The Police - Unsynced- An Alternate Version of Synchronicity (1983) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

Here's an alternate version of the blockbuster 1983 album by the Police, "Syncronicity." This was one of the best selling albums of the era. It also wound up fairly high on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 500 albums of all time.

Guest poster Mike Solof recently got himself the 6 CD super deluxe edition of the album, which was released in 2024. It has some less interesting stuff on it, as well as a full concert from that time period. Mike boiled down the best studio outtakes to one album, which he presents here. Please read his PDF included in the download zip for more information, plus lots of photos.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 Synchronicity I [Demo] (Police)
02 Walking in Your Footsteps [Alternate Version] (Police)
03 O My God [Demo] (Police)
04 Mother [Alternate Version] (Police)
05 Miss Gradenko [Alternate Mix] (Police)
06 King of Pain [Demo] (Police)
06 Synchronicity II [Demo] (Police)
07 Every Breath You Take [Demo] (Police)
09 Wrapped Around Your Finger [Demo] (Police)
10 Tea in the Sahara [Alternate Mix] (Police)
11 Murder by Numbers [Demo] (Police)
12 I'm Blind [Demo] (Police)
13 Three Steps to Heaven (Police)
14 Truth Hits Everybody [Remix Outtake] (Police)
15 I Burn for You (Police)
16 Every Bomb You Make (Police)
17 King of Pain [Alternate Version] (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iEKQLPpA

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/BkbDYtOOdXlH9tk/file

The cover image was found by Mike. It's from some photo shoot the Police did around the time of the release of the Syncronicity album. A couple of the photos made it onto the artwork for singles related to the album.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 6: The Police

The sixth and final album from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the band the Police. But there are two days of the festival after this.

This concert was one of the last of a year-long tour the Police did to support their album "Ghost in the Machine," released in late 1981. They only performed two concerts in the tour after this one.

I read somewhere, although I couldn't find the exact quote, that drummer Stewart Copeland thought the band's performance was very good, but also that it was the beginning of the end for the band. The band members wouldn't get along well during their recording of their next and last studio album, "Synchronicity," with a fist fight even breaking out at one point.

The festival was so well organized that halfway through this final set of the evening, staffers went out into the audience and began picking up trash. That kind of approach set a new standard, since festivals had generally been ramshackle affairs prior to that.

This recording is just an audience bootleg, like the vast majority of the recordings of the sets from this festival. However, it's a particularly good one, enough so that it has often been mislabeled as a soundboard recording. I did my best to improve the sound quality in the same way I did for all the other audience sourced sets in this festival.

By the way, it seems Sting really liked the English Beat. He wore an English Beat T-shirt the day of this concert. And during the song "One World (Not Three)," Ranking Roger, one of the two lead singers for the English Beat, joined in on backing vocals.

This album is an hour and 31 minutes long.

106 Voices Inside My Head (Police)
107 Message in a Bottle (Police)
108 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Police)
109 Walking on the Moon (Police)
110 talk (Police)
111 Spirits in a Material World (Police)
112 talk (Police)
113 Hungry for You [J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi] (Police)
114 When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around (Police)
115 The Bed's Too Big without You (Police)
116 De Do Do Do De Da Da Da (Police)
117 talk (Police)
118 Demolition Man (Police)
119 Shadows in the Rain (Police)
120 Bring on the Night (Police)
121 Driven to Tears (Police)
122 One World [Not Three] (Police)
123 Invisible Sun (Police)
124 Roxanne (Police)
125 talk (Police)
126 Don't Stand So Close to Me (Police)
127 Can't Stand Losing You (Police)
128 talk (Police)
129 So Lonely (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gZyxoi8p

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/pvkytDAoiMcz1QK/file

The cover photo of Sting comes from this exact concert.

Sting - VH-1 Storytellers, Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett, NY, 7-15-1996

Next for the "VH-1 Storytellers" series is an episode by Sting, former lead singer of the band the Police.

In early 1996, Sting released his fifth solo studio album, "Mercury Falling." It did reasonably well by his standards, selling over a million copies in the U.S., but it didn't have any big hits in the U.S., a first for one of his albums. Only three of the songs performed here come from that album, "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying," and "Lithium Sunset."

This episode is rather unusual for the series, because Sting often stopped in the middle of performing a song to talk about the song structure. Then he would finish it off. That happened for five songs. It's an interesting technique, though I wish he would have saved the talking for before or after those songs.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 talk (Sting)
02 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
03 talk (Sting)
04 Message in a Bottle [Reprise] (Sting)
05 Every Breath You Take (Sting)
06 talk (Sting)
07 Every Breath You Take [Reprise] (Sting)
08 Fields of Gold (Sting)
09 talk (Sting)
10 Fields of Gold [Reprise] (Sting)
11 talk (Sting)
12 King of Pain (Sting)
13 talk (Sting)
14 King of Pain [Reprise] (Sting)
15 talk (Sting)
16 Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot (Sting)
17 talk (Sting)
18 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting)
19 talk (Sting)
20 I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying (Sting)
21 talk (Sting)
22 I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying [Reprise] (Sting)
23 talk (Sting)
24 Roxanne (Sting)
25 talk (Sting)
26 Lithium Sunset (Sting)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17161582/STNG1996StrytllrsStphnTlkhuseAmgnsttNY__7-15-1996_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/X4fu4R6x

I couldn't find any really good images from this exact concert. So instead I used a photo taken somewhere in France some time in 1996.

The Police - The Scope, Norfolk, VA, 8-15-1983

The band the Police definitely are part of my big BBC project, although I haven't posted any BBC material from that band at the time I write this (in January 2024). Unfortunately though, it seems they only performed for the BBC in the years 1978 to 1980. In 1983, with the hit studio album "Synchronicity," the Police were one of the biggest musical acts in the world. Then they broke up. So, since there's no BBC material from 1983, I thought it would be a good idea to post a full 1983 concert.

There's only one official live album from the main time the Police were together, 1977 to 1983. (There were reunions in 1986 and 2007.) That album, simply called "Live," is a double album, and the second part contains selections from two 1983 concerts. But I prefer full concerts rather than shorter albums put together from different shows. 

I checked out some 1983 concert bootlegs, and they mostly were a disappointing lot. Some are incomplete or have other flaws. Others just sound okay. This is a soundboard bootleg, and it has the best sound quality of any 1983 boot that I heard. 

There were a few problems with this boot, but I believe I fixed them all. It was complete, except the last minute of the last song, "Can't Stand Losing You," was missing. So I found another version from another 1983 soundboard boot, and used that to fill in the missing bit. A second problem was that the soundboard recorded what was happening on the stage so well that the was much less crowd noise than one would normally expect. So I tried to boost the crowd response whenever I could. But also, I think the applause after some songs were completely missing. I can't be sure because maybe they just went directly from the end of one song to the start of the next one most of the time. But I added in some more applause in a few spots where I thought that makes sense (including at the start of the first song).

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 Synchronicity I (Police)
02 Synchronicity II (Police)
03 Walking in Your Footsteps (Police)
04 Message in a Bottle (Police)
05 talk (Police)
06 Walking on the Moon (Police)
07 talk (Police)
08 Oh My God (Police)
09 De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (Police)
10 talk (Police)
11 Wrapped Around Your Finger (Police)
12 Tea in the Sahara (Police)
13 Spirits in the Material World (Police)
14 Hole in My Life - Hit the Road Jack (Police)
15 Invisible Sun (Police)
16 One World [Not Three] (Police)
17 talk (Police)
18 King of Pain (Police)
19 Every Breath You Take (Police)
20 Murder by Numbers (Police)
21 Don't Stand So Close to Me (Police)
22 Roxanne (Police)
23 Can't Stand Losing You [Edit] (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ERF9Aagx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/20BF7TkAyAzAb85/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/dV9Ln

The cover art is made up of two pieces. I found a photo of a concert ticket at a Police fan site, so I used a portion of that for the top part. I compressed it some to give more room. For the bottom part, I used a photo of Sting and Andy Summers at a concert in London in December 1983.

A Conspiracy of Hope, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ, 6-15-1986, Part 5 - Joni Mitchell, U2, & the Police

Finally, this is the last of five parts of the last concert from the 1986 "A Conspiracy of Hope" tour. The biggest name artists were saved for last.

Originally, Pete Townshend of the Who had been announced as one of the final acts for this concert. He hadn't played any of the other dates on the short tour. However, I saw the first one, in San Francisco, and I recall that a video of him performing "Won't Get Fooled Again" in solo acoustic mode was shown to the audience, to great applause. Unfortunately, he had to cancel at the last minute because his father, Cliff Townshend, became gravely ill (and in fact died later that month).

Townshend was replaced by Joni Mitchell. Although she'd had much critical and commercial success in the 1960s and 70s, the 1980s hadn't been good for her. Her talent was still undeniable, but her attempts to modernize her sound with synths and drum machines didn't work at all, and her sales plummeted. For this concert, she only played three songs, and she played them in solo acoustic style. Unfortunately, she avoided playing her classics and instead chose three musically complicated songs that very few people in the audience was familiar with. This did not go over well at all. She was booed and even pelted with objects. Rolling Stone Magazine at the time even called it the worst concert performance of the year.

However, in retrospect, there's nothing at all bad about her performance. In fact, these versions of her recent songs "The Three Great Stimulants" (from her 1985 album "Dog Eat Dog") and "Number One" (then unreleased, from her 1988 album "Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm") are drastically different from the album versions, and sound way better in solo acoustic format, in my opinion. It's just unfortunate that she didn't pander to the crowd's desire for better known songs. Plus, she only played three songs that lasted 15 minutes.

U2 hadn't done much musically since their 1984 album "The Unforgettable Fire." Their blockbuster album "The Joshua Tree" wouldn't be released until a year after this concert. However, their reputation had continued to steadily rise anyway. For instance, their performance in the 1985 Live Aid concert was widely considered one of the highlights. For this concert, they played a surprising number of covers, doing "Maggie's Farm" by Bob Dylan, "Cold Turkey" by John Lennon, "Help!" by the Beatles, and then finishing with "Sun City," helped by Little Steven (who wrote it), Lou Reed, Ruben Blades and Nona Hendrix. Their set was 28 minutes long.

But without a doubt, the most anticipated act of the whole concert was the Police. The Police were one of the biggest musical acts of the early 1980s, but they broke up in 1983, at the peak of their success. They attempted a reunion in 1986, but it didn't go far. Sting played the first three concerts on this tour as a solo act. Then, for the last three, including this one, he reunited with the Police instead. This particular concert would be the last time the Police performed together until 2003, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (They would have a reunion tour a few years after that.) One month after these concerts, they tried to record another album in the studio, but they couldn't get along. All they managed was a revised version of their hit "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Their set was 31 minutes long.

The Police were joined by Bono, lead singer of U2, for their last song, "Invisible Sun." When the song ended, they handed over their instruments to U2 for the finale, a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," with everyone singing on stage. Bono put a lot of symbolic importance into the handing over of instruments, since the Police were considered the biggest band in the world at the time, and U2 would be considered the biggest band after their "Joshua Tree" album was released. Bono later said, "It was a very big moment, like passing a torch."

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

088 The Three Great Stimulants (Joni Mitchell)
089 Number One (Joni Mitchell)
090 Hejira (Joni Mitchell)
091 MLK - Pride [In the Name of Love] (U2)
092 Bad (U2)
093 Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2)
094 Maggie's Farm - Cold Turkey (U2)
095 Help (U2)
096 Sun City (U2 with Little Steven, Lou Reed, Ruben Blades & Nona Hendrix)
097 Message in a Bottle (Police)
098 King of Pain (Police)
099 Driven to Tears (Police)
100 Every Breath You Take (Police)
101 Roxanne (Police)
102 Invisible Sun (Police with Bono)
103 I Shall Be Released (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iUvuykJF

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/VzAgTjpT2wCGk1R/file 

The cover photo, of Bono and Sting singing "Invisible Sun" together, comes from this exact concert.

Sting - Before the Police - Non-Album Tracks (1975-1977)

When the Police hit the music scene in 1977, it seemed they came out of nowhere. They looked like a young punky band just getting started, especially due to their short, spiky haircuts. But in fact, all three members had been playing music for years already. Drummer Stuart Copeland had been in the prog rock band Curved Air. Lead guitarist Andy Summers was even briefly a member of the Animals in the 1960s.

As for lead singer and songwriter Sting, real name Gordon Sumner, he was in a jazz fusion band called "Last Exit" from 1974 to 1977. Then, around the time the Police formed in early 1977, Sting also joined a band called "Strontium 90" as kind of a side project. At that point, the Police consisted of Sting, Copeland, and a guitarist named Henry Padovani. Through Stontium 90, Sting and Copeland met Summers. Summers soon replaced Padovani, and the Police went on to great fame and fortune.

This album contains what I consider the best of Sting's music before the Police got big. I selected the songs I liked the most from both Last Exit and Strontium 90. Both bands had two lead vocalists. My job was made easier by only selecting the lead vocals by Sting. He wrote nearly all of the songs as well (with a cover of Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" an exception). As a result, this sounds much like a lost Police album, though with more of a jazzy sound than a reggae/ new wave one.

I think the music here is quite good. I was very selective, making a rather short album of only the best songs. A couple of them were reworked in Police songs, and there are bits and pieces of others that got recycled as well. Also, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" was a big hit for the Police in 1981, even reaching Number One in Britain. This includes a version of that all the way back in 1976. It's billed as a Strontium 90 song, since it appeared on an album billed to them, but it really was just a Sting solo demo.

Everything here is officially released, though extremely rare. The Last Exit songs are from albums called "First from Last Exit" and "Savage Beast," and the Strontium 90 songs are from the album "Police Academy." These are all studio versions, with the exception of "3 O'Clock Shot," which is from the sole concert Strontium 90 ever did. The albums generally are compilations put together after the Police got famous.

If you like the Police, I'll bet you'll like this.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Carrion Prince [Ye of Little Hope] [Early Version of Bring on the Night] (Sting [Last Exit])
02 I Got It Made (Sting [Last Exit])
03 Oh My God (Sting [Last Exit])
04 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Sting [Last Exit])
05 I Burn For You (Sting [Last Exit])
06 Fool in Love [Early Version of So Lonely] (Sting [Last Exit])
07 I'm on This Train (Sting [Last Exit])
08 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting [Strontium 90])
09 3 O'Clock Shot (Sting [Strontium 90])
10 Visions of the Night (Sting [Strontium 90])

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700507/STNG1975-1977_BforethePlice_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Sting before the Police. I ended up using one from the first few months of the Police's career. This is a rare photo of him before he dyed his hair blond. The photo was black and white, but I colorized it.