Sting

After the carefully crafted excuses that got me home early last night I headed of to see Sting at the MEN. As the forth ticket was obtained on a second order I was on my own in the upper right of the Arena. Unfortunately the MEN acoustics did mean the vocals came across a little muffled which was a shame. Mufi quite liked the first few tracks (his newer stuff I think) but I didn't feel it got going until he returned to his older stuff (Fields of Gold and some of his Police songs). Once the audience was warmed up things did indeed go well although he isn't exactly big on talking to the crowd. There was definitely a Jazz influence on a lot of the keyboard stuff (lots of long piano solo's). The light/video show was pretty good with expressionist style images being projected onto a sliding screen layout. As he went into his first encore he was

inspirational* and the final closing encore was a nice way to round of the evening. All in all an entertaining night although if I was to see him again I may aim for a smaller venue and not be lofted up to the Gods!

*Really, the algorithm for the next stage of binmerge

became clear to me during "Desert Rose".