. Desmond Child eventually developed into a well-known songwriter, but his band took the plunge almost immediately. The Police, on the other hand, attacked America with a vengeance. The band’s work ethic was astonishing. Like they did in England, they toured the States in a van, with their soundman serving as their chief (and only) roadie. “Roxanne” went on to become one of America’s first alternative hits, and each subsequent release got more attention than its predecessor.
By the time of their fourth album, Ghost in the Machine, the Police were international superstars. Unfortunately, the price of experience was a heavy load to bear. During their previous tour of four continents, including stops in areas of the globe that were isolated from Western pop culture, Sting, Summers, and Copeland saw poverty and destitution like they had never seen. Starvation was no longer a concept, but a reality, and their fourth album reflects the knowledge that so many people live with this pain on a daily basis. Sting began to express universal concerns in his lyrics, asking the Western world to employ its might to help. While the Police’s previous records had been sparse and limber, Ghost in the Machine became a lumbering behemoth. In conjunction with producer Hugh Padgham, the band layered an excess of synthesized keyboards on the album, along with countless overdubs, blanketing the already weighty subject matter in a web of bombastic production. With the best of intentions, the Police became bogged down by the weight of the world.
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” sounds almost magical among the dour surroundings of Ghost in the Machine. It captures the Police doing what they do best by combining a simple, upbeat love song with intelligent lyrics, a great melody, and typically fantastic ensemble playing. What other band of the mid-‘80s was lithe enough to float above the dense production of this song and make it sound easy? Who else could have presented a pop song that so seamlessly shares familiar and foreign influences? The simple escapism of the single was perfect for the post-progressive pop scene of the blossoming ‘80s. Balancing lighthearted whimsy with the personal/political concerns that are expressed in the song’s companion album, the Police were confident in knowing that they enjoyed the best of both worlds.
 
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