DIRE STRAITS c or d

Agree with yr overall assessment of this album's worth btw.

(which i think he does rather brilliantly)

i should re-listen to Communique and Making Movies; i suspect they would stick to my ribs a little better now than they did 12-13 years ago when i was obsessing over s/t

xx-post

I've got 'Single Handed Sailor' stuck in my head now and I'm thinking that the tune is a lot like Dylan's 'Oh Sister'.

So okay, what's the deal with the Twisting By The Pool EP, from 1983? (Or, as my copy says on the cover, ExtendedDanc"EP"lay -- not sure what its official name is supposed to be; Joel Whitburn's book lists it as the former.) Contractual obligation, frustrated sellout move, record label pressure to go more "pop," bid for the European market, or what? Title track might be the lightest, most frivolous thing they ever did, and it didn't chart Hot 100 at all in the States (EP went to #53 on the album chart), but I remember it being pretty ubiquitous in Germany when I lived there. (Actually, just checked Wiki -- only #31 Germany, but #14 UK, #1 New Zealand, #2 Australia, #11 Italy; apparently got "rock" airplay in the States, but only reached #105 pop.) And I guess, yeah, a dance song, though who would actually be "twisting" in 1983? Stray Cats fans? Except the lyrics says they're on holiday at the beach, dancing to "the Eurobeat" (first time I ever heard that word, I think, but living in Germany I thought it was a perfect genre name.) Song doesn't sound cynical, but knowing Knopfler, it's gotta be right? Maybe a template for Brothers In Arms (which I haven't listened to in entirety for decades so this could be way off), as in: moving away from uppity literary aspirations toward putting out dumb records the masses will buy. Three other songs on the EP, most substantial being a talked-not-sung five-minute diddy-bebop quasi-jazz (as in Steely Dan maybe) workout called "Badges, Posters, T-Shirts," about fans looking for merch and (I think) claiming they could drum better than the drummer. The B-side songs really do sound like B-sides, pleasant but forgettable, one sax based and maybe very slightly jump-bluesy ("Two Young Lovers"), the other piano based and possibly an attempt at Blonde On Blonde era Dylan. Did anymore care?

"Did anybody care?," I mean. (Actually, I was thinking they were on a career downswing by that point, and just fishing for whatever they could get, but I just noticed in Wiki that Love Over Gold from 1982 -- which I know basically nothing about -- apparently went #1 all over Europe, their first album to do so, but peaked at #19 in the States just like Making Movies before it had. So it's possible that, by this point, they figured the Euromarket was their future.)

"Two Young Lovers" - haha, that's the yakety sax song right?

Sax is by Mel Collins of King Crimson btw iirc

Contractual obligation, frustrated sellout move, record label pressure to go more "pop,"

A little of everything perhaps? The video for the title track was in pretty heavy MTV rotation and I recall that Rolling Stone had a very prominent review (I'm sure paid for). Love Over Gold was a complete non-entity in the US (despite the charts).

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/faggot-to-be-removed-from-dire-straits-song-20110114-19q9m.html

i never even knew that word was in the song until i read about that this morning!

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/faggot-to-be-removed-from-dire-straits-song-20110114-to-be-replaced- with-leftover-nigger-from-huck-finn-19q9m.html

guilty lol

guilty post

I think "Twisting by the Pool" EP is mostly an example of how they liked to play with American idioms. One interesting thing about Dire Straits, which connects w/ what someone said about Thin Lizzy, is how at their best they interpret and put their own spin on very "American" sounding rock'n'roll. Dire Straits did this a few different ways-- from proggy Springsteen-style epics to "yackety sax" kind of stuff-- and their fortunes in the U.S. really hinged on where their sound was at any given point and how well if fit with emerging, early-80s ideas of what "classic rock" meant.

"Twisting by the Pool" was also a harbinger for the boomer nostalgia of the 80s. For people of a certain age, it sounded like the music they heard as kids.

I've always suspected that "Twisting by the Pool" came about partly because they had just hired ex-Rockpile drummer Terry Williams, who was born to wail frantically on songs like this.

Sarcasm and irony is inappropriate in 2011?

Me on Love Over Gold: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/dire-straits-love-over-gold.html

Very good review. This is one of my father's favourite albums and "Telegraph Road" one of his favourite songs.

I was particularly interested in your comparisons with Steely Dan; I'd never made that connection before, but in retrospect, it's easy to see with Knopfler's style of playing and early adoption of digital technology.

Nice job. But why skip over It Never Rains? That's one of the best Dire Straits songs.

Never mind, I take that back.

been diggin 'Beryl' today

Posted this on the "World" music 2015 thread, but it also kinda belongs here

http://www.afropop.org/22260/accounting-for-taste/

On air this week is “Accounting for Taste.” We’ll find out how the fluid guitar playing of ’70s rock band Dire Straits became massively popular in the Sahel, influencing Tuareg rockers like Tinariwen and Tamikrest. We’ll hear about the American country superstar Jim Reeves’ African career, and the unlikely story of how the pedal steel made it from Hawaii to Lagos, Nigeria. Finally, we’ll travel to Angola to explore that nation’s death metal scene. Produced by Sam Backer with help from Jesse Brent.

Mauritanian Noura Mint Seymali's guitarist husband told me he listened to Dire Straits. But his guitar playing is such edgier and funkier (than I recall from Dire Straits).

― curmudgeon, Saturday, February 28, 2015 7:34 PM (0 seconds

http://africasacountry.com/the-unexpected-popularity-of-dire-straits-in-north-african-tuareg-communities

The guy who did the afropop.org radio story from February, wrote the later blog item. As I noted on the "world" music thread, when I interviewed Noura Mint Seymali's guitarist from Mauritania, he also noted that he listened to Dire Straits. But as the article notes, younger Tuaregs do not seem to listen to Dire Straits anymore because there are so many desert blues bands around. I wonder if Dire Straits are awarwe of their audience there?

Rep for "Six Blade Knife":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHIIivQnIsU

rep for the whole first album!

ber neh ber-neh ber-neh ber-ner-neh-nurUR

HA!

good jj cale vibes on six blade knife

btw it's fun to listen to 'lady writer' and pretend it's actually tom verlaine you're hearing

Love Over Gold fucking rules.

and 'Twisting By The Pool' is shite.

Love Over Gold is a good record indeed, I kept that and the debut in my collection

although Telegraph Road is a... well, stupid is not the right word, but it's a weird song that's too ambitious for its own good and really doesn't deliver at all lyrically

sounds pristine tho

It's strange - if people ever speak about this band these days, it's usually about the Brothers in Arms period or 'Sultans of Swing', and even then they seem to be one of those formerly huge bands that generally hardly ever crop up in musical discussions anymore.

Making Movies and Love Over Gold come across as the bands peak now, and both are very underrated these days.

Making Movies, short a song maybe, is their masterpiece. Roy Bittan really livens things up, especially on "Tunnel of Love," which is also their peak.

Brothers in Arms was actually the end, IMO... I don't like the one LP they put out after, I'm not a fan of Knopfler's solo work at all and I fucking detest 'Walk of Life' more than 'Twisting by the Pool' ...

Will never miss a chance to repost this:

http://www.wolproject.com

Communique is good too

really good, dare I say

Most of the self-titled first album too. "Six Blade Knife" and "Water of Love"...

I don't like the one LP they put out after

The title track of On Every Street has the greatest guitar part Knopfler ever wrote, tho.

Communiqué is far better than many would have you believe, yeah!

well yeah self titled is a total classic xxp

communique may not be as tight or well written as the debut but the production is really nice and i love hearing those guy play

Had heard the story that Tuaregs in exile in Libya had heard Dire Straits and been influenced by it, and now there’s 90s video evidence of Libyans playing "Sultans of Swing"

http://sahelsounds.com/2018/03/dire-straits-in-the-sahara/

Richard Thompson is convinced that Knopfler ripped off his guitar sound. He's very serious about it, I heard him discussing it in a recent interview...

interesting, have a link?

Thompson's sound seems a lot more powerful to my ears

RTs soloing has an emotional violence to it that you just don’t find in Knopfler imo. I guess you could compare eg Walk Of Life with Tear Stained Letter, but that similarity would be down to shared influences

Oh man, the audience watching that Libyan band doing SOS look bored as shit

Niels – it was this podcast: http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_634_-_richard_thompson_lemmy_kilmister

it was this interview with Neil Dorfsman:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-dire-straits-money-nothing

"Mark was a very casual vocalist," Dorfsman remarks. "He'd often be smoking a cigarette while he sang, and we'd probably do six or seven similar passes and I would put something together.

This is the other bit that really stuck out, the insult to injury that was replacing Terry Williams with Omar Hakim:

"I'd always had my doubts that we were getting what we needed on the rhythm tracks, and I remember telling Mark early on that the drums weren't really happening," he says. "Initially, he didn't feel the same way, but after several weeks he picked up on my frustration. So, we decided to ditch the drums and bring in a new drummer to overdub onto the existing tracks. I remember Mark talking about maybe getting Roxy Music's Andy Newmark or the jazz drummer Peter Erskine, but eventually we sent for Omar Hakim. On the New York scene he was known more as a jazz-fusion drummer than as a rock drummer, but he was the kind of guy who could play anything and Mark was a big fan of his, so we brought him down to Montserrat and he re-did all of the tracks in about two and a half days. The first day he did about six, the next day he did three or four, and he was out of there by the third day. That was pretty mind-blowing.

So Terry struggles for weeks, then they get Omar, who does it in like two days. But it's Terry Williams doing the intro to "Money for Nothing," so there's that.

I've always been very fond of all of the Brothers in Arms singles, with the exception of "So Far Away", which is a great riff in search of a song.

Side b >>>>> side a

I like those guitar gremlins on "So Far Away."

the guitars on the less rockier material sound gorgeous, it's like knofler's trademark silky tone with added celestial magic or something. really just love the texture of the slower stuff, very watery/humid sounding idk

thanks for the link Josh, keen to read, love the way the album sounds - maybe when the CD revival really kicks in (lol) it will get a new lease on life

(I was talking to some early 20s hip kids at a gig the other week and one of them told me wide-eyed that they’d heard tell CD’s actually had the best sound quality, better even than vinyl!!!)

and brimstead, i am a side 2 fan as well - particularly ride across the river and the title track - but i think Why Worry is my fave

Brothers in Arms is good

my dad liked to say in the car that they were never as good once pick withers left and terry williams replaced him

Certainly it's hard to find a better name than Pick Withers.

In 2021, Withers re-surfaced with a new rhythm and blues band called 'Slim Pickin's', [8] later renamed 'Pick's Pocket'.[9]

Money riff