The Police were very good at documenting themselves. This video is proof of that! Filmed over a 11-month period this documents the Regatta De Blanc tour and then picks up on the Zenyatta Mondatta Tour. It all starts on February 15th 1980 at the Sun Plaza Hall in Tokyo, then in Australia, Cairo and Bombay (two very unusual places for a pop group to tour then or now). Then it picks up in August of 1980 in Spain (where they seem a bit under the influence) and lots of footage from the same show in France as seen in Urgh! A Music War. This particular show has an extremely angry Sting cursing and baiting a member of the audience for throwing mud and stones at him - which prompts Sting to give the audience the finger. All this takes place during the song "De,Do,Do,Do,De,Da,Da,Da" which creates kind of an unusual, surreal contrast to the song. Sting yelling for a roadie to pull this guy out of the audience over the piped-in background vocals of the bridge. All this undoubtedly pumped up Sting and they proceed into a rip-roaring version "Truth Hits Everybody". The film ends with a January 1981 show at The Variety Arts Theatre in LA where the audience had to be blonde (wig/spray/dye/natural) to attend the show. Preceded by silly-would-be interviews of the band with the then-just-departed from Squeeze Jools Holland.
The video is interspersed with the band making a video for "Next To You" with a bunch of sheep and videos for Voices Inside My Head, Canary In A Coalmine and When The World Is Running Down... all unissued on their 'Every Breath You Take: The Videos" collections for some reason.
Hopefully a revised Special Edition DVD will be released with even more footage of songs (and full songs instead of the snippet of song - dialog - back to song sloppy editing job that you get here). In fact if it is ever "properly released" on DVD it could use with a nice edit job showcasing one thing at a time. Along with much more footage considering The Police have miles and miles of live footage that they're just sitting on...probably collecting dust somewhere...that the Copelands are not making any money on.
The DVD would benefit with a lot of extras like The Police In The East BBC special and the Florida show that was broadcast on the BBC.
If you can find it, pick it up. If you already have it then you know that this the best released footage of the Police in their prime!
