Sting and Annie Lennox

Last night Nora and I saw Sting and Annie Lennox perform at the Woodlands Pavilion.

Annie Lennox opened for him and sang several songs I didn’t recognize (presumably her new stuff) and of course she got the biggest reaction out of her 80s hits like "Missionary Man." God, I’ll always remember how shocked I was when Charles Follmer and I were watching WTBS Night Tracks in 1983 (there was no MTV in those days). When "Sweet Dreams are Made of This" came on and we recognized the synthesizers, we both exclaimed, “Ah!” Then we saw Annie Lennox for the first time, with her orange crew cut, men’s suit and riding crop. “Argh!” we both said again, but this time in a different way. She was almost as bald as Persis Khambatta and freaky as Siouxsie Sioux. Neither of us really knew what to make of the video, what with the cows wandering around. Since then she’s become one of those icons of the 80s music scene, and I was glad to see her perform live.

Sting was also good. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Police in the early 80s, but I remember playing his solo album Dream of the Blue Turtles over and over. Mostly he played newer songs, but he also gave us a rendition of “Roxanne” and “King of Pain.” After the concert we stopped by Chayn’s for a drink and to watch the crowds. For those of you who haven’t been, wow. It’s one of few clubs we can go to and feel young. Not too many places in Houston where you can go see women in their 60s shake their silicone to hip-hop music. Come to think of it, that’s probably a good thing. I emptied my pockets of the accumulated stubs and junk that people hand out at concerts, and the bartender asked us, “Did you just come back from a concert?”
     "Yeah."
     “Who did you see?”
     “Sting,” I said (sorry, Annie).
     He got all excited. “Stained? Are they in Houston?”
     "No, Sting! Sting!"
     His face fell. “Oh.” Our coolness factor dropped a few degrees.
     If I'd have told him I don’t know who Stained is, we would have bottomed out on the coolness scale. I told Nora, "I wonder what he would have said if we’d gone to see Engelbert Humperdinck." He probably would have thrown us out.