Tuesday, January 30, 2024

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://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.

5 comments:

  1. I missed seeing The Police in their heyday, having gone to school in a very small and out of the way location the first half of the 80's. But I did see them in 2007 here in Las Vegas. This looks like a great show!

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  2. I don't have much from this tour but this one sounds like a must have. Thank you.

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  3. Paul,
    Thank you for sharing THE POLICE from their prime year! Much appreciated!

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    1. Yeah, they were massive that year. Synchronicity was their best album, in my opinion. I thought they were going to keep getting bigger and better... and then they broke up. :( Then Sting went in a different direction.

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