Live! captures the Police at two distinct points in their career: disc one features a 1979 show at
The 1979 show is all adrenalin and bravado, sometimes messy, never dull, a portrait of a band still proving itself nightly before club and theatre crowds. Breaks and solos are loose and energetic, background vocals from drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers are unpredictable, and tempos are often a step faster than the studio recordings, even on already-frantic rockers like the opening “Next To You.” 
The set list for the first disc is Outlandos D’Amour (the whole thing, even “Be My Girl/Sally”) plus four tracks from Reggatta, plus two early songs (the punky, frenetic “Fall Out” and “Landlord”) that never made it onto a Police studio album. This keeps things fast and fun with pedal-to-the-metal nuggets like “Truth Hits Everybody,” “Peanuts” and “Born In The 50s” taking their place alongside the increasing sophistication seen in second-album cuts like “Walking On The Moon” and “Message In A Bottle.” The emerging sound is perhaps most evident on “The Bed’s Too Big Without You,” which gets a stretched-out treatment rich with Summers’ trembly reggae riffing and exotic soloing, matched by Copeland’s complex, intricate rhythm work behind the kit.
The 1983 show spotlights the band at the height of both their commercial popularity and Sting’s dominance within the band. The arrangements here are closer to Dream Of The Blue Turtles jazz-pop than Outlandos D’Amour reggae-punk, adding a chorus of female background vocalists and smoothing almost all the rough edges off these songs.
As might be expected, disc two consists primarily of Synchronicity material, with just a couple of tracks each from the other four albums the band had out by then. Only four tracks are repeated from disc one -- “Roxanne, “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Message In A Bottle” and “So Lonely” -- and in each case the difference is telling. The disc one versions burn with a loose, almost giddy energy; the disc two versions feel overly polished and tame by comparison. They’re cleaner and crisper and subtler and about half as much fun.
Live! is a substantially accurate portrait of the band at two distinct phases of its career. As such it’s tough to rate, with disc one ranking high on energy/fun and medium on technical/production values, and disc two lagging on energy/fun but stronger on the technical/production side. How much you enjoy this album will probably depend substantially on how you feel about the band’s evolution and shifting internal dynamics. By my way of thinking, Sting fans will love disc two and Police fans will love disc one. If you love ’em both equally, then you’ll probably rate this higher than I do…