Sting and Annie Lennox Live at the Marcus Amphitheater - 7/17/04 Jul 18 '04 (Updated Jul 26 '04)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line An evening of adult, Brit-poppy goodness. I don't quite know why, but whenever I go to a concert with two headlining acts and I'm only really excited about one of them, I always end up liking the other one better. Maybe it's that my expectations are too high for the act that I'm really going to see, and my lower expectations for the other performer open the door for some surprises. Whatever the reason, it happened again last night. So to begin with, the nice thing about going to a concert at Milwaukee's Marcus Amphitheater on a Summer weekend is that chances are, there's some big ethnic festival going on at the Summerfest grounds where the Amphitheater is located. This weekend they were holding Festa Italiana, and our tickets to see Sting and Annie Lennox's Sacred Love tour also got us to the Summerfest grounds. My friends Jon and Lisa and I got there fairly early to savor the cannolis and Sicilian concert bands before the show, and to soak in the atmosphere at Milwaukee's lakefront. As 7:30 approached, we headed down to the Amphitheater and found our seats just in time for the opening act. The name Dominic Miller wasn't familiar to us, but looking back now, I'm surprised I didn't remember who he is. Turns out that Miller wasn't just some unrelated act along for the ride with the tour, as so many opening acts are, but rather, he's Sting's guitarist of the past fourteen years. Miller came out alone on stage with an acoustic guitar and opened up with an acoustic instrumental version of Fields of Gold. From there, he went on to a mixture of original compositions and classical pieces, including Bach's Air on the G String (it's not what you think), as well as a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. After a few songs with a pleasant, but subdued reaction from the crowd, there came a sudden roar of applause as Sting himself walked out onto the stage and the two of them performed a stripped down Shape of My Heart, without anything to stand in the way of the emotion of the song. Miller's performance lasted only about twenty minutes, and from there the show moved quickly, with only a five minute wait for Annie Lennox to come out with her band. Now admittedly, I'm not all that familiar with Ms. Lennox's oeuvre, so it's a little hard to critique her selection of songs or to compare the performances last night to the album versions, but damn, does that woman put on a fine show. The set was awfully simple, with just a shimmery curtain hanging behind the band, but Lennox's stage presence was more than enough to light up the stage. She stepped out in a faded pair of jeans with a sparkly jacket over a dark tank top, ready to take charge. Lennox's set included a healthy mix of songs from throughout her career. Starting with Legend in My Living Room from her first solo album, Diva, and proceeded to leap back and forth between hits from that album and from her most recent release, Bare. Of course, she made a few other stops along the way, giving us covers of Bob Marley's Waiting in Vain and Lover Speaks' No More I Love You's, both from her album Medusa, as well as Eurythmics standards Missionary Man and Sweet Dreams. Lennox stretched her voice to its limit, letting her head voice soar on There Must Be an Angel, and immediately dropped down to a deep, guttural growl of Pavement Cracks. After a little under an hour, Lennox and her band left the stage for just a moment before returning with her encore of Sweet Dreams and Why, then waved goodbye to an ecstatic crowd. We ended up with about a half-hour wait between the end of Annie Lennox's set and the start of Sting's. To pass the time, Jon and I, being the huge geeks that we are, ended up playing Six Degrees of Sting (sort of like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only we had to connect random actors to Sting). We started out with Bruce Willis, and managed to find a link by going from Willis to M. Nigh Shyamalan in Unbreakable, to Mel Gibson in Signs, to Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, to Roger Daltrey in Tommy, to Sting in Quadraphenia. When we later found a shorter route by going from Bruce Willis to Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, to Sting in The Last Temptation of Christ, we felt awfully proud of ourselves, but the inevitable sense of disappointment and shame set in as we realized that it wasn't Sting who played Pontius Pilate in Last Temptation, but rather David Bowie. The whole time, Lisa just rolled her eyes and pretended she didn't know us. (And yes, I know I've gone off on a horrible tangent here, but it was fun, and I insist on embracing my geekiness. You should try it too. It's fun.) By the time we wore out our little geek fest, the lights dimmed once again, and Sting stepped out on stage for the second time that evening. At this point, the stage had a very different feel. Behind Sting and his band, the stage was crowded with moving video screens and lighting equipment, giving the set a much more crowded feel than it had for Lennox. Sting himself, dressed in a sharp black suit complete with jacket and vest, came out with a much more formal look than Lennox had had, and both his look and feel were just a bit more stiff than they should have been. Sting opened up with Send Your Love off of his recent Sacred Love album, any never strayed too far from promoting his latest tunes. Throughout the evening, he kept coming back to songs from his newest album, working his way through Dead Man's Rope, This War, Sacred Love, Whenever I See Your Face, and Inside, never putting more than one or two of his older songs in between before returning once again to his new material. With the exception of Send Your Love, which helped to energize the audience right at the start of his set, and Whenever I See You Face, during which one of the backup singers came to front of the stage to belt out the part originally sung by Mary J. Blige, none of the newer songs quite had the same powerful spark of the older songs Sting played. And in all fairness, some of the excitement of Whenever I See Your Face probably came from Festa Italia's nightly fireworks show that started up during the song. The bright (not to mention loud) display went off about a hundred yards to the north of the Amphitheater, and the bright lights and booms seemed to energize Sting and his band as they stretched to outdo the fireworks as the familiar smell of gunpowder wafted over the crowd. Most of the highlights of Sting's set came from his older material, including Fragile, Englishman in New York, If I Ever Loose My Faith in You, Seven Days, Fields of Gold, Synchronicity II, and Every Breath You Take. While Sting seemed a bit stiff while performing his newer songs, these older songs showcased a more open, more relaxed Sting. The only older song that didn't quite pull it all together was Roxeanne, which, clocking in at about twelve minutes, just seemed to go on a bit too long and felt a bit tired. For the whole evening, though, the real highlight came with We'll Be Together. The song started well enough, with the energetic spark that Sting was displaying on all of his older songs, but as the first verse progressed, Annie Lennox came out on stage to join Sting and make the song into a duet. As he played off of Lennox's stage presence, we got to see Sting at his most relaxed and energetic self, and Lennox's strong, powerful voice helped to raise the song to a whole new level. The show ended with just a bit of a letdown. After playing for about an hour and a half, Sting and the band came out for a second encore and played 1000 Years from Brand New Day. It certainly wasn't a bad performance, but the three previous times I've seen Sting, he's always ended with Fragile. Fragile is definitely one of Sting's more low-key songs, but it's got an undeniable emotional resonance that just wasn't there in 1000 Years. Overall though, the experience was a really enjoyable one. It wasn't the best Sting concert that I've seen, and he leaned a little too heavily on his newer material that couldn't quite match his older work, but there were more than enough high points in his set to make it worthwhile. Annie Lennox, though, simply glowed with her classy, powerful showmanship. I may have gone specifically to see Sting, but its Lennox who really stood out with a surprising performance.

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