This article is not what you think it’s about.  Although I could write several articles concerning my opinion about the police force of our nation, the “Police” I’m referring to in this article are “The Police” of Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland, and Sting fame.  Leave it to us Baby Boomers to have to figure out how to do the aging rocker thing with dignity.  Somehow, I feel it must be easier to age if you play jazz or the blues but rock is just a whole ‘nother world un to itself.  I am proud to say that many of my friends who went to see the Rolling Stones when they performed here in Austin last year, were thrilled with the show that they were treated to and many commented how truly “fit” Mick looked strutting about the stage in all his glory and splendor.

Back to The Police.  There’s a review out on Yahoo about the recent Police concert in LA (Craig Rosen).  Ouch, ouch and triple ouch.  I don’t know how old Mr. Rosen is but whatever his age, couldn’t he have given a glimmer of respect to these fine musicians of yore and also today (more specifically where Sting is concerned)? The premise of his article was that The Police tried to bring in all their combined wisdom and knowledge of music over the years and re-create themselves into something even better. According to Craig it fell well short – even though they did apparently have several encores of “Every Breath She Takes” at the end.  At the end of the review, Mr. Rosen makes his last side swipe inferring that The Police are making this music for the bank roll and not so much for the music.  I wonder if Craig could benefit from therapeutic exploration.

I don’t know The Police personally, but I did listen to them regularly in college and kept up with what was written about their philosophies which leads me to believe that these guys are just not the type of people that would go through all the headache and work of touring if they weren’t in it for the music. Let’s face it, they can probably find much softer and kinder ways of bringing in the bacon if they wanted. 

My argument of Craig’s review (given that I wasn’t in LA and have not heard the “new” Police) is for those people to give aging rock and punk musicians a chance to get back on the horse and check out the new tack and saddle as they discover a different trail to blaze.  Who knows maybe a whole new genre of music will be created from the young and reckless of days gone by as they take care of themselves better and age more gracefully into the future.    I seem to recall that there were at least a few aging blues/jazz musicians who the new and upcoming bands such as Led Zeppelin listened to and emulated and morphed their music together into creating something new and different.

You’ll see—all you younguns of today—that you will feel just the same (and in some cases better) when you’re 55 as when you were in your twenties and you’ll wonder about all the glorious things we could have all created together if we had just been willing to put down our opinions and our judgments with every breath we took.