Of all the new wave and punk era drummers,
Stewart Copeland was maybe the first and maybe
the only one to call attention to himself, to
distinguish himself in the genre as a drummer
one would admire, and, if one was a fledgling
percussionist, one to aspire to. He was, possibly,
the Neil Peart of the punk and new wave movement.
His drumming was over the top, inventive, active,
surprising, and fresh, but, in contrast to his
hard rock and progressive rock counterparts,
his drumming was palpably unhinged, unpredictable,
imprecise sometimes, unabashedly punk. Just
listen to the opening track, “Synchronicity I,”
and you hear drumming that is absolutely on
the edge of chaos. But, in the same way that
Rush was not a vehicle for its drummer, but
an integrated whole of three equally gifted
musicians, The Police were a trio of unparalleled
and perfectly matched musical gifts. This
is the only album from The Police
I have on vinyl, although at some point
in my youth I had all their records
(currently, the entire catalog is
contained in my CD collection inside the
indispensable anthology, Message in a Box).
Synchronicity is the pinnacle of a very short
but shining career as a band, a band of perfectly
matched musicianship, but desperately imperfectly
matched personalities. One of the best bands
from this era and this genre made a recording
history that was only five short years long.
They were, and Stewart was, a touchstone
of my budding musical development in the 80’s.
Synchronicity holds up exceedingly well.
It is timelessly great. The songs are terrific,
even the weird ones (the ones that weren’t
written by Sting, “Mother” and “Miss Gradenko,”
specifically), and the hits are absolute
giants from the era, and the performances from
Stewart, Andy, and Sting are the best of their
time together as a band, I think. Talk about
going out with a bang: these guys went out
on a tremendous bang.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Synchronicity, A&M Records, 1983, black vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
