Albums That Should Exist: US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982

Sunday, December 8, 2024

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)