Sting- vocals and some guitar Kenny Kirkland- keyboards Branford Marsalis- sax Daryl Jones- bass Omar Hakim- drums (and one or two others along the way) the Ritz, N.Y.C. February 27, 1985 performance quality: B+ recording quality: B+ source: audience tape (2nd generation) total runtime: 89:26 lineage: Naka. CM-100 microphones > Sony D-5 cassette deck (dolby off) > master cassette > copy > my copy > (all 3 are Maxell XLII-S 90 min.) soundforge 4.5 (WAV) > FLAC 6 > torrentially yours. setlist: 1: Roxanne 2: shadows in the rain 3: driven to tears 4: A children's crusade 5: one world 6: We work the black seam 7: bring on the night > when the world is running down 8: Moon over Bourbon Street 9: I burn for you 10: if you love somebody set them free 11: Low life 12: been down so long (Freddie King) 13: message in a bottle 14: need your love so bad 15: demolition man comments: Sting played at least 1 night (apparently 2) before this one at this location, and he comments in this show of mistakenly saying the night before that the blues originated in England. Not quite. I suppose Brits had their own kind of it, sorta. This is I believe Sting's 1st solo tour after the monstrous 1983 Syncronicity Police tour, and one of the 1st few shows of this tour, including music of his 1st solo album. It is the earliest non-Police Sting show I've heard so far. It's a Stud Muffin Production, not one of his best ones but even a bad Stud Muffin production is kinda like a bad 2007 N.E. Patriots game- pretty good to anyone else. This one isn't bad at all, and the Doctor (of SMP) loves Sting, with or without Summers and Copeland, so he made the (usual) effort to get a good recording. Sting and his band were in a good mood and form. The opening song in this recording is a duet version of Roxanne with Sting singing and playing guitar and Marsalis on sax. A similar version of Message in a Bottle near the end also is a "bare bones" version, but most of the rest is with the full band. I don't know if this is the whole show, but I think it is, except one song is missing a couple of seconds. There are a couple of edits in this between songs, and track 7 ends with fade out and track 8 begins with a fade in due to the tape flip (nothing missing there). This is the place to break if burning to CD. I'm pretty sure the 4 unlisted titles are songs from Sting's 1st solo album. Track 4 is somebody's crusade (I couldn't recognize the name). Track 6 is about coal mining. Track 8 was inspired by a book, "interview with a vampire", and the French Quarter section of New Orleans, La. (the same area ravaged so badly 20 years after this concert in 2005 by hurricane Katrina) and Sting introduces track 11 as if you recognize this one, I'd be very surprised. So I shouldn't be too surprised that I didn't recognize it either. Maybe all that should help an in-the know fan with a Sting thing figure out which tracks these are before hearing it. I don't know if this has ever been posted before, it is the 1st time I've posted it or had anyone else post it from my copy. I suspect this would be of interest to the many fans of Sting out there, and am hoping to have this up around the time of Valentine's Day 2008. Sting has always had good bands with him. No exception here. It sounds like some in the band here only play in a few of the songs. (including a couple of vocalists). I usually have a "band introduction" track if the whole band is introduced at once. In this show, it is introduced in a few different segments so thus no track for band intros in this torrent. (I don't like "overtrackage", and am pretty sure track 7 is the only one with more than 1 song in it.) Do not sell this recording. Trade freely and losslessly. - ** Thu 08th May, 2008 16:03 GMT -- This had SBEs on all tracks. I corrected them w/ shntool fix and reFLACd (level 8 w/ Verify). I also changed the file names. - Carlo. length expanded size cdr WAVE probs filename 3:18.45 35033084 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t01.flac 4:39.71 49382636 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t02.flac 5:35.22 59145788 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t03.flac 6:49.59 72286412 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t04.flac 6:33.33 69402860 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t05.flac 8:15.70 87482684 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t06.flac 8:15.38 87407420 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t07.flac 6:11.67 65602028 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t08.flac 6:17.47 66613388 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t09.flac 6:59.61 74055116 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t10.flac 5:04.07 53642108 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t11.flac 6:30.14 68828972 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t12.flac 4:42.13 49775420 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t13.flac 6:42.74 71086892 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t14.flac 3:28.73 36862940 --- -- -xx sting1985-02-27t15.flac 89:26.19 946607748 B (totals for 15 files, 0.5783 overall compression ratio)