The Cure in late spring at the BankAtlantic Center is all but confirmed, with June 13 as the likely date. I don't know when the show goes on sale, beyond "soon," but tickets for June 11 in Tampa are already available, so I'm guessing it won't be long. 65daysofstatic opens. More details as I get 'em.

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Maybe the best American rock group of the Double Zeroes, Spoon makes what is, for me, a long-awaited South Florida appearance, April 16 at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale.

I can't recommend this band enough. Spoon's latest three - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007), Gimme Fiction (2005) and Kill the Moonlight (2002) - make up the finest trio of albums I've heard from one band since Wilco put out Being There, Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 1996-2002.

Spoon does not bare its heart like Wilco; Spoon's music is icier, and the sentiments are played closer to the vest. Singer-frontman Britt Daniel's voice almost sounds dessicated, as if he's rid it of excess emotion and trained it entirely to the task of acute observation. Just about every word Daniel sings sounds telling. (And he's fashionably hoarse.)

Being smart does not make Spoon joyless. Yes, a listener could take purely cerebral pleasure in the precision of the songs and their insinuating hooks. But Spoon also offers a kind of survival guide to contemporary life; their approach to not getting rolled by the chaos is to be cool and circumspect - and not in a cheesy "I wear my sunglasses at night" kind of way. Spoon has its eyes wide open.

The band's publicist says The Walkmen and White Rabbits will be the opening acts. I'll post more details on showtime and ticket prices as I get them.

Here's Spoon playing Don't You Evah, from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, last year at a record release party in their hometown.

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To anyone seeing Van Halen tonight at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, I'd like to hear what you think of the show (I went last Tuesday), especially the sound quality. Did the mix have balance and clarity? Did the music mesh and, at the same time, were you able to pick out the voices and instruments?

A lot of spectators last Tuesday night enjoyed seeing David Lee Roth back with his old mates, Eddie and Alex Van Halen, plus Eddie's teen-aged son, Wolfgang. But some were unhappy with the sound, which they described as the fly in the punchbowl at this much-anticipated rock reunion. Here's a sampling of reader replies to a review of the show:

- I was up in the upper level and the sound was horrible. You could not make out the vocals as they competed with the other member's of the band's instruments. I was pretty disappointed in the concert because of the crappy sound.

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I've got a story due to run Monday about Barry Manilow, which I'll link to once it's posted. I talked with him by telephone last week, ahead of his Feb. 23-24 concert dates here, and he was just about everything you'd hope for in an interviewee: disarming, self-deprecating, funny and straightforward.

He joked about closing old Sunrise Musical Theatre before a church took over the facility: "I was the last Jew in the building." He agreed that South Florida has been, and to a great extent remains, Manilow Country. "They get me," he said of his SoFla fan base, citing kinship with the many ex-New Yorkers down here. I just haven't decided whether the under-$8 base price for the cheap seats at BankAtlantic Center and AmericanAirlines Arena is a sign of his generosity, or of his grip on the region slipping.

(Lately it seems like there are more concerts chasing fewer disposable dollars, but that's a story and a post for another day.)

Manilow's brand of easy listening is not especially easy for me, personally, although I can't seem to not smile whenever somebody turns on the waterworks factory known as Mandy. I also like Could It Be Magic, with its romance-novel contours. Notwithstanding the lyric about "where the stallion meets the sun," it's always sounded to me like a vampire love story.

I think I surprised Manilow when I said that Tony Braxton's Unbreak My Heart reminded me a lot of Magic. They have a similar, rising-falling sequence of chords and melody. After our interview, I read somewhere that Manilow, for his part, based Magic on a piece by Chopin. If so, it was an inspired bit of thievery - or quotation, if you prefer - no less astute than Procol Harum channeling Bach on Whiter Shade of Pale.

On the other hand, there's Can't Smile Without You, which makes me want to drive into a canal - anything to stop the bathos and the sensation of suffocating between the covers of a giant get-well card.

So how do you feel about Barry Manilow, if you're not agnostic on the subject? Has the man's music ever made or spoiled a moment for you? Could you picture, say, Mandy, as a bar tune with 30 or so of your fellow-travelers belting out lines like, "Well, you came and you gave without taking ... "? Or does his music cause you to drink?

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Reigning American Idol champ Jordin Sparks will be the opening act on r&b singer Alicia Keys' spring U.S. tour, which will include a May 25 date at Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena, according to Sparks' label, Jive Records.

Confirmed dates, ticket prices and on-sale details TBA.

The Jive press release touts the 18-year-old Sparks' performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, and her Outstanding New Artist win at the NAACP Image Awards. It mentions her current singles, Tattoo and No Air. Interestingly, it says not a word about American Idol.

Is Sparks pulling a Kelly Clarkson and downplaying her Idol resume? Sparks' official biography mentions the starmaking TV show early and often, along with the "American Idols Live!" tour she completed. The absence of Idol from the press release announcing her first tour as a standalone performer seems odd.

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The Police, with opener Elvis Costello & the Impostors, will perform on May 17 at Cruzan Amphitheatre (formerly Sound Advice), promoter LiveNation announced today. Tickets are $50 - $225.00 and go on sale 10 a.m. Feb. 23.

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Radiohead at Bonnaroo festival 2006 / AP

A ticket pre-sale happens Thursday at the Radiohead-run Web site W.A.S.T.E. with general Ticketmaster on-sales beginning Saturday. Tickets are $32.50 (lawn) and $55.00 (reserved).

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LiveNation today announced that hip-hop/soul singer Mary J. Blige and rapper Jay-Z will launch their co-headlining Heart of the City Tour with a March 22 performance at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami. Tickets for the double-bill are $49.75 - $125.75 and go on sale 10 a.m. February 16 through Ticketmaster (954-523-3309, 561-966-3309, 305-358-5885, ticketmaster.com).

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... at least not that anybody knows of yet, but the PR firm for a female LZ tribute band, called Lez Zeppelin, has amused itself putting out a press release headlined "CONFIRMED: ZEPPELIN TO APPEAR AT BONNAROO! (LEZ, that is…)"

The band's MySpace tagline: "All Girls, All Zeppelin." Text of the press release (from Michael J. Media) as follows:

After rumors following Led Zeppelin’s reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena in December that Led would headline the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Bonnaroo promoters have finally confirmed that the 2008 Festival will, indeed, feature an historic performance by Zeppelin – Lez, that is -- the New York City-based, all-girl quartet that has gained international acclaim as one of the world’s most exciting and talked about live acts.

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The firm handling publicity for Radiohead has Miami on a list of 22 North American markets the British rock band plans to play on an upcoming North American tour. Dates and venues have yet to be announced, and I'm taking "Miami" to mean South Florida, generally. (They played West Palm last time around.)

Radiohead put its latest batch of songs, entitled In Rainbows, on the Web in October for all to download at a price of the buyer's choosing. That deal has expired, and the band hasn't released figures on how many, or how few, actually paid, and what the average consent-price was. But the packaged, physical CD version of In Rainbows, released on Jan. 1, is now the No. 1 album in the United States, with 122,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures cited by a publicist for tbd, the releasing label.

It's also tops over there.

Some perspective is in order: In Rainbows is the slowest-selling of the band's last four CDs in the U.S., according to this 2003 article from Billboard. 2003's Hail to the Thief sold 300,000 copies in its first week. 2001's Amnesiac sold 231,000 copies in week one, and 2000's Kid A sold 207,000 copies in the opening frame. So In Rainbows ends the band's steady upward sales curve in 2000-2003.

On the other hand, Radiohead and its then-partner, Capitol Records, weren't leaving a guitar case open in cyberspace for the collection of spare change, in effect a giveaway of the music. In Rainbows is also the band's first independent CD release, free of the terms of a long-term recording contract. Radiohead simply hired a label to do the mass production and distribution (and a PR firm for the tour), so the band presumably gets to keep a bigger chunk of change from each CD sold.

Considering the industry-wide decline in CD sales, 122,000 isn't a first-week figure to shrug off under any circumstances. Lastly, In Rainbows is a better album than Hail to the Thief, more flat-out fun and less claustrophobic. It's as if the band has escaped the electronic igloo they were building around their sound over the previous records. Many critics have called In Rainbows their best work since 1997's OK Computer, the consensus masterpiece.

So maybe working without a corporate minder made Radiohead happier. This seems like a band that would prefer having total, final say over its affairs, creative and business-related. That autonomy had to be liberating.

In Rainbows also got a timely push from the band's cable-TV broadcast of Scotch Mist, a live-in-studio New Year's Eve performance of the new songs. It's available for streaming anytime through Jan. 30 on Current TV's Web site. Or you can watch it below, since Current TV was nice enough to provide an embed.

If the N.A. tour gets up and running quickly, Radiohead could be here quite soon. Or maybe not until August-September, since they're otherwise booked in June and July. More details as I get 'em.

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Overheard last night at the R. Kelly concert in Miami:

"I can't shrink your head, baby."

-- souvenir photographer to vaguely dissatisfied customer

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The tour shall go on. AP

Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old star of the Disney Channel show and daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, announced Wednesday she’ll extend her hugely popular concert tour with 14 more performances in January.

A Disney rep told AP that tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday for all 14 new Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus shows, including Jan. 31 at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami. But note that Ticketmaster is listing 10 a.m. Friday as the start time for their "presale." And just so you know, HM/MC also plays Jacksonville and two concerts in Orlando.

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After the rapturous reception for last night's reunion show, will Led Zeppelin take their revitalized selves on the road? Rumors are flying, although the Los Angeles Times said on Monday, before last night's concert, that nothing is confirmed.

“It’s just a rumor, none of that is real,” says Randy Phillips, chief executive of AEG Live, the concert promotion company that runs O2, the London arena where Zep will be playing in a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records and one of the most celebrated figures in the music industry. AEG is pushing hard for the Zeppelin tour; Phillips said Friday that he was headed from Los Angeles to England to “meet with Bill Curbishly, the band’s manager, and hand him a huge offer.”

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The reunited Van Halen has added a second local date, Feb. 20 at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. The first is Feb. 12 at BAC, and tickets for both shows are now on sale through the usual outlets.

Reggae/hip-hop artist (and Miami resident) Ky-Mani Marley opens. This musical son of Bob Marley has been recording since the late 1990s, but the opening slot on the VH tour may be his biggest platform. He appears to be making the most of it:

Startled Van Halen fans in Charlotte and Greensboro gave Marley standing ovations at the end of his sets.

So the pairing of L.A. rock warhorses and a young Rastafarian is becoming a show to arrive early for.

By contrast, anyone who recalls Peter Tosh opening for the Rolling Stones in the late 1970s might remember some Stones' fans shabby behavior. The bio at this Tosh website notes that while the Stones/Tosh tour was well-received for the most part, " ... rock and roll audiences weren't always receptive of the militant reggae which Tosh performed ... ".

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There's no South Florida date, or U.S. dates, as yet for the reunion of My Bloody Valentine. But these cross-ocean pioneers of dreamy, pretty, dissonant, melodic, sound-scraping co-ed pop are planning to release a new CD and tour for the first time since 1992.

How big a development is this? As Wired blogger Eliot Van Buskirk notes, "Something like 30 percent of all music reviews contain a comparison to My Bloody Valentine."

He might not be joking. Approximately 30 percent of all indie bands invite the comparison.

As The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll describes MBV, "The band's approach on stage - motionless and reserved - popularized the phrase 'shoe gazers' to describe their (and those who followed in their footsteps) passive, introspective demeanor."

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File this under "I'm old". Dave Grohl has been in Foo Fighters longer than
Nirvana. I bet more people under a certain age know him as the guy who sings Best of You than as the guy who drummed In Bloom. Foo Fighters also have made more albums than Nirvana. Just out, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace gets an airing on a tour coming here, 8 p.m. Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. Friday (Nov. 30) through Ticketmaster and the BAC box office for $25-$45. The floor ($45) will be general admission.

Here's what I wrote about the Foos on a visit to BAC in September 2005:

Dave Grohl came out of a band that was desperate to understand the world. His current band has no such ambition.

Maybe Grohl left Nirvana numbed by the suicide of band leader Kurt Cobain. Maybe he thinks meaning is wasted on the medium of rock 'n' roll. Whatever the motivation, Grohl has spent 10 years constructing in Foo Fighters a band that is impervious to thought. It exists only to rock. And in rocking for rock's sake, Grohl, 36, has no doubt made himself and his fans happy. But the abdication of everything Cobain's Nirvana stood for is odd, to say the least.

Paired on the road this summer with their soul-baring opposites, Weezer, Foo Fighters played the big, concussive arena set on Saturday night in Sunrise that Grohl's songwriting all but requires. Several trailers' worth of sound, light and video were going off simultaneously inside BankAtlantic Center throughout a 90-minute set, and about 10,000 people were there to soak up a rock show that also felt like a tribute to rock shows.

Singer-guitarist Grohl handled his other leading role, as the enthusiastic curator, capably. At one point he told the crowd to go ahead and download the band's new double album, In Your Honor. "I've got enough ... money already," he said. "I don't need any more. All I want is for everyone to sing the songs with me." Because no rock show is complete without a sing-along.

The songs themselves were marvels of methodology: Learn to Fly, with its shimmering chords and vague invocations of home; The Last Song, all reverberating majesty and finality (placed in the middle of the set); Best of You, in which Grohl screamed, "I've got another confession to make" without actually confessing anything; There Goes My Hero, perhaps a song about parental abandonment except that its real priority was the pure thrill of its shuddering arrangement.

Most of Grohl's words were just strings of rock-appropriate phraseology: -- "It's times like these/time and time again," for example, on Times Like These -- concerned with evoking sensation, not sense.

Everlong offered the rare example of a lyric with an identifiable subject: a break-up. Standing at center stage under a smoky curtain of laser lights -- a visual scheme borrowed from the Who's rock documentary, The Kids Are Alright -- Grohl sang it and strummed it unaccompanied by his bandmates. The show's designated quiet moment was just that. "Ah, enough of that sensitive..." he said, revving back up for a stretch that included Creedence Clearwater's Born on the Bayou, which the band had played at Friday night's televised benefit concert for Gulf Coast disaster relief.

I haven't heard the new album yet, so if the Foos - a good-borderline-great rock band - are now officially preoccupied with meaning (and with a name like Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace ... ), let me know how that's working out for them.

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I've got a story in today's print and online editions about Hannah Montana mania in South Florida.

If you read it, you may find yourself asking, how do brokers get their concert tickets before you do? Thank Hannah Montana for making the question so much fun to ask.

Hannah, to recap, is the eponymous hero of a Disney channel TV show that has five million viewers each week. When tickets went on sale in September for a string of Hannah Montana concerts, they seemed to vanish. The 54-date tour sold out, including Tuesday’s show at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, and at some tour stops every seat in the building was gone literally within minutes.

Parents and kids were bewildered and upset. Where did the tickets go? One answer came in the form of a media storyline that emerged in October, not long before the tour hit the road. The headline on an article posted last month to CNN’s Web site may have phrased it best: “Brokers snatch joy from Hannah Montana fans.”

The article explained, “Ticket brokers swooped up thousands of tickets within minutes of them becoming available online and shut out legitimate Hannah followers. Desperate fans found they would have to pay brokers $350 to $2,000 for the $63 concert tickets.”

Price-gouging brokers. Disappointed kids. What a great story.

I’m not saying it’s just a story. Brokers, those “evil scalper monkeys,” as my colleague Sherri Winston dubbed them, clearly did get their prehensile paws on tickets. Probably thousands of tickets, all told, using various methods, some old-fashioned, some ingenious, some diabolical but possibly quite legal (pending the outcome of certain court proceedings). And in their earnest desire to resell those tickets to you, their suggested markups have been dramatic, to say the least.

At the Web site for a brokerage called Front Row King, the “King,” thangyaverymuch, was asking $2,999 for a front row seat and $13,500 for a 20-person luxury suite on Tuesday at BankAtlantic.

The tickets retailed for about $25-$60.

It’s tough, of course, to put a price tag on love. As any broker might ask, what’s it worth to you to keep your child happy? But I’m not here to discuss Hannah Montana tickets as a measure of parental caring. (I don’t have kids.) Rather, I want to tell you what I know about how brokers have come by blocks of tickets while you’re still trying to get a Ticketmaster operator on the phone. And in another blog post or two over the next few days, I’ll look at a question that’s more complicated than CNN and other news outlets might have led you to believe: How much responsibility do brokers, and other parties, bear for a scarcity of Hannah Montana tickets priced at face value?

I’m hoping to give people some idea of the odds they face when they’re trying to get into a concert, any concert, that can be legitimately described as a “hot ticket.” Don’t ask to define the term; you know a hot ticket when you covet one.

So if this interests you, read on.

How do brokers get tickets? Let us count the ways.

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The Van Halen reunion tour with original lead singer David Lee Roth plays the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise on Feb. 12. Tickets, $49.50 - $149.50, go on sale 10 a.m. Dec. 8 (and not this weekend, as the promoter first announced), through Ticketmaster, said a statement from tour promoter LiveNation. Besides Roth, who has not toured with Van Halen since the 1980s, the revived Los Angeles rock band features brothers Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen on guitar and drums, respectively. Eddie's 16-year-old son, Wolfgang Van Halen, plays bass.

Cynical me, I said this tour would last two weeks tops. But Roth and the brothers Van Halen seem to be getting along, and I've heard that young master "Wolfie" is impressing people, not just as a stand-in for founding VH bassist Mike Anthony, but as a scary-good musician in his own right. Apparently, the kid can play. And with a positive role model like Uncle Dave involved, what's not to approve of? The band plays Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.

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The Langerado festival is going to Native American country (and Phish country, too): Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, March 6-9. A lineup will be announced Nov. 8, and tickets go on sale Nov. 15 (at 800-594-8499 and langerado.com), say festival reps.

Big Cypress, you'll recall, is where the protean jam band Phish set up camp for the last days of the 20th Century and rang in the new millenium with tens of thousands of revelers. Estimates of attendance ran as high as 90,000.

Langerado has favored jam bands of the Phish genus, but also presented indie rock, reggae, world music and electronic pop. The festival has never played a space as big as Big Cypress. But it's definitely grown, from the lawn outside Fort Lauderdale Baseball Stadium in 2003 to last year's two-day affair, which drew 15,000 people each day to Markham Park, on the edge of the Everglades in Sunrise.

Langerado #6 heads deeper into the 'Glades and expands to four days.

Read on for the text of the press release

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Rush enlists South Park for an intro to Tom Sawyer. A brief history of Mark Twain ensues.

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And not because they're skipping South Florida. (So far the closest they come is North Carolina.) This is a 3/4ths-original lineup, with guitarist Eddie Van Halen's teen-aged son, Wolfgang, replacing Michael Anthony on bass. So that's three Van Halens - Eddie, Wolfie and drummer Alex - versus the family's old bandmate-turned-antagonist: singer David Lee Roth.

Two weeks, tops.

From the press release:

LOS ANGELES, CA -- August 13, 2007 Beginning this September, in what promises to be the most exciting live tour this year, Van Halen will embark on a national concert tour throughout the U.S. and Canada with its original lead singer David Lee Roth for the first time in 22 years.

Considered by fans and media alike as one of the most highly anticipated
tours in rock and roll history, Roth, guitarist Eddie Van Halen and drummer
Alex Van Halen will perform with Eddie's son, Wolfgang who joins the line-up
as the band's bass player. Van Halen and Roth have not performed or
recorded together since 1984's classic multi-platinum album "1984" and
subsequent tour, making this tour truly a historic event.

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The possibility that rising gas prices might hurt concert attendance raises a question: Who should bear the higher cost of driving to the show?

Sure, concertgoers can save by carpooling and buying fewer beers. But bands, promoters and venue operators that want us in the seats might have a part to play, too. If venues won't hand out gas coupons at the gate -- and wouldn't that be fun? -- they could lower or eliminate parking fees. Up at the top of the trickle-down chain, really popular bands could reduce their guarantees -- the amount they charge promoters to come out and perform. Promoters could then pass along the savings through reduced ticket prices.

The problem for touring acts, of course, is that their gas prices are climbing, too.

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What to expect when Britney Spears walks on stage at Mansion in Miami Beach on Sunday night? Well, here's an account of her May 1 appearance at San Diego's House of Blues under the fictitious band name M+Ms. The headline is "Britney Spears' 20 minutes of fame" and the story from the San Diego Union Tribune reads in part:

After two hours of various DJs twiddling knobs onstage at the House of Blues in downtown San Diego, the much-hyped show began about 10 p.m.
In what was talked up as a comeback performance, Spears played for, at most, 20 minutes.
“That was so disappointing,” one exasperated woman said as she strode out.

The intervening three years, notably the last six months, have not been the happiest for the erstwhile queen of teen-pop. But is the Spears Express turning over or just rolling over? Seats in San Diego supposedly went for well above face value. Tickets for this coming Saturday's Orlando date disappeared in 30 minutes.

On the other hand, I bought a ticket for Sunday's show at 1,500-seat Mansion with no problem. There were plenty left, and I'm going so you don't have to. I'll be back in 15 minutes.

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One of the (almost) ironclad rules of fiction that Alec Ounsworth says he learned in college was, don’t write your dreams. They and their seeming portents are to be treated as a third rail of literature. Tap them as source material at your own considerable risk of bad writing.

It’s a rule that Ounsworth has pretty well observed in his current line of work — singer, songwriter and lyricist for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Brooklyn-based indie rock band playing Revolution in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday. Ounsworth writes short, direct songs that get plenty of grist from the strangeness of our waking hours.

Still, the stuff of dreams will sometimes creep in.

Take Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning? a song on the band’s recently released second album, Some Loud Thunder. As Ounsworth sings about a character gripped by self-doubt, he references somebody famous in literary circles for violating the heck out of the don’t-write-your-dreams rule:

Like Berryman
Bed-wet poet fears
That better men drink taller beers

That would be the late John Berryman, a brilliant, troubled writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Dream Songs, an epic in verse form. Berryman, as noted at the Modern American Poetry web site, considered the insights he gleaned from having his dreams analyzed in therapy “publishable.”

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah isn’t running a dead poets society, but as the band worked on Some Loud Thunder at a rural studio house, Ounsworth was deep into The Dream Songs, a text composed of 385 individual poems relating a dialogue between a self-hating everyman and his imaginary friend.

So is Berryman the secret influence behind Some Loud Thunder? “Maybe subconsciously,” says Ounsworth. He does believe a poet and a songwriter have similar jobs: to describe the indescribable — the feelings and sensations that pass through us as we live our lives and react to our surroundings — and to do it succinctly.

“The idea of not wasting words is a goal that everybody strives for,” says Ounsworth, “and in poetry I think it’s at its highest form.”

Here’s Berryman on Ounsworth’s craft:

I consider a song will be as humming-bird
swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange
as the world of anti-matter

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Talk about a defining choice. As an acquaintance of mine put it, tomorrow will be remembered as the day that both Slayer and Justin Timberlake came to town. I can't think of two greater opposites: Slayer at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale and Timberlake at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami (with a second Timberlake show on Sunday at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise).

So which is it for you?

Gory metal or pretty pop? Cry Me a River or Raining Blood? One Slayer fan I know insists that Timberlake is actually the more evil of the two. I'll find out soon enough: I'm attending the Timberlake show, though not on account of preferences. The first of two local arena dates with pop's new boy prince is the kind of event a daily paper is duty-bound to cover -- no disrespect to Slayer, who I adoringly previewed.

Headline reference explained.

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It's admirable how the Police simply refused to reunite, or at least how a reunion remained unlikely so long as Sting and Stewart Copeland couldn't get along, even with nice guy Andy Summers mediating. Yes, ego is a major reason that the pioneering reggae-rock trio disbanded (without ever formally calling it a breakup) more than 20 years ago. Another way to look at it is, the Police respected their work for what it was, and when it was, and didn't make like the Eagles and recycle themselves ad nauseam.

They did reconvene in 2003 for a three-song jam at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but that's just ceremony. Now, however, it looks like their resistance is slipping. The Grammys announced today that Sting, Summers and Copeland will perform as the Police on the Sunday, Feb. 11 awards telecast. Including the Hall of Fame gig, the Grammys will be the second Police show since 1986.

Rumors of a full blown reunion tour have already been raging, and band members haven't squashed them. Sting was at the recent midseason TV press tour to talk up a solo appearance on the PBS series Great Performances. But the conversation turned to you-know-what. Here's an excerpt, located for me by my colleague Tom Jicha:

QUESTION: Sting, Neal Justin from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Will there be a Police reunion?
STING: You know, it's the 30th anniversary. We started 30 years ago, so it would be nice to do something to celebrate. We don't quite know what, but we're talking about it.
QUESTION: Is it just the 30th anniversary, or does this feel like the right time for all the members to kind of go back and get together and play again?
STING: I don't know yet. I mean we haven't had this discussion. Do you know something I don't?
QUESTION: Well, I'm curious from your standpoint why would this be the right time for you to go back and put --
STING: It seems an organic time to discuss the past and say, "Hey, what did we achieve?" It would be nice to do something. I don't quite know what.

Mind you, Sting on PBS will be playing material from his latest solo album, Songs from the Labyrinth, a collection of 16th Century lute songs. When you're doing Elizabethan oldies to stay in the game, maybe it is a good time to call your former bandmates.

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