It's not every day you see a big piece of catalogue get loosed from the jaws of rights holding or format availability - which is why we're extremely pleased to pass on the news that, four decades after its original release, The Police's first video album is coming back into print.

The Police Around the World, a travelogue/live chronicle showcasing Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers on their ascent to the mantle of biggest band in the world, will get its first release on DVD and Blu-ray on May 20. In addition to restored audio and video, the discs will include full performance footage of four songs as bonus material, as well as an accompanying disc of previously unreleased live audio from the same concerts.

Already proven hitmakers in the band's native England by 1979 - "Message in a Bottle" would top the U.K. charts less than a year after breakthrough Top 20 hit "Roxanne" - The Police Around the World features the trio building a solid fan base in a way few other contemporaries had plotted. With the help of Stewart's brothers Miles and Ian, The Police's manager and booking agent, the band delivered their high-energy sets (a mix of Copeland's polyrhythmic punk percussion, Summers' trained guitar textures and Sting's hyperliterate pop songcraft) to countries that had largely escaped the blast radius of punk and new wave. Around the World finds the group in Asia, the Middle East, Greece, Africa, Mexico and elsewhere.

It was a whirlwind of activity the band only barely kept up with. "We had bitten off more than we could chew," Copeland mused in the liner notes to Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings (1993). "We finished [Zenyatta Mondatta] at 4 a.m. on the day we were starting our world tour. We went to bed for a few hours then travelled down to Belgium for our first gig. It was cutting it very fine." Nonetheless, the world's Police-mania soon translated to crossover success in America, where Zenyatta's singles "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" reached the Top 10.

While some of the footage of Around the World overlaps with Copeland's personal Super 8 home movies, the backbone of the entertaining 2006 documentary Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, the film was out-of-print not long after debuting on videocassette and laserdisc. It shows sides of the trio that are not often seen, from the raucous camaraderie between the band members (whose internal struggles remain the stuff of rock legend) to less-polished interactions with unruly crowds (Sting's keening voice spewing profanities at a man who threw mud at him during a French gig will resonate in your ears forever).

The Police Around the World will be available in three different formats. The Blu-ray or DVD sets are housed in a digipak with an accompanying CD of 11 live songs. A vinyl version, pressed on blue or silver wax depending on country of origin and featuring two less tracks than the CD, will come only with the film on DVD. You can check out the full track list below!

The Police Around the World (Restored & Expanded) (Mercury Studios/Cherrytree, 2022)

DVD/CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
BD/CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
DVD/LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

documentary includes performances of:

• Next to You
• Walking on the Moon
• Born in the 50's
• So Lonely
• Man in a Suitcase
• Can't Stand Losing You
• Bring on the Night
• Canary in a Coalmine
• Voices Inside My Head
• When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
• Shadows in the Rain
• Don't Stand So Close to Me
• Truth Hits Everybody
• Roxanne

Bonus material - complete performances of:

• Walking on the Moon (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
• Next to You (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
• Message in a Bottle (Live @ Today's World Disco, Hong Kong - 2/26-27/1980)
• Born in the 50's (Live @ Today's World Disco, Hong Kong - 2/26-27/1980)

Live album track list (* only on CD)

1. Walking on the Moon (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
2. Next to You (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980) *
3. Deathwish (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
4. So Lonely (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
5. Can't Stand Losing You (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
6. Truth Hits Everybody (Live @ Kyoto Daigaku, Seibu Koudou, Kyoto, Japan - 2/23/1980)
7. Visions of the Night (Live @ Hammersmith Odeon, London, England - 9/22-23/1979) *
8. Roxanne (Live @ Hammersmith Odeon, London, England - 9/22-23/1979)
9. Intro/Born in the 50's (Live @ Today's World Disco, Hong Kong - 2/26-27/1980)
10. Message in a Bottle (Live @ Today's World Disco, Hong Kong - 2/26-27/1980)
11. Bring on the Night (Live @ Today's World Disco, Hong Kong - 2/26-27/1980)