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Rating: The Martians have arrived.
Yes: in Turin, Tuesday, October 2, 2007, the Martians have arrived. And they have arrived, as in every good saga worth its salt, from a past that is actually an incredible and impossible future. The Police are back, thirty years after the recording of their first 45 rpm (a creature now unknown to most), and twenty-three years after their breakup. They descended on Turin in front of sixty-five thousand devotees praying, shouting, singing, imploring, dreaming, moved, astonished, some even scared. All clamoringly in love. Because, it’s fair to let you know, Martians like these know how to make people fall in love, because they teach that everything is splendidly relative, starting with time. And indeed, it seems as though much less time has passed. Andy Summers has gained a few pounds, has a few more wrinkles, and has the look of someone you’d expect to see waiting in line at the deli. But, fundamentally, he was just thinner before. Stewart Copeland has glasses and hair more white than yellow. The rest is the same. Sting, the most Martian of them all, was turning fifty-six that very day (assuming Martians celebrate birthdays) (some say the day before... you see... the Martians...), and only has a slightly longer forehead. The rest is outrageously the same. My group and I, assuming we get there, will probably look like Cugini di Campagna and be doing tipsy covers at some workers' club in the Lowlands, unable to find our way in the fog without a caregiver. The Police explained to us (they are explaining it to the world) how music was made up until the crazily vilified eighties. With bass lines never banal, a highly original guitar that draws from everyone to imitate no one, and the most unusual, recognizable, and brilliant drums in the history of so-called light music. They explained that that music is difficult only for the lazy and spoiled listener of the "post-nineties", but is entirely accessible to those whose ear is trained to hear something other than the tonic thumbed on a distortion pedal sung by a whining teenage eunuch voice. The Police, perhaps, were the demarcation line of so-called light music, the last chapter of a beautiful story that held the market on a leash, instead of being held by it. Today's record companies, the missing link between the monkey and the stone, are too preoccupied with making Britney Spears dance in time or making us believe that the latest American pimple who discovered overdrive is a genius (and that we just don't get it) to consider that there might be something comparable to the Police today. And we will never know if there isn't or if there's no one daring enough to produce it. The fact is, my inner voice tells me that three crazy and extraordinarily talented blond guys arriving today at any record company with that music would certainly be left outside the door. Without even a coffee offered. But the Police, the Martians, showed us the other night that old things are beautiful and, above all, not old, like Mozart and like Miles. The myth of the new at all costs, of the latest release at any price, is a nonsensical gimmick well-orchestrated by the architects of the market and idiocy, riffraff living on the shoulders of young people's dead critical sense and their parents' overly full wallets. And, to make clear that thirty years have passed, the Martians displayed incredible expertise and professionalism. Sting skillfully and perfectly uses his voice, exerting himself in the first half-hour and the last, wisely conserving his energy with great illusionistic skill in the intermediate hour, knowing by heart the art of providing pleasure with less effort, and achieving the same results. Copeland possesses a taste that certainly does not need my poor words to be illustrated, and Summers, the magnificent old man, "dirtied" the sounds a little and amazed with splendid solos. In short: all like then but with the pocketful of treasure from varied and rich experiences. The fact is, everyone can make a monument to what they want. Together with the Martians and under their skillful direction, we did it on Tuesday evening to the past, to ourselves, to nostalgia, to falling in love, to good Music. Personally, I did it for that boy thirty kilos ago who, in front of the mirror, wondered why he couldn't do what Stewart did with the hi-hat.
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