Sting in the Park

One of the bands I regret not seeing live is The Police. That combination of three great musicians is hard to beat and they did some amazing songs. I missed them when they reformed a few years back. I have seen that drummer Stewart Copeland is doing a tour where he plays Police songs with an orchestra and Sting is still touring too. It came as a surprise that Sting was doing a show in Bedford Park. Not only is it only twenty miles from home, but my parents live next to the park so we would have somewhere to park the car. We booked tickets for ourselves plus a couple of old friends.

The show was last night and the weather gods smiled on us. Just two days earlier there had been torrential rain in Bedford with some roads flooded, but it had not soaked into the baked ground.

My photos with the phone are not great as we were a fair way back.

There are a series of shows in the park as they make the most of setting up a big stage. We were only there last night, but on Friday they had The Jacksons and Sister Sledge. Tonight there is a concert of songs from musicals.

Gates opened at 5pm and we arrived at my parents' a little later. We had a drink there and could hear some music. Sting's son Joe was the opening act. We have seen him perform a few times at the Bowie Celebration gigs. He does look and sound a lot like his dad. We walked over to the park just as he was finishing. The tickets were via Ticketmaster and we had been bombarded with messages reminding us to have installed their app for the barcodes. I opened it as we walked up and it was struggling. Having 20,000 people gathered seems to overload the mobile networks. Luckily I also had the barcodes in Google Wallet, but others may have had issues.

The park is pretty big and has a vast open area that is ideal for concerts. There is usually a parkrun there on Saturdays, but the concerts meant that could not happen as they had put up lots of fencing. My friend @purplesinger was also there, but I could not find her in the crowds.

We sat on the grass in front of the 'VIP' area on one side. People in there had paid about £160 for their own bar and toilets plus some comfortable seating. There was also 'the Garden' which was next to the stage and a little cheaper. We were in with the masses. You could set up folding chairs, but only in the back half of the field that was surrounded by food wagons. We did not actually buy any food or drinks, but you could fill a water bottle. I tend not to drink much at concerts as I do not want to be using the toilets too much.

The second act was Dagny from Norway. We had not heard of her, but she has some nice pop songs.

Sting came on about 9pm. The screens were not huge and you could see through them, but they looked better when it got dark. He started with Message in a Bottle followed by Englishman in New York. I have to say he is looking very fit for a man of 71. He was playing his battered old Fender bass through the show and using a headset microphone so he could wander around the stage. The sound quality was excellent, which is not guaranteed at big concerts.

It was not a huge band. Guitarist Dominic Miller has played with him for many years plus there were a keyboardist, drummer, harmonica player and two backing singers.

We got lots of hits, but at one point he said "You won't know this one" and played a song we did not know. That was followed by a couple more I did not recognise. I have not heard all his albums, so maybe they were from those. He did get back to the crowd favourites though. We jumped around to So Lonely (aka Sue Lawley) and sang along to tunes like Walking on the Moon. I clocked up thousands of steps during the show. The song arrangements were good and a little different to The Police. Some were stretched out with the backing singers getting some time to shine. Joe came out to sing with his dad on a few.

Of course we had to have Roxanne, but had to wait until the encore for that. He finished by switching to acoustic guitar for Fragile. He played for about an hour and forty in all.

We did not have far to walk to get to the car, but with all those people leaving it took a while to get away from the traffic. After dropping our friends at their hotel we got home about midnight. Hotels in town were all booked up, so they were in St Neots.

There was some merchandise on sale of course. We just got some postcards to put on the fridge, but even those were not cheap. I do not feel the need for more concert shirts.

It was a nice evening out with great music.