Videos From The High School Years: Message in a Bottle (1979)

I have to tell you, I was a bit late to the party when it came to The Police. Raised in a country music household will do that. After moving to my current abode, I spent a lot of after-school hours at a now-defunct newsstand, where one of the afternoon managers would invariably play a Police album. The first one I ever bought was 1981's "Ghost in the Machine". In time, I caught up with their earlier works, and ended up getting their box set, "Message in a Box", albeit on cassette (If I can upgrade to CD....!).

One of those earlier works, "Message in a Bottle", is just a mix of brilliant songwriting and musicianship. The video is a combination of performance & studio clips, a combination that would be used again in "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" 2 years later. In both, drummer Stewart Copeland, who was recently in the home district, hams it up in front of the camera.



I had envisioned a conceptual clip where the band were on an island somewhere, and......!