![]() Some of the understanding is born of my own scenario, though they are incredibly different. ![]() My career has been about battling the sexualization of women. Rightfully or wrongfully, they bring those conversations into scenarios where it isn’t appropriate. Gay men, many times, communicate in sexual innuendo. In my experience, it’s far from all gay men. I don’t think it’s fair to say all gay men do. The pause before he spoke was the one time over the course of two interviews that I had a moment to write down a note. He speaks quickly-“it’s a habit I’ve always had”-and the only time he was at a loss for words was when I asked him what he thought about Cynthia Nixon’s run for Governor of New York (“I really haven’t had time to think about it”). While there are a handful of out members of Congress (only Tammy Balwin in the Senate), at least we now have role models to emulate and inspire.Īs an interviewee Sims is uncensored, yet somehow manages to answer every question like he’s read, contemplated, and written down the answer before you’ve even spit it out. Sims, the 39-year-old Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, did in fact grow up gay, and his success in politics is making another dream come true: That LGBTQ people have an openly gay place in American politics. And like those guys, our imaginations would run to the impossible dream: If only a man like that could be gay… Today, he's the opposite - rock's elder statesman, still sounding like a virile punk in his 20s.Brian Sims reminds me of that older next-door neighbor gay kids might have had crushes on in elementary school: sexy and smart, and so friendly we almost didn’t feel like outcasts when we were in his presence. But the real revelation was his voice, which is almost as agile today as it was in his earlier days.īack then, Sting seemed like an old soul trapped in a young man's body. Sting anchored the band with his vibrant-but-subdued bass playing, the most under-rated component of his career. Pummeling his way through Police rockers like "So Lonely" and "Next To You," Freese gave the show an edge that recalled Sting's first solo tour with Branford Marsalis. The band's star, however, was Josh Freese, a hard-hitting drummer best known for playing with Guns N' Roses and Nine Inch Nails. The father-and-son guitar team of Dominic and Rufus Miller fleshed out songs with a lively mix of jazz, flamenco and hard-rock while Sting's son Joe Sumner and members of the Last Bandoleros sang backup. But the crowd's mellow mood wasn't due to a lack of energy from Sting or his band. ![]() The set-closing "Roxanne" finally got fans off their rumps and on their feet. ![]() Never content to merely crank out the hits, Sting re-arranged a lot of his older tunes - though not always for the better in the case of a hyper-reggae spin version of his country tune "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying" and a purposely off-kilter "Walking on the Moon." But he managed to breathe new life into other Police hits, especially "Roxanne," which zig-zagged perfectly into Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine." "It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile," Sting sang. Sting divvied up the show evenly between new tunes, Police songs and gems from past solo albums, including the Arabic rocker "Desert Rose" and "Englishman in New York," his '87 tune about gay writer Quentin Crisp that now sums up the struggle of "aliens" in the Trump era. The half-dozen new songs he played from his album 57th & 9th stacked up nicely next to the classics: "I Can't Stop Thinking About You" is his best power-pop tune in decades, and the global-warming themed "One Fine Day" and "Petrol Head" remind you he's a master at writing message songs that don't sound like message songs. More importantly, he's still making valid music. Chalk it up to yoga, barbells or the miracle of hair restoration surgery - whatever the reason, Sting remains the everlasting sex symbol of the thinking woman. The former schoolteacher known as Gordon Sumner has indeed traveled light years since the 1970s, though he certainly doesn't look it. "Forty years later, everyone in Dallas is singing all the words." "Forty years ago when I wrote this, only a dog was listening - and he was barely wagging his tail," he told about 5,000 fans at Verizon Theatre. Now that he's turned 65, Sting was sounding a bit nostalgic Monday night after he played "Message in a Bottle," perhaps his greatest song with The Police.
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