x

The Orion
"Tribute band nabs The Police"
by Valerie Lum
Assistant Entertainment Editor
March 24, 2004

The crowd at La Salles was ready to hear the sounds of one of Chico's most popular party bands and a tribute band from one of the most popular bands of the '80s on Friday.

Stung, the ultimate tribute to The Police, hailed from the Bay Area with Chico being just one stop on the band's journey to conquer Northern California. Buffalo Creek took a break from touring the West and recording its new album to play some of the crowd's old favorites and try out some new material.

Stung took over the stage after Buffalo Creek's set and did a tedious sound check before jumping off the stage to put on their Police jumpsuits. The suits were complete with a portrait of The Police on a large patch sewn on to the backs, while lead singer Bee also had his hair spiked in a very Sting-like manner.

The stage was set with Christmas lights on the microphone stands and a blue police light. However, it was the stuffed bee on the drum kit -- affectionately named Lil' Bee -- that brought the ensemble together.

The power trio then happily decided to take the crowd back to the '80s and perform the reggae-tinged pop-rock that made The Police so popular nearly 20 years ago.

Bee's enunciation of syllables embodied Sting's to the point where the crowd had to do a double take.

"I've been doing this (imitating Sting of the Police) since I was 9," Bee said. "And I'm always afraid that I don't sound as good as I do in my head. Luckily, most people say that I do."

The band bounced into a portrayal of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" that had the audience dancing and singing, even though they didn't all know who the band was. After a while, the crowd realized that Stung was a cover band and they were soon shouting out their requests. Most of the crowd was panting for "Roxanne" but the band held out while they, in Bee's words, "brought old gems to a new generation."

Although Stung, for the most part, stayed very true to the original versions of the songs, the band periodically slipped into more personalized renditions. The drums became harder and the guitar became faster as the band went into a trance-like state.

"Nothing is as passionate as unrequited love," Bee said as the band dove into "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic."

By the end of the set, Stung gave in to the crowd's requests and played a song that was about "the trials and tribulations of falling in love with a whore."

The band's rendition of "Roxanne" invigorated the crowd and got them ready for yet another twist in Stung's rendition of The Police's music.

"So Lonely" had more of a reggae influence than the original version and ended with Bee and the crowd singing "No woman, no cry" to each other.

After the show, the band was greeted by newly won fans, who showed their appreciation for the cover band with handshakes and hugs.

"We've been together now for 2 years," Bee said of his bandmates, who all share their love for being children of the '80s.

Though the band members have never seen The Police perform live, they did have the opportunity to sit in on a few songs with some of the former members at a birthday party.

This was Stung's third trip to Chico, and the band members were excited about getting their image known in California. Stung hopes to someday play the clubs of Los Angeles and New York. But for now, the band gets to entertain the idea of performing in the Netherlands, where it has an offer to play.

Valerie Lum can be reached at vlum@orion-online.net

Back to top

The Daily Californian
"They’ll Be Watching You: Nostalgic Crowds Just Can’t Get Enough of ‘80s Cover Bands"
By Jia H. Jung
Thursday, January 29, 2004
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13927

Last Saturday found Brooks "Bee" Lundy, Eric Swihart, and a mystery companion across the street from Bimbo's 365 Club of the North Beach district on the cusp of 9 p.m. The trio chatted coolly with one another while observing the slew of gussied latecomers realize with ugly gapes that tickets were sold out before getting in some last draws of nicotine and mild alcohol before they hit the stage for their show with '80s cover band Tainted Love.

Okay, not so coolly-under the silences that stood between the sparse exchanges of verbal communication, a charged field of anticipation could be felt warming up, despite the nippy San Francisco air.

"We're ready to rock it," Bee declared. He remarked that a sold-out show promised a paycheck totaling the gross of a meager 12 tickets for his band Stung, but seemed amply consoled by the exposure they had already gained from delighting hundreds of people here the night before. Despite the group's humble mumblings about the small-spread acknowledgment of their art, the moments that followed provide good indication of a fan base that is growing, united in their love of a time that should have never passed. See, Cal graduate Bee (as in Sting, you savvy?) is the lead singer of a tribute band for The Police. Along with bassist Swihart and drummer John Messier, he resurrects the sound of decades past for benefits, private parties, and big little venues crowding the hotspots of California.

Imitation? Not on your life. The events that unfurled over the next few hours certifiably proved Stung to be more than a duplication of the subject of their homage, and demanded newfound respect for what it means to carry on the legacy of another in every last living, breathing detail.

Lundy, Messier and Swihart took their posts at the head of the cavernous, velvety venue. Already, blue fog swirled about enigmatically, and diffused Bee's suddenly hoarse, lilting, and distinctly English voice into the audience as he embarked upon "Don't Stand So Close to Me," and closed with the iconic wail, "I want my MTV…"

Instantly, prom met gala, and girls who were beautiful in that '80s sort of way spun like circles of electric mist in their teal pumps and ruched black dresses complimented by giant orbs of faux pearls. Men in cotton cabled sweaters sipped Bay Breezes from behind their standing collars and sang along, exposing bleached teeth against salon tans. The fever of nostalgia was contagious-those who remained sitting down did so with a self-imposed air of a too-cool reject of institutionalized society or a daddy's girl resting her feet.

The entire place had earnestly gone back in time, and what set the occasion apart from mere pastiche was the musical accuracy of the band. Each note was sung in proper timbre, duration, and emphasis. Key riffs warped and echoed with prismatic symmetry to the original compositions, and the humid pauses of "King of Pain" which are easily shirked by imposters were thankfully dealt due respect. Once, before bounding into the chorus for "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," Bee left the audience singing alone.

"I gotcha! We got you, San Francisco," he shouted victoriously, before continuing. As had been predicted from the reaction the night before, the crowd remained stomping and cheering at the conclusion of the set, at which point Stung reappeared right away and obliged all with "Synchronicity II."

The next half of the night, in juxtaposition to the first, was a testament to the cleft between New Wave and meathead rock that was a very real thing during the penultimate decade of the 20th century. Appearing more No Doubt than Tom Petty or Rick Springfield, Tainted Love nevertheless managed to pound out startlingly authentic representations of just about every rockin' track ever heard on a gym addict's mix tape.

Wide-eyed singer John Tea Love pranced about in a sweatband and muscle tee, embracing the crowd for killer photo opportunities without missing a beat. The pig-tailed Brett alternated between impersonations of Axl Rose, Joan Jett and Steven Perry. Loaded with a leather-panted bassist who received throughout a considerable amount of harassment from a testosterone-infested drunkard with good intentions, a bangin' keyboardist, and two additional guitarists who doubled as vocalists, the crew brought aerobicized insanity to the helm.

What didn't they play? A "Holiday," "Angel in the Centerfold" and "Any Way You Want It" later, it was well past midnight, with no one backing down. And that's the way they left us, reeling and unwilling to change-the same way that the '80s left us when the clock struck 12 so long ago.

At least the information age is more than a space-dream now. Both Stung (www.stunglive.com) and Tainted Love (www.taintedlove.com) can be touched online - if you reach out.

Back to top

The Daily Californian
"The Black and White Benefit-Truly a Ball - The Bay Area's Largest Charity Event Lives up to its Name"
By Jia H. Jung
Friday, June 6th, 2003
http://www.dailycal.com

It all came down to this last night of May. Socialite-in-training Dominic Bocci, and I toddled giddily to the press room in all our black and white glory. There, we were tagged with green wristbands, and suddenly, we had all-access to the Black and White Ball, long-awaited biennial extravaganza for the benefit of the San Francisco Symphony.

The vacated streets of the Civic Center area revealed the granite and marble sheen of the stately buildings that are usually hidden by the daily commute. Music flowed from every edificial orifice. The attendees, in get-ups that ranged from classy to trashy (I mean, quirky), scurried from here to there, scrambling to catch as many of the 22 scheduled musical performances as possible, while tasting as much food and spirit being offered by 90 restaurants of the East Bay.

Everyone will present a different account of the grand occasion that heretofore ensued, but all will agree that the ball was absolutely outrageous. The gala embodied decadence without presumption-gorgeous socialites and shuffling press personnel alike strode through the larger-than-life, Gothamesque hallways created by the roads, which were empty, save immaculate Mercedes, which shuttled the lazy, the intoxicated, and the silly from block to block.

For my date and I, the decadence began in the press room, which was laden with skewers of chicken dipped in peanut sauce, a torturous multiplicity of gourmet pizzas, pita chips next to five different dips, and a whole lot of the bubbly. Even while reveling in this secret bastion for gluttons, however, we were not to be denied from our real mission, which was to truly experience the event itself. Of course, this entailed the viewing of the San Francisco Symphony, which played waltz music from atop a high stairway in City Hall, as the true lovers of music danced in circles and praised the performers with raised arms. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas responded to the warm crowd by turning around now and then with eyebrows raised, as if to incite the audience to join the fray.

Reluctantly, yet hardly so, we moved on to see The Emotions at Davies Symphony Hall. The trio sang bewitchingly, but when it seemed like they had either already played, or were not going to play "Best of My Love," it was time to cut our losses and catch Stung, the cover band of The Police. Bee Lundy, whom I had interviewed just days beforehand, was belting out "Every Breath You Take" in the courtyard of The State of California Building. Dancers swayed, eyes closed in nostalgic passion. As the set wrapped up, I scurried to the stage. Squeezing through all the other people clamoring for his attention, I greeted him. With a grin, he took my hand and kissed it. It was as if Sting himself had laid his lips on my skin. I was starstruck.

At this point, I was also three sheets to the wind. Indeed, the refined occasion allowed an excess of alcoholic pleasures along with everything else-Amstel Light representatives were distributing personal blood alcohol content testers. "Why should I take this, when I know I'll fail?" Chuckled a silver-haired man in a tuxedo, thereby voicing everyone's thoughts. Despite the unanimous carousing spirit, though, most people were generally well behaved. As the hours ran away from us, it became evident that the college-student's tendency to slug down chocolate martinis lest they disappear is what distinguished us from the generally older crowd.

We ended up at The Civic Center Plaza tent, triple-fisting honey roasted ham, high-scale Mexican treats, and French pastries. Suddenly, Berlin was playing "On the Metro," God I love that song even if I was probably an infant when they first came out with it and "I Love Rock and Roll," holy mackerel, it's Joan Jett, wait, her hair's not black, it's blonde, that's not her, yes it is, and everyone's twirling and dancing I can't feel my body but every muscle aches ...

Then, it was over, and the revelers dispersed to their separate realities. Leaving, I willed myself to have had ten bodies, twenty stomachs, and thirty livers, but when I woke up the next morning, I realized that I had had the time of my life with the one of each in my possession. Immortalized in my mind is the image of that beautiful, beautiful symphony orchestra, bathed in rosy light, perched on high as if reaching for the firmament with their notes, calling back from the depths of my forgetful soul my utter love for music. And that is what it was really all about.

Back to top

The Daily Californian
"Bee Lundy Floats Like a Butterfly, Sings Like Sting"
By Jia H. Jung
Friday, May 30, 2003
www.dailycal.com

In a giddy stroke of luck, I also had the opportunity to speak with the guitarist and lead singer of Stung, an up-and-coming band hailing from the East Bay, which will perform in one of the earliest shows responsible for kicking off the entire event.

"I went to go see one of our local heroes," he began, smiling from his comfortable seat in a cool Chinese restaurant on a sweltering afternoon. This said hero was Stewart Copeland, drummer of The Police. Watching him in the Greek Theatre, Lundy underwent a transformation for which the Police-loving world may be forever grateful, for the Copeland fascination fueled enough energy within Lundy, drummer John Messier, and bassist Eric Swihart to inspire them to devote their fiercest musical dedication to the revival of one of the most heralded bands of all time.

The day after Christmas in 2001, only months after their inspiration, Stung's members played for Wicked Wednesday, an AIDS Benefit in San Francisco. The rest is history.

Naturally, Stung owes its name to Sting, the frontman of The Police, and represents a rising phenomenon in the musical world -the tribute band. Lundy himself now goes by the name "Bee," and has already been dubbed a "dead ringer" for Sting by a growing fanbase. He and the other two members of the "power trio" recreate eerily authentic tracks through painstaking studies of B-sides, live shows, and other rare recordings of The Police.

Stung performs frequently in joints across the Bay Area, and, unsurprisingly, get recruited for weddings, birthdays, and other events demanding quality music of the most specific sort. Here, we may mention that Bee's status as a native of the area reaches back to when he attended UC Berkeley as a student of the class of '96. His major was English, his minor Education. As seems apropos to the classic Berkeley experience, the best experiences of his college career did not necessarily occur in a lecture hall, or even during a riot on Sproul Plaza.

"I graduated with a 3.33 GPA and a CD," he said. Indeed, and with a wife to boot. "She was the manager of the ASUC bookstore, and I was a temp, working to buy a new guitar," he reminisced shyly. During the "courting stage," she, under 21, would sneak into Blake's to support his then-band, and sit in the dank dark for hours praying that she wouldn't be caught. Now that's love. Subsequently, the couple got married at the Faculty Club.

Now, we bitter students who have quite different accounts about Berkeley life shouldn't scorn Bee for his unbelievable luck, because he's the kind of guy who looks comfortably familiar, treats his interviewers to potstickers and eggrolls, conducts easy conversation, and just deserves whatever good things are in store for him in his life.

Bee has dutifully directed what could be a self-absorbed personal pursuit into a commitment to his favorite community, both on and off the stage. When he's not sending an S.O.S. to world-Berkeley and the surrounding area, that is-Bee busies himself by informing the teachers of America about how to optimize the use of technology in the classroom. When he is impersonating the deity of '80s rock, he gives his (certifiably incredible) CDs away as promotions, and prefers to play for benefits. In this selfless tradition, Stung plans to rock out with all they've got tomorrow night at the biennial Black and White Ball.

Eyeing his spacesuit adorned with authentic Police decals, I asked if he would be sporting similar attire at the ball. Affirmative. But, he made sure to qualify this affirmation: "There's varying degrees of obsession to this tribute phenomenon that exists … we're right in the middle." In other words, they "don't really do the lookalike thing." Oh, well, judging by the band's on-the-mark Police reproductions, there's no doubt that Stung gets the job done, with or without the image.

Finally, I had to ask if The Police was his favorite band-I mean, just how much does he love this band, anyway? With a deep breath, he hesitated, as a true lover of music is wont to do: "The favorite band is always such a tricky question, because you develop a taste for several genre."

Well, then, let's just say that he played "Beth," Kiss's "syrupy ballad," in the first grade, when he first learned to deal with stagefright, and that AC/DC was one of his "first love[s] of rock 'n' roll." He also performed "Message In A Bottle" for his eighth grade graduation ... solo.

Even as his band grows and his dreams expand, Bee keeps a level head, and left me with the earnest words: "Support your local bands." Since we are surrounded by venues such as Pyramid Brewery and Blake's, it should be easy to follow his kindly advice. So if you can't make it to the ball, you can catch the band's future tour dates at www.stunglive.com.

Back to top

San Francisco Bay Guardian
Liner Notes
By Lynn Rapoport
March 18, 2003
www.sfbg.com

"#1 fan"

THINGS ARE BAD now. We should all be painting the town red with antiwar graffiti, defacing monuments to capitalism, and engaging in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience instead of going to shows. But it still seems worth pointing out that if the world were ruled by obsessed rock fans rather than people who want to kill and maim one another, this would probably be a happier, if not necessarily saner, place. Unless there were Hell's Angels on the stage.

I've been thinking about this since Noise Pop, an event that brings the number-one fans out of the woodwork. They're all around us, the number ones, and they're usually hard to miss. Sometimes they're just wearing the T-shirt, mouthing the words, and recording the show on a cassette player. Other times they're also hanging out at the edge of the stage, gigantically tall, and connecting with the set in a way that no one around them would ever have thought of - flashing the sign of the devil during a Smog show, for instance, and vigorously jumping up and down to the slowest song on a set list of fairly downtempo numbers. Or twirling. Or taking their shirt off to display tattooed iconography from the band's first single. Or calling out, "Pretty kitty!" during a Cat Power show while everyone else thinks about how they should have stayed home and listened to The Covers Album.

It's hard to be a fan, let alone a number-one fan, when all around you people are following their baser instincts. And audience members continue to make depressingly bad choices (like the shushers and the retaliatory faux-shushers at a recent Smog show). But fandom has made me happier, if not necessarily saner, recently. There was the moment at the Mountain Goats show when John Darnielle started taking requests, and Bottom of the Hill sounded like a stadium full of WWF attendees compacted into a space the size of my apartment - because all Mountain Goats fans are number-one fans. And there was the e-mail from a local Police tribute group called Stung, without whom I might never have known that my favorite band of all time, the band I fell for before I even knew about the FM dial, was going to be inducted March 10 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and would play together that night for the first time in 18 years.

It made me feel old. The Police's Synchronicity tour was the last concert my parents refused to let me attend. After that I was old enough, meaning I've been old enough for 18 years now - much good it's done me. The band broke up soon after that tour, possibly reasoning that they'd made their crappest album yet and should quit while they still had stadiums full of screaming fans. I held it against my parents for a long time, but I'm ready to forgive them.

On the other hand, I will never forgive the producers of the Hall of Fame event, which screened on VH1 last Sunday, for allowing Gwen Stefani to do the induction honors for the Police. Gloating, she related how, during that same tour - while I was sulking in my bedroom, soaking my pillow over Sting's heartbreaking beauty, staring at the poster of him and Stewart and Andy I'd recently received at my first boy-girl birthday party - she was somewhere backstage getting an autograph from the man whose name I'd inked into every pair of jeans, every notebook, since the summer after sixth grade. When Stefani returned to the stage with Steven Tyler during the band's spiritless rendition of "Every Breath You Take," I had to leave the room.

Would a real number-one fan have left? Would a real number-one fan be complaining? Who knows. If I had even a scrap of a clue of what it took to be that person, I would have started my own Police tribute band long ago, or at least launched a fan-club chapter.

They played their stalker hits; Andy Summers said God was at every rock ceremony; it was fun to watch Copeland break a drum skin; and Sting didn't talk about how he can fuck for eight hours straight - that's a full workday! - which was nice. I could see in retrospect, though, why no one except me, my older brother, and Gwen Stefani seemed to care that any of this was happening. Including Sting.

It's weird to think that the Police are the last band I'll ever devote so much emotional energy to, in that moody, hormonal way that wells up from the very core of adolescence. I'll try not to miss any more Mountain Goats shows, but my days of waking up at 6 a.m. to stand in line for concert tickets are over. I'll never skip school again. I'll never make a scrapbook, or cry over the lead singer of a rock and roll band, unless I interview one someday and we end up dating and she cheats on me with a younger, cuter groupie. Is this what growing up means? Some people would flash the devil sign and say it doesn't have to be that way. The Police could have used them the other night, every last one.

E-mail Lynn Rapoport at lynn@sfbg.com

Back to top