Mark Blevis

Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland will take the stage tonight for the final date of their 30th anniversary tour. By all accounts, this will be the last time The Police play together as a band.

While I’d like to believe that there will be the odd performance here and there in the coming years, and that there is always the hope of a new studio album, I more practically believe that this is it. In fact, if you consider that there was 23 years gap in legitimate projects by the band prior to this current tour, Sting and Stewart will be nearly 80 and Andy nearly 90 if they wait that long again.

Frankly, I’d like them to start releasing the ‘missing recordings’ so that us Police fans can complete our digital music collections and the band can make good on their claim that the boxed set they released years ago was the complete recordings. In fact, it was missing key commercial releases including the Spanish and Japanese versions of De De Do Do, De Da Da Da. That’s right, Sting re-recorded the vocals for that classic in two additional languages and they were released on import singles.

For those of us that can’t be at Madison Square Garden tonight, Best Buy will be streaming the final three songs of the concert on their website at bestbuy.com/thepolice. You can also pre-order The Police: Certifiable, a live recording of their 2007 performance in Rio de Janeiro Buenos Aires as a DVD/CD set, a Blu-Ray/CD set or a three-LP set! The package is due for release in October.

Update: To coincide with the end of their anniversary tour, I’ll be delivering a presentation on what social media producers can learn from The Police at the upcoming Niagara-on-the-Lake Podcasting and Social Media Conference. The talk will explore content, production and promotion, how The Police approached those elements and how they benefited from their efforts.