No Rock And Roll Fun

ODDLY, NOT THE 'MID-LIFE CRISIS' TOUR: If we'd been thinking of going to see Sting - okay, that's an unlikely opening, isn't it? But imagine we had - we'd be hiding our tickets as news of what he's planning for Sting Tour 05 comes in.

First of all, he's "ditched his large back-up band" because this, oh yes, is to be a "no frills rock n roll tour" (he's lived abroad so long, he probably won't realise the Kwik Save cheapo implication that now clings to the phrase 'No Frills'. Best of all, the tour is called The Broken Music Tour, named after his self-serving sobobiography. Seriously, we'd be making other plans:

"I was ready for a change," Sting, 53, told Reuters in response to questions submitted by e-mail. "The idea of going out and playing guitar-driven music coupled with performing at colleges, something I haven't done since the Police days, was extremely exciting... Certainly there will be songs that are guitar-drivenIt will be pretty raw and stripped down, different from anything I've done in a long, long time..."

In other words: He's sick of doing stuff nobody really cares about and wants to see if he can go back to when he was actually liked.