Police drummer rips band's "lame" concert

Drummer Stewart Copeland performs during the opening concert of the Police Reunion Tour in Vancouver, British Columbia, May 28, 2007.

By Dean GoodmanFri Jun 1, 3:56 AM ET

The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing?

Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it's a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio.

A philosophical Stewart Copeland unleashed his vitriol in a posting on his Web site on Thursday, a day after the band played its second show in Vancouver, the Canadian city where it began its first world tour in more than 20 years on Monday.

"This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea."

Most of the 20,000 fans at the venue might not have noticed a series of small flubs, but Copeland, singer/bassist Sting, and guitarist were painfully aware of them.

Copeland started the show off on the wrong foot, literally. He tripped as he took to the stage, and then banged his gong at the wrong time so that "the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib."

He did not hear Summers' opening riff to "Message In a Bottle," and Sting in turn misheard Copeland's drum intro -- "so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho."

They quickly recovered, but then Sting got his footwork wrong as he leapt into the air to signal the end to a shambolic version of their rat-race rant "Synchronicity II."

"The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock," Copeland reported.

"And so it goes, for song after song," he wrote, with tunes such as "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" reduced to ruin.

"It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule," he said.

Fortunately, no fists flew backstage as they did back in the Police's heyday. The threesome fell into each other's arms laughing hysterically, Copeland said.

"Screw it, it's only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it's time to get out of Vancouver."

The band's next show is set for Saturday in Edmonton.