Love Is The Seventh Wave

The Mobile Fidelity Gold edition from 1990. $30 then; way spendy now.

In 1985, when Sting debuted his solo career, the public's memory of The Police was still rather vivid. After all, the band had sold millions of records and their worldwide tours were a consistent hot ticket, so a lot was riding on how well Sting could deliver. A radical change in musical style would be unnecessarily risky, but on his debut solo album, "Dream Of The Blue Turtles", Sting still managed to up his musical game while keeping it palatable for radio. No small feat for anyone, never mind a name artist in a sink or swim situation.

Based on several accounts, Sting was, by this time, more than ready to roll with doing things his own way. As talented as Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland were, Sting was feeling limited in what could be done; not the least of that being the trio format of The Police. There was also plenty of personal drama going on within the Police camp that would have been enough to bring almost any band to a grinding creative halt. Perhaps some of that was traceable to Sting's insufferable trademark chant of "E-Yo-Ohh" (or some variant thereof), that seemed to be the lyrical foundation of 7 out of 10 Police tunes. At any rate, all of this is covered rather thoroughly in the excellent musical video, "Bring On The Night", that briefly mentions the end of The Police, but is much more about documenting the formation of Sting's new band, which was a top flight assemblage by any musical standard. In retrospect, he was lucky to have secured the services of high caliber musicians like bassist Daryl Jones, drummer Omar Hakim, pianist Kenny Kirkland, and sax man Branford Marsalis. It would be difficult at best to assemble that band now, although to be sure, Sting has done well with sidemen over the years, attracting world class talents like David Sancious on keyboard and guitar, and one of the world's finest drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta, to augment his music.

From Sting's solo debut, here is "Love Is The Seventh Wave". I know nothing at all about the first six.

 

As a fun side note, Sting says in the video that he never believed he had 'made it' as a musician, until one night, while staying in a Paris hotel, he heard some familiar whistling outside his hotel room window, coming from the street below. It was a Parisian street sweeper, biding his time by whistling the melody to "Walking On The Moon". That serendipitous moment was enough to convince him that his music had reached the public at large and was quite a source of pride for him. I'd be happy about that too.

One indisputable fact about acoustic music is that it has a unique way of exposing a song for its true worth. By employing as simple an arrangement as possible, a song will either soar or collapse, depending on the need for electric augmentation and having the foundational stability for being tweaked a bit. But if you start with a solid lyric and a catchy, rhythmic riff, the adaptation will almost always work.

The 2nd album from The Duhks, now available very affordably.

Today's featured artist, The Duhks (pronounced 'ducks'), are a Canadian Folk-Fusion band, formed in 2002 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The name and spelling of "Duhks" comes from "Scruj MacDuhk", a defunct previous version of the band named as a nod to a Disney character. The Duhks play a blend of Canadian and American Soul, Gospel, Folk, Brazilian Samba, Old School Country, Cajun Zydeco, and Irish dance music. Despite several changes in the band lineup through the years, they've always retained four central elements: vocals, guitar, banjo, and fiddle. The band sings primarily in English, but all of the band's past and current singers have also sung frequently in French, and performed at least one song in Portuguese.

The Duhks' first album, "Your Daughters & Your Sons" from 2003, was nominated for a Juno award, leading to a contract with Sugar Hill Records. A new Latin-influenced percussionist, Scott Senior, then joined the band. The Duhks' eponymous second album, where you'll find today's featured song as an album-ending bonus track, was released by Sugar Hill in 2005. The album was produced by Béla Fleck, and it won a Juno award for Best Roots & Traditional Album by a Group. Later, another song entitled "Heaven's My Home", from their third album, "Migrations", which was produced by Tim O'Brien, was nominated for the 2007 Grammy award for Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal. So, on occasion, the Grammys get things right, it seems. At least with their nominations.

Here are The Duhks, laying the acoustic whammy on Sting's "Love Is The Seventh Wave". It brings the song a whole new level of clarity without all that mucky 80's production in the way, wouldn't you say?

Music from The Duhks can be found at Amazon, or in the Folk section of your local indie music emporium. They may have a stray used copy as well, so that's worth a look. You can find current tour dates for The Duhks on their website, along with a few live performance videos.

While the man called Sting has amassed quite a catalog of music over the last nearly 4 decades, I feel he's taken quite a somber turn during the last several years, especially with that deeply depressing 'Winter' album from 2009. Maybe living in Europe for too long has vacuumed the joy right out of him. Nonetheless, he's written plenty of great stuff in years prior and all of it is available at Amazon and most record shops. If all you want is a decent single disc 'Best Of", then "Fields Of Gold" is the ticket. Also, if you've never bothered to replace your battered Police cd's from the 80's, then it might be time for you to pop for the box set, which is affordable, decently mastered, and contains everything the band released, including rare singles and B-sides, all in one tidy, book-shaped package.