Today's Shuffle: Everybody wants to look the other way

Periodically, this blog is about how I (still) like Sting when I shouldn't.

My return to Shuffle coughed up my favorite track from The Soul Cages, the tour of which I actually saw almost exactly twenty-two years ago. I managed to miss most of Don Henley, who opened (hah, post-punk rules!) that night at Alpine Valley. My roommates bought me a ticket for my birthday earlier in the summer and then set me up to travel to East Troy with some of their friends.

I haven't forgotten that show, mostly because someone had a reserved ticket stub and each person in the group (who the hell they were, I have no idea now) used it to travel into the rarefied air of the Reserved Covered Area. I made to row 8 and was able to get an up-close with a forty year-old and still incredibly hot Sting and his big ol' Doc Martens.

Now, of course, I look at the footage of it from my desk (and imagine not being able to comprehend that 22 years ago--I mean, did I know an Internet existed in 1991?) and see that Sting, as usual, positioned some incredible musicians from across genres to deploy his cross-genre music, his music that, in the immortal words of Branford Marsalis, "is a motherf*cker."


Love, Erykah Badu New Amerykah Part Two
Lithium, Nirvana Nevermind
Pass the Plugs, De La Soul De La Soul Is Dead
Pursuit of Happiness, Weekend Players Pursuit of Happiness
Ships Passing Through, Jimi Hendrix Valleys of Neptune
Everybody Wants The Same Thing, Scissor Sisters Ta-Dah
My Time, Kaskade It's You, It's Me
Summertime, Sarah Vaughn The Very Best of Sarah Vaughn
Uncountable (Feat. Tomomi Ukomori), Hideo Kobayashi A Drama
Fin, Supergrass Road To Rouen
Don't Lose Your Temper, XTC Black Sea
You Can Get It If You Really Want, Jimmy Cliff The Harder They Come
As, Stevie Wonder Songs In The Key Of Life
Baby Britain, Elliott Smith XO
Seen Your Video, The Replacements Let It Be
Bombers, Gary Numan The Pleasure Principle (30th Anniversary Edition)
Can I Get A Witness, Marvin Gaye Greatest Hits
Fire Island, Fire Island Hed Kandi: Back To Love - True Club Classics 2
West of Hollywood, Steely Dan Two Against Nature
Hoover Dam, Sugar Copper Blue
Jeremiah Blues, Sting The Soul Cages



Addendum:

I just found this, and, despite afternoon dyspepsia, I've become happy as a pig lolling in jazz-rock poo:



By the way, is Branford wearing the first iteration of a WHO DAT t-shirt, or what?