| The Police — Flexible Strategies (Nov. 16th, 2018) |
The Police — Flexible Strategies (Nov. 16th, 2018)
NEW 6~LP BOXSET CELEBRATES 40 YEARS OF OUTLANDOS D’AMOUR.
Location: UK
Album release: Nov. 16th, 2018
Record Label: Polydor/UMG
Prize: £99.99
Duration: 38:14+41:52+38:16+41:03+39:42+42:45 => 241:52
Tracks:
Outlandos d’Amour (1978) 38:14
01 ‘Next to You’ 2:55
02 ‘So Lonely’ 4:50
03 ‘Roxanne’ 3:12
04 ‘Hole in My Life’ 4:55
05 ‘Peanuts’ 4:02
06 ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’ 2:59
07 ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ 2:55
08 ‘Born in the ’50s’ 3:45
09 ‘Be My Girl — Sally’ 3:24
10 ‘Masoko Tanga’ 5:42
Personnel
The Police
✹ Sting — bass guitar, lead and backing vocals, harmonica (2), butt piano (3)[33]
✹ Andy Summers — guitar, backing vocals, spoken word (9), piano (9)
✹ Stewart Copeland — drums, backing vocals, percussion
Additional personnel:
✹ Joe Sinclair — piano (4, 10)
✹ Nigel Gray and Chris Gray — engineers
✹ Janette Beckman — cover photography
Reggatta de Blanc (1979) 41:52
01 ‘Message in a Bottle’ 4:51
02 ‘Reggatta de Blanc’ 3:06
03 ‘It’s Alright for You’ 3:13
04 ‘Bring on the Night’ 4:15
05 ‘Deathwish’ 4:13
06 ‘Walking on the Moon’ 5:02
07 ‘On Any Other Day’ 2:57
08 ‘The Bed’s Too Big Without You’ 4:26
09 ‘Contact’ 2:38
10 ‘Does Everyone Stare’ 3:52
11 ‘No Time This Time’ 3:17
Personnel:
The Police
✹ Sting — bass guitar, lead (all but 2 and 7) and backing vocals, double bass, bass synthesizer (9)
✹ Andy Summers — guitar, piano (10), synthesizer (1, 6, 9)
✹ Stewart Copeland — drums, backing and lead vocals (7), guitar (3, verses and chorus), spoken word (10)
Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) 38:16
01 ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’ 4:04
02 ‘Driven to Tears’ 3:20
03 ‘When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around’ 3:38
04 ‘Canary in a Coalmine’ 2:26
05 ‘Voices Inside My Head’ 3:53
06 ‘Bombs Away’ 3:06
07 ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’ 4:09
08 ‘Behind My Camel’ 2:54
09 ‘Man in a Suitcase’ 2:19
10 ‘Shadows in the Rain’ 5:04
11 ‘The Other Way of Stopping’ 3:22
Ghost in the Machine (1981) 41:03
01 ‘Spirits in the Material World’ 2:59
02 ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ 4:22
03 ‘Invisible Sun’ 3:44
04 ‘Hungry for You (J’aurais toujours faim de toi)’ 2:52
05 ‘Demolition Man’ 5:57
06 ‘Too Much Information’ 3:43
07 ‘Rehumanize Yourself’ 3:10
08 ‘One World (Not Three)’ 4:47
09 ‘Ωmegaman’ 2:48
10 ‘Secret Journey’ 3:34 [?]
11 ‘Darkness’ 3:14 [?]
Synchronicity (1983) 39:42
01 ‘Synchronicity I’ 3:23
02 ‘Walking in Your Footsteps’ 3:36
03 ‘O My God’ 4:02
04 ‘Mother’ 3:05
05 ‘Miss Gradenko’ 2:00
06 ‘Synchronicity II’ 5:00
07 ‘Every Breath You Take’ 4:13
08 ‘King of Pain’ 4:59
09 ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ 5:13
10 ‘Tea in the Sahara’ 4:11
11 ‘Murder by Numbers’ (on cassette + CD versions but not vinyl) 4:36
Bonus Disc: Flexible Strategies (2018) 42:45
01 ‘Dead End Job’ (1978) 3:35
02 ‘Landlord’ (1979) 3:08
03 ‘Visions Of The Night’ (1979) 3:06
04 ‘Friends’ (1980) 3:36
05 ‘A Sermon’ (1980) 2:33
06 ‘Shambelle’ (1981) 5:10
07 ‘Flexible Strategies’ (1981) 3:42
08 ‘Low Life’ (1981) 3:46
09 ‘Murder By Numbers’ (1983) 3:43
10 ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ (Remix) (1983) 3:48
11 ‘Someone To Talk To’ (1983) 3:05
12 ‘Once Upon A Daydream’ (1983) 3:33
Description:
✹ Rare is the day we get to write about The Police. Ever since Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers threw down their badges in 2008, things have been fairly quiet for the group. This holiday season, however, they’re back with a new box set.
✹ Due out November 16th, Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings collects all five studio albums on 180~gram heavyweight vinyl, in addition to a sixth record dubbed, Flexible Strategies, which strings together 12 non~album recordings and B~sides.
✹ Each record — 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour, 1979’s Reggatta de Blanc, 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta, 1981’s Ghost in the Machine, and 1983’s Synchronicity — was re~mastered at half speed by Miles Showel at Abbey Road Studios.
✹ In addition to music, the package comes with a special 24 page, 12”x12” photo book that includes a ton of rare and unseen images from the band’s personal archives. So, if we’re lucky, we’ll see cute photos of Copeland strangling Sting!
✹ Formed in 1977, The Police are comprised of Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. During their existence their contribution to the lexicon of rock was immense. The originality of their music fused elements from both punk and reggae to form a brilliant new style that can only be described as Music of the Police. They exist within their own genre. Having sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide, The Police had phenomenal chart success and earned a multitude of accolades both public and critical, but they never allowed such peripherals to overshadow their commitment to the music itself. This collection features 14 U.K. and 18 U.S. Top 20 singles, including five U.K. and four U.S. single number ones and four U.K. number one albums and a number one U.S album.
Short bio:
✹ From their early beginnings, The Police were hailed as a maverick live band — a group that galvanized an already impressive studio sound into something otherworldly when performing. Combining controlled energy and evocative melodies, Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers played with the improvisational instincts of a jazz trio and the raw energy of a punk~rock band — a blend that made them one of the definitive rock groups of the 70s and 80s.
✹ The group originally broke through at the same time that punk was shaking up the music scene in the late 70’s. Each member came from a different musical background: Summers played with The Animals, Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers, Copeland was a member of Curved Air and had a brief solo career as Klark Kent, while Sting had played in various jazz fusion groups. The band manifested an understated virtuosity, applying their chops within reggae grooves and intricate arrangements. Between Summers’ trenchant and groundbreaking guitar work, Copeland’s deceptively complex polyrhythms and Sting’s loping bass and soaring vocals, The Police were indisputably the most adventurous ambassadors of the genre then known as new wave.
✹ ... In March of 2003, The Police returned to the stage for the band’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The three~song set included the classics ‘Roxanne’, ‘Every Breath You Take,’ and ‘Message in a Bottle’ and the renewed hope in music fans worldwide for a future reunion of one of the most innovative and influential bands in rock & roll. In February 2007, the group performed at The Grammy Awards and later embarked on a worldwide Reunion Tour that included over 150 shows in 28 countries and was met with critical acclaim. Although the band existed for just over six years, their contribution to the lexicon of rock was immense. They were the first band to fully integrate the no~nonsense approach of punk rock and the spirit~moving positive energy of reggae. Having sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide, The Police had phenomenal chart success and earned a multitude of accolades both public and critical, but they never allowed such peripherals to overshadow their commitment to the music itself.
By Tim Peacock
Published on November 15, 2018
✹ ‘Flexible Strategies’: Recovering The Police’s Most Arresting Rarities
✹ A collection of B~sides and rarities, ‘Flexible Strategies’ proves what a versatile group The Police were, and reveals a number of long~lost gems along the way.
✹ Bearing in mind their canon includes enduring hits such as ‘Roxanne’, ‘Message In A Bottle’, ‘Walking On The Moon’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’, it’s safe to say that The Police remain one of rock’s great singles bands. However, as their collection of B~sides and rarities, Flexible Strategies, demonstrates, they also kept a gem or three in reserve when it came to their flipsides.
✹ Issued as part of the band’s exhaustive, career~spanning 6LP box set, Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings, the vault~scouring collection is extremely welcome, not least because the post~millennial CD reissues of the band’s five studio albums eschewed its 12 standalone B~sides, which have also previously been hard to source digitally.
✹ Largely familiar to the diehards, the material on Flexible Strategies provides a fascinating alternative history of Sting and co’s work, and shows just how rapidly they evolved from punk~era hopefuls of 1977 to the all~conquering rock legends responsible for 1983’s multi~platinum~selling Synchronicity.
✹ Allowing for a few wonderfully eccentric diversions, Flexible Strategies mirrors this remarkable career arc. ‘Can’t Stand Losing You”s frenetic, pumped~up B~side, ‘Dead End Job’, and ‘Walking On The Moon’s beefy, Sex Pistols~esque flip, ‘Visions Of The Night’, both featured in The Police’s earliest live sets, while the manic ‘Landlord’ (a scathing and still frighteningly prescient critique of squat~level living and/or homelessness in London) made for a quixotic, rubber~burning companion for the iconic ‘Message In A Bottle’.
✹ Moving forward, the aggression subsides a tad and the tracks become increasingly sophisticated, with the iconic new wavers showing off their chops on the George Clinton~esque funk of ‘Flexible Strategies’ and displaying an admirable restraint on the dreamy Sting/Andy Summers co~write ‘Once Upon A Daydream’. Further pleasant surprises also lurk courtesy of the vivid, cinematic ‘Low Life’ and ‘Murder By Numbers’, the latter an eerie, jazz~flavoured outing which previously graced the flip of ‘Every Breath You Take’ and presaged the sound of Sting’s solo debut, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles.
✹ As a unit, The Police will always be associated with Sting’s songwriting prowess, yet Flexible Strategies reminds us that his cohorts also fought hard for their credits. Drummer Stewart Copeland’s ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’ B~side, ‘A Sermon’, is stuffed with sharp hooks that stand among the best of the group’s work.
✹ Elsewhere, guitarist Andy Summers (whose Zenyatta Mondatta highlight, ‘Behind My Camel’, won a Best Instrumental Grammy in 1982) weighs in with a diverse selection of tracks, including the atmospheric instrumental ‘Shambelle’, the disarmingly frank break~up song ‘Someone To Talk To’ and the brilliantly arcane ‘Friends’: a cheerful song about cannibalism based upon Robert Heinlein’s sci~fi novel Stranger In A Strange Land, and which was originally paired with the chart~topping ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’. Throw in a robust 1983 re~recording of Outlandos D’Amour’s ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ and you’ve got a quirky compendium akin to The Who’s Odds & Sods or The Jam’s Extras, rating as an essential album on its own terms.
✹ https://www.udiscovermusic.com/
Website: https://www.thepolice.com/
_____________________________________________________________
| The Police — Flexible Strategies (Nov. 16th, 2018) |
Location: UK
Album release: Nov. 16th, 2018
Record Label: Polydor/UMG
Prize: £99.99
Duration: 38:14+41:52+38:16+41:03+39:42+42:45 => 241:52
Tracks:
Outlandos d’Amour (1978) 38:14
01 ‘Next to You’ 2:55
02 ‘So Lonely’ 4:50
03 ‘Roxanne’ 3:12
04 ‘Hole in My Life’ 4:55
05 ‘Peanuts’ 4:02
06 ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’ 2:59
07 ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ 2:55
08 ‘Born in the ’50s’ 3:45
09 ‘Be My Girl — Sally’ 3:24
10 ‘Masoko Tanga’ 5:42
Personnel
The Police
✹ Sting — bass guitar, lead and backing vocals, harmonica (2), butt piano (3)[33]
✹ Andy Summers — guitar, backing vocals, spoken word (9), piano (9)
✹ Stewart Copeland — drums, backing vocals, percussion
Additional personnel:
✹ Joe Sinclair — piano (4, 10)
✹ Nigel Gray and Chris Gray — engineers
✹ Janette Beckman — cover photography
Reggatta de Blanc (1979) 41:52
01 ‘Message in a Bottle’ 4:51
02 ‘Reggatta de Blanc’ 3:06
03 ‘It’s Alright for You’ 3:13
04 ‘Bring on the Night’ 4:15
05 ‘Deathwish’ 4:13
06 ‘Walking on the Moon’ 5:02
07 ‘On Any Other Day’ 2:57
08 ‘The Bed’s Too Big Without You’ 4:26
09 ‘Contact’ 2:38
10 ‘Does Everyone Stare’ 3:52
11 ‘No Time This Time’ 3:17
Personnel:
The Police
✹ Sting — bass guitar, lead (all but 2 and 7) and backing vocals, double bass, bass synthesizer (9)
✹ Andy Summers — guitar, piano (10), synthesizer (1, 6, 9)
✹ Stewart Copeland — drums, backing and lead vocals (7), guitar (3, verses and chorus), spoken word (10)
Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) 38:16
01 ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’ 4:04
02 ‘Driven to Tears’ 3:20
03 ‘When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around’ 3:38
04 ‘Canary in a Coalmine’ 2:26
05 ‘Voices Inside My Head’ 3:53
06 ‘Bombs Away’ 3:06
07 ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’ 4:09
08 ‘Behind My Camel’ 2:54
09 ‘Man in a Suitcase’ 2:19
10 ‘Shadows in the Rain’ 5:04
11 ‘The Other Way of Stopping’ 3:22
Ghost in the Machine (1981) 41:03
01 ‘Spirits in the Material World’ 2:59
02 ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ 4:22
03 ‘Invisible Sun’ 3:44
04 ‘Hungry for You (J’aurais toujours faim de toi)’ 2:52
05 ‘Demolition Man’ 5:57
06 ‘Too Much Information’ 3:43
07 ‘Rehumanize Yourself’ 3:10
08 ‘One World (Not Three)’ 4:47
09 ‘Ωmegaman’ 2:48
10 ‘Secret Journey’ 3:34 [?]
11 ‘Darkness’ 3:14 [?]
Synchronicity (1983) 39:42
01 ‘Synchronicity I’ 3:23
02 ‘Walking in Your Footsteps’ 3:36
03 ‘O My God’ 4:02
04 ‘Mother’ 3:05
05 ‘Miss Gradenko’ 2:00
06 ‘Synchronicity II’ 5:00
07 ‘Every Breath You Take’ 4:13
08 ‘King of Pain’ 4:59
09 ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ 5:13
10 ‘Tea in the Sahara’ 4:11
11 ‘Murder by Numbers’ (on cassette + CD versions but not vinyl) 4:36
Bonus Disc: Flexible Strategies (2018) 42:45
01 ‘Dead End Job’ (1978) 3:35
02 ‘Landlord’ (1979) 3:08
03 ‘Visions Of The Night’ (1979) 3:06
04 ‘Friends’ (1980) 3:36
05 ‘A Sermon’ (1980) 2:33
06 ‘Shambelle’ (1981) 5:10
07 ‘Flexible Strategies’ (1981) 3:42
08 ‘Low Life’ (1981) 3:46
09 ‘Murder By Numbers’ (1983) 3:43
10 ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ (Remix) (1983) 3:48
11 ‘Someone To Talk To’ (1983) 3:05
12 ‘Once Upon A Daydream’ (1983) 3:33
Description:
✹ Rare is the day we get to write about The Police. Ever since Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers threw down their badges in 2008, things have been fairly quiet for the group. This holiday season, however, they’re back with a new box set.
✹ Due out November 16th, Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings collects all five studio albums on 180~gram heavyweight vinyl, in addition to a sixth record dubbed, Flexible Strategies, which strings together 12 non~album recordings and B~sides.
✹ Each record — 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour, 1979’s Reggatta de Blanc, 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta, 1981’s Ghost in the Machine, and 1983’s Synchronicity — was re~mastered at half speed by Miles Showel at Abbey Road Studios.
✹ In addition to music, the package comes with a special 24 page, 12”x12” photo book that includes a ton of rare and unseen images from the band’s personal archives. So, if we’re lucky, we’ll see cute photos of Copeland strangling Sting!
✹ Formed in 1977, The Police are comprised of Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. During their existence their contribution to the lexicon of rock was immense. The originality of their music fused elements from both punk and reggae to form a brilliant new style that can only be described as Music of the Police. They exist within their own genre. Having sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide, The Police had phenomenal chart success and earned a multitude of accolades both public and critical, but they never allowed such peripherals to overshadow their commitment to the music itself. This collection features 14 U.K. and 18 U.S. Top 20 singles, including five U.K. and four U.S. single number ones and four U.K. number one albums and a number one U.S album.
Short bio:
✹ From their early beginnings, The Police were hailed as a maverick live band — a group that galvanized an already impressive studio sound into something otherworldly when performing. Combining controlled energy and evocative melodies, Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers played with the improvisational instincts of a jazz trio and the raw energy of a punk~rock band — a blend that made them one of the definitive rock groups of the 70s and 80s.
✹ The group originally broke through at the same time that punk was shaking up the music scene in the late 70’s. Each member came from a different musical background: Summers played with The Animals, Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers, Copeland was a member of Curved Air and had a brief solo career as Klark Kent, while Sting had played in various jazz fusion groups. The band manifested an understated virtuosity, applying their chops within reggae grooves and intricate arrangements. Between Summers’ trenchant and groundbreaking guitar work, Copeland’s deceptively complex polyrhythms and Sting’s loping bass and soaring vocals, The Police were indisputably the most adventurous ambassadors of the genre then known as new wave.
✹ ... In March of 2003, The Police returned to the stage for the band’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The three~song set included the classics ‘Roxanne’, ‘Every Breath You Take,’ and ‘Message in a Bottle’ and the renewed hope in music fans worldwide for a future reunion of one of the most innovative and influential bands in rock & roll. In February 2007, the group performed at The Grammy Awards and later embarked on a worldwide Reunion Tour that included over 150 shows in 28 countries and was met with critical acclaim. Although the band existed for just over six years, their contribution to the lexicon of rock was immense. They were the first band to fully integrate the no~nonsense approach of punk rock and the spirit~moving positive energy of reggae. Having sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide, The Police had phenomenal chart success and earned a multitude of accolades both public and critical, but they never allowed such peripherals to overshadow their commitment to the music itself.
By Tim Peacock
Published on November 15, 2018
✹ ‘Flexible Strategies’: Recovering The Police’s Most Arresting Rarities
✹ A collection of B~sides and rarities, ‘Flexible Strategies’ proves what a versatile group The Police were, and reveals a number of long~lost gems along the way.
✹ Bearing in mind their canon includes enduring hits such as ‘Roxanne’, ‘Message In A Bottle’, ‘Walking On The Moon’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’, it’s safe to say that The Police remain one of rock’s great singles bands. However, as their collection of B~sides and rarities, Flexible Strategies, demonstrates, they also kept a gem or three in reserve when it came to their flipsides.
✹ Issued as part of the band’s exhaustive, career~spanning 6LP box set, Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings, the vault~scouring collection is extremely welcome, not least because the post~millennial CD reissues of the band’s five studio albums eschewed its 12 standalone B~sides, which have also previously been hard to source digitally.
✹ Largely familiar to the diehards, the material on Flexible Strategies provides a fascinating alternative history of Sting and co’s work, and shows just how rapidly they evolved from punk~era hopefuls of 1977 to the all~conquering rock legends responsible for 1983’s multi~platinum~selling Synchronicity.
✹ Allowing for a few wonderfully eccentric diversions, Flexible Strategies mirrors this remarkable career arc. ‘Can’t Stand Losing You”s frenetic, pumped~up B~side, ‘Dead End Job’, and ‘Walking On The Moon’s beefy, Sex Pistols~esque flip, ‘Visions Of The Night’, both featured in The Police’s earliest live sets, while the manic ‘Landlord’ (a scathing and still frighteningly prescient critique of squat~level living and/or homelessness in London) made for a quixotic, rubber~burning companion for the iconic ‘Message In A Bottle’.
✹ Moving forward, the aggression subsides a tad and the tracks become increasingly sophisticated, with the iconic new wavers showing off their chops on the George Clinton~esque funk of ‘Flexible Strategies’ and displaying an admirable restraint on the dreamy Sting/Andy Summers co~write ‘Once Upon A Daydream’. Further pleasant surprises also lurk courtesy of the vivid, cinematic ‘Low Life’ and ‘Murder By Numbers’, the latter an eerie, jazz~flavoured outing which previously graced the flip of ‘Every Breath You Take’ and presaged the sound of Sting’s solo debut, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles.
✹ As a unit, The Police will always be associated with Sting’s songwriting prowess, yet Flexible Strategies reminds us that his cohorts also fought hard for their credits. Drummer Stewart Copeland’s ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’ B~side, ‘A Sermon’, is stuffed with sharp hooks that stand among the best of the group’s work.
✹ Elsewhere, guitarist Andy Summers (whose Zenyatta Mondatta highlight, ‘Behind My Camel’, won a Best Instrumental Grammy in 1982) weighs in with a diverse selection of tracks, including the atmospheric instrumental ‘Shambelle’, the disarmingly frank break~up song ‘Someone To Talk To’ and the brilliantly arcane ‘Friends’: a cheerful song about cannibalism based upon Robert Heinlein’s sci~fi novel Stranger In A Strange Land, and which was originally paired with the chart~topping ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’. Throw in a robust 1983 re~recording of Outlandos D’Amour’s ‘Truth Hits Everybody’ and you’ve got a quirky compendium akin to The Who’s Odds & Sods or The Jam’s Extras, rating as an essential album on its own terms.
✹ https://www.udiscovermusic.com/
Website: https://www.thepolice.com/
_____________________________________________________________