When it comes to this year's Grammy Awards, you can forget about the Dixie Chicks keeping it real. You can ignore Mary J. Blige's attempt to teach us all about the birds and the R&Bs. And you can most definitely suspend your delight in Ludacris' joint marriage proposal to Oprah Winfrey and Bill O'Reilly, where he made no bones about wanting to be with them for the rest of his life and move with them to Puerto Rico to become the Trans-American Triple Terror.
To find out what was best about this year's ceremony, look no further than the sweet, sweet vindication you can only see when you turn on the red light.
That's right, my fellow classic rock fans. There's only one thing an opening Grammy performance can mean: The Police are getting back together.
Announcing an international reunion tour launching in May, the Sting-a-licious trio will travel throughout North America before heading to Europe, Asia and Australia, including a headlining stop at Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival this June.
With all the excitement surrounding the reorganization of the continental rockers, there's barely time to think about all of the possibilities this tour might entail. So I've taken the liberty of doing a little bit of that for you, with one possibility in particular.
What if instead of The Police going on a world tour, it was actually our good friends The Tempe Police?
Just stick with me here.
The potentials are literally boundless. However, we should probably keep in mind that there will have to be some slight changes to the set list, band membership and, well, everything else.
First of all, some of the well-remembered song lyrics will have to be altered a bit to fit with The Tempe Police's agenda.
"Every Breath You Take" will become "Every Breathalyzer Test You Take." "So Lonely" merges to "So Incarcerated." "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" takes a larger shift to "Every Little Party You Throw is a Violation." And "Don't Stand So Close to Me" turns to "Don't Stand So Close to Me or I Will Have You Arrested for Attempting to Assault an Officer."
"Roxanne" will be given to the opening act - The Sheriff's Deputies - to be done as a cover that more closely resembles the department's love of prostitution crackdowns.
The Tempe Police will tour the world in newly-painted black, white and gold tour buses, which will definitely raise morale for the band members and allow them to become the envy of other touring rock icons, including also newly-reformed groups like The (Prison) Doors, The (Patrol) Cars and The Foot Beat-les.
In addition to these changes, Miller High Life will be the official tour sponsor, but only when the bottles are placed in brown paper bags. And Sting will no longer reflect an actual member of the band, but rather the ability to combat mafia racketeering, go undercover in illicit drug and gambling rings and bust up the recent influx of community speakeasies.
Wait, you're telling me that my interpretation of the touring potential for The Tempe Police is almost as awkward as NBC broadcaster Campbell Brown reporting that newly-announced presidential candidate Mitt Romney's assets include his "chiseled good looks"?
OK, maybe you're right. But the truth is, regardless of how arrestingly awesome a show like that would be, I still wouldn't be able to afford tickets. It's a good thing they've always accepted community service as a down payment.
Reach the reporter at: heather.hull@asu.edu.
