Been some time I sat back and listened to my favourite Sting albums. Last week, my friend Neel gave me a movie/concert DVD I have been looking for all my life: Bring On The Night.
Till now, I have only been able to catch glimpses; on vague Transtel late-night transmissions in the pre-cable days, on TB5; on YouTube in more recent times but only as single tracks in performance.
The movie brings together Sting with some of the cutting-edge performers in mid-80s American jazz — Branford Marsalis, Omar Hakim, Kenny Kirkland and Darryl Jones. The subsequent interplay of exchanges — often musical, largely humourous — are missed if you don't see the entire film at length. As Sting puts it at the beginning at a press conference on the Eiffel Tower (talk about being a rock star), this movie documented the "birth of a band", unlike Quadrophenia or Let It Be.

I love I Burn For You. It's probably my favourite Sting song. Well, if there can be one; I keep on posting new lists from week to week on the Orkut forums, as all of the members know. Anyway..back to ...Burn. Why do I love it? Let's just say that's personal.
No, seriously... The words, for one. Branford's lines, for two. And the groove — the water-like, shimmering 6/8 that Omar played on the Brimstone and Treacle soundtrack, not to mention the brilliant live solo. Omar's groove is just oe solid He breaks down the groove, accents the1s, finds 16th note accents within the structure quite like the Weather Report alumnus that he was at that time.