The Police
Certifiable

THE REVIEW

One could, if they wanted, get pissed off for a multitude of reasons.

It was around Christmas, and double CDs and double DVDs, especially when it comes to "famous people", are the least the market usually offers to irritate us.

Then it was a reunion. The kind that rarely finds justification and reason for being in the heart. Especially when, in the year in question, it is the most profitable tour in the world.

In short, there would be plenty of reasons for criticism. Especially that snobbish and somewhat boring criticism, almost always a priori, resulting from shooting at point-blank range which never misses.

And instead, no. Really: no.

If music has a meaning, if knowing how to play has a meaning, if it makes sense to do concerts and travel the world with notes that have made us dream, jump, learn to play, to love instruments and harmonies... in short... if all this has any meaning, the latest live performance by the Police is a work one can scarcely afford to be without.

One reads the tracklist and says: "but this is stuff I already have, practically the setlist of one of the many 'best of' albums that have come out in recent years, not too far from the previously officially published live works."

And instead, no. Really: no.

Here we have a group of three splendid musicians coming together after more than twenty years since the official breakup. And each has had their own story. Summers has released fine jazz records (particularly one on Monk's music that I personally love very much, especially for the crooked and unpredictable similarities between the author and performer), Sting has released the albums we know, some magnificent others simply beautiful, and Copeland has done everything from soundtracks, to the Doors' reunion, to tarantella music.

I'm not saying everything is here and everything can be heard in this live show, but an attentive ear cannot miss the profound evolution of each of these musicians. Some of Sting's vocalizations would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, as unthinkable as the sublime "craft" and technique he has developed. Some of Summers' solos are equally unthinkable (both in harmonization and construction). Just as Copeland's drumming discipline would have been unimaginable then, while fully respecting his unique style.

And the recording is excellent, both video and audio.

Absolute perfection. Both in form and content.

Many tracks have been rearranged, especially from a harmonic perspective, and a lot of space is rightly given to the guitar solos, making it a full co-star.

Then there are some tracks that did not particularly shine in studio productions ("Voices inside my head", as well as "Walking in your footsteps", to name two) that here appear enriched and full of a "sense" they seemed to relatively lack before.

Even the famous, trendy production, previously chart-topping, comes out enriched and beautified.

In short: a little masterpiece as much as a live performance can be (and in my opinion, it definitely can be, and there are plenty of proofs of this). And yet another confirmation that these three Martians, as imitated as they are never equaled, are capable, in their sixties (some just before, some just after) of having the freshness, energy, and originality that would be wonderful to see in some twenty or thirty-year-olds.

But that's how it is: by now we are in a declining viewpoint, either due to the producers' and record companies' shortsightedness or, more likely, because of the natural decline of any phenomenon, even cultural. And, without expecting too much, we find a treasure in a box set made and studied to be a perfect Christmas gift for forty-somethings in 2008.

But, there it is, the quality is not a matter of opinion. And even the twenty-year-olds can and should listen and learn, and many, in fact, do.

And the Police today greet us (definitively?) with a splendid swan song.