Sting Fever

What better way to celebrate the first day of spring?  Last night Josh and I attended a Sting concert at the HMV Apollo theater in Hammersmith.  I have always been a huge fan of Sting and The Police, so I've been looking forward to this ever since I bought the tickets months ago.

Outside the theater

Making sure I got the date in the photo...

Josh was sad that we would miss seeing Bear Gryll

The tickets said "NO CAMERAS OR RECORDERS" so I left my camera at home -- I didn't want to risk it getting confiscated at the door.  But as soon as Sting appeared on stage, a million flashes went off.  Clearly, many people in the audience did not read the fine print, and no one asked them to stop.  Doh!  I took these photos with my iPhone, which is why they aren't very good...

View from our seats - darn that tall guy!

It was a great concert, with no special effects, choreography, or fancy costumes.  Just Sting and five incredibly talented musicians playing their hearts out.  Dominic Miller, who has played guitar with Sting for over 20 years, was joined onstage by his son, Rufus. (In the photo above, Dominic is on the left with the blue guitar and Rufus is on the right with the yellow acoustic guitar.)  Another newcomer was an AMAZING fiddler named Peter Tickell.  I looked him up online and was tickled (OK, pun intended) by this quote on his website:

‘You may be from the North of England, but you play country music like a motherfucker’ – Laurence Fishburne

Everyone sat down for the slow/unfamiliar songs

The theater was packed, and when the band left the stage after playing for nearly 2 hours straight, everyone stood and cheered through not one, not two, but THREE encores.  It's hard to believe that Sting is 60 years old -- he's definitely still got it!

Grand finale

Sting ended the show with a solo acoustic performance of "Message in a Bottle" and encouraged us all to sing along.  Not a huge surprise, but it was a nice ending to a fantastic evening.