Show 54: The Police - Roxy Theatre, San Diego, USA - 16 May 1979

The Police were one of the biggest bands of the early 1980s - but this show captures them in concert just before they hit the bigtime.

They had released their first album, Outlandos d’Amour in November 1978 and initially it didn’t do too well - the first two singles from the album, Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You, having flopped some months earlier. In early 1979 however, Roxanne was released in the USA and met with some success - The Police duly set off on a low budget tour of the USA, driving themselves around in a van - and that success led to Roxanne being re-issued and making the UK top 20. After this tour they finished recording their 2nd album, Regatta de Blanc. The 1st single from that, Message In A Bottle (played on this tour for the first time), got to #1 in the UK and...well, the rest is history.

UPDATE 2018
While preparing this old show as separate files for a donator to the site, I found I could now improve the sound quality further, over what I’d originally done to the recording several years ago. You can now download this new version (as of 2018) HERE as 1 new 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format of the new version, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Setlist
Can't Stand Losing You
Truth Hits Everybody
So Lonely
Fall Out
Born in The 50s
Hole In My Life
Sally
Message In A Bottle
Peanuts
Roxanne
Next To You
Landlord
Can't Stand Losing You