MiamiTickets.co · Local knowledge
Before the Arenas, the Police Played Fat Cats Club
On May 4, 1979, the Police played two sets at Fat Cats Club in Miami. Concert records list an early show and a late show, each built around songs from their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour. “Roxanne,” “So Lonely” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” were in the set. So was “Message in a Bottle,” a song that had yet to appear on an album.
It is tempting, knowing what came later, to call this the night Miami discovered the Police. The record cannot tell us that. It does tell us something better: for one Friday, a band that would become one of the biggest in the world was still playing club shows here.
The group was Sting on bass and vocals, Andy Summers on guitar and Stewart Copeland on drums. Their music could turn quickly, from the urgency of punk to a reggae rhythm and back to a sharp rock chorus. In 1979, that sound was still taking shape in front of audiences. At Fat Cats, the set included much of their first album, alongside songs pointing toward the next one.
Miami got another chance to hear how far they had come before the year was over.
On October 26, the Police played the Gusman Cultural Center with the South Florida band the Cichlids opening. A contemporary review, preserved on Sting’s website, describes an animated crowd and a trio whose power came as much from its timing and interplay as its volume. Sting took a request for “Message in a Bottle.” The audience sang along to “Roxanne.” Songs from the newly released Reggatta de Blanc sat beside material from the debut.
The Cichlids’ place on that bill matters to this Miami story. This was a visiting band on its way up, sharing the evening with musicians from South Florida’s own scene. The reviewer gave the openers serious attention, describing a performance that grew stronger as it went. For the people at Gusman, the concert was a local night out before it became a piece of rock history.
One part of that night can still be heard. A live recording of “Message in a Bottle” from the October 26 Miami show was later included in an expanded edition of the Police’s Synchronicity. A performance once heard by the people inside Gusman now sits in the band’s official catalog.
The two Miami dates frame an extraordinary year without requiring us to invent what anyone in the audience thought. In May, the Police played early and late sets at Fat Cats. In October, they returned with another album out and a concert that earned a glowing review. Their global fame still lay ahead.
That is the pleasure of finding an early show in a city’s music history. Miami did not have to know what the Police would become to have heard them becoming it.