The music may sound fresh and the crowd surely will be frenzied, but nostalgia will be an unavoidable theme when reggae-flavored rock giants The Police hit the stage Friday night at Marcus Amphitheater.

With only a few dates left on what they are proclaiming to be their final tour, Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland will pause to smell the roses while pounding out hits like "Roxanne" and "Spirits in the Material World" and "Every Breath You Take."

For many fans of the band, which bypassed Milwaukee last season, Friday's final encore may symbolize a different kind of ending:

The end of the era of the mega-concert experience.

With the record industry in shambles and the economy sputtering, it's only natural to wonder how much longer music fans will shell out big bucks for big concerts. Top tickets to see the Police and opening act Elvis Costello and the Imposters cost $200.

Wednesday night, Front Row Tickets advertised fourth-row seats in Section 2 for $1,248 apiece. Cheaper seats were available on Craigslist.com ($325 for a pair of seats in the 30th row) and Stubhub.com, which had some reserved seats in Section 8 for $277.75 each.

Bleacher and unreserved lawn seats were floating around for $30 to $70. As is often the case, the supply of cheaper seats outpaced the supply of "prime" seats.

"There was a time a few years ago when I booked a band for what I thought was a ridiculous amount of money," recalled Bob Babisch, the vice president of entertainment for Summerfest.

"I remember thinking to myself 'That's it. We can't go on like this. It's crazy.' Well, things have only gone up since then. And, I don't think they're going to come down any time soon."

In this era of radio homogenization and digital downloads, artists have a hard time making money from CD sales and rely on touring and merchandise sales for the bulk of their revenue.

With gas prices increasing, indie bands who travel in vans have felt the crunch. The Police, who grossed $171 million last year, feel it in a different way.

"The Police has become this huge monster. And we're proud of this enormous monster we've created. But it owns us," Copeland told Post-Gazette writer Scott Mervis.

"The Police doesn't belong to Sting, Andy and me anymore -- we belong to The Police. In terms of the entity that is The Police, the band, the 200 roadies, the equipment, the plane, the trucks, all those people, we need to show up on stage for two hours a day to sustain this huge machine.

"I screw up, I trip, I stub my toe, break my hand, Sting gets a cold, something like that, (screws) it all up. Our bodies don't even belong to us anymore -- we're wrapped in bubble wrap, we're surrounded by people who make sure we're going to get to that stage, fully equipped to play that show, and it's my duty to deliver up this body of mine, my knees, my elbows, my nose, I have to deliver that (stuff) up, ready to play. And it's kind of a responsibility.

"The music doesn't even belong to us anymore, it belongs to the people in whose lives its woven. Everyone grew up to these songs, they got married, they got divorced, they got fired, they got 'whatever' with this music as a soundtrack, and they want to hear it the way they want to hear it."

That situation can lead to robotic performances and mixed emotions.

"The Police is a celebration of something that's already there, sort of like when you go to see a Mozart in concert," Copeland told the Pittsburgh paper. "You already know the music, you just want to see it performed. We're performing something that's already there and has a huge dramatic impact on the night, but we're creative artists, we have to do something new -- not necessarily with each other. We've all got to go off and live our lives. I want to be able to stub my toe if I want to, damn it. I want to be able to stay up late and have a hangover in the morning if I want to."

Hangovers will be inevitable on Saturday. Fans of The Police will get over them with aspirin and Gatorade. The concert industry, however, might not be able to shake its headache as easily.

According to a report in Pollstar, a trade magazine, North American concert tours in the first half of 2008 grossed $1.05 billion -- virtually the same mid-year figure as 2007.

Given the state of the economy, music executives view that number as a positive. There is, however, a significant downside. Although revenue may not have changed in the past year, attendance at shows took a downward turn.

Only the exorbitant ticket prices commanded by bands like The Police, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and others kept the revenue high. Many summer concert tickets were sold in the spring, before gas soared past $4 a gallon.

When people are filling their tanks for $65, the idea of spending $100 for a mediocre seat at an arena or amphitheater becomes less tantalizing.

The second half of the year could present new challenges for the industry in addition to other obstacles presented by iPods, YouTube, the demise of MTV as a place to "break" new acts and other hurdles.

"Everybody's nervous," Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni told the New York Times. "If you look at the parade of bad economic news we've seen in the first six months of the year, we're doing better than we should be. When is the bottom going to drop?"

The answer to that question, which is common in many industries today, will come from the customers.