DIRE STRAITS c or d

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

I don’t remember if it was Maron who brought the topic up (think so?); but I recall RT was definitely “salty” about it (as the kids say).

I never really thought of them as similar guitarists. I guess they both play Strats and sort of apply folk techniques? Regardless, I say hats off to anyone able to ape Richard Thompson, there's more than mimicry involved there. And besides, Knopfler can write songs, too.

Good Knopfler interview(s) here: http://ds.mk-guitar.com/knopfler-interviews.htm

I was in my 20s in the 80s and i cherishes this band at the time. But when the smiths came dire straits turned into pleasant mainstream without interest.

I think at this point I'd probably rather listen to Dire Straits than The Smiths.

I remember seeing Richard Thompson live, maybe 20 years ago. He was quite funny, talking about movie soundtracks. He said "Here's how it goes with soundtracks. They always start out asking for Mark Knopfler. Then when he asks for too much money, they come looking for me."

Weird one-way rivalry. Not sure how Thompson’s grudge (whatever merit it may have) exactly squares with “avoiding ego” or what I understand to be other aspects of his adopted faith, but that’s none of my business....

Hmm, both these guys are accomplished English musicians born in ’49 and have been awarded “OBE”. Maybe they’ve bumped against each other in other ways over time, or it’s one of those “too close for comfort” rivalries.

Tried recently to sell a friend on Dire Straits. Wasn't interested. I then played some Richard Thompson. She said it sounded like Dire Straits.

QED

My children used to watch the show "Dinosaur Train."

If you are familiar with this show there are occasional appearances from a paleontologist, Scott Sampson.

His main fossil discovery was named after Mark Knopfler, apparently because the crew listened to his music a lot and found it inspiring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masiakasaurus

(insert lazy joke about classic rock / dinosaurs here)

Weird:

Classic rock fans rejoice, the music of roots rock icons Dire Straits will soon return to stages in the United States. For the first time in decades, all of the band’s hits and more can be experienced live, on-stage via the world-class contingent that is DSL Dire Straits Legacy. A celebration of the music of Grammy-Award-winning, multi-platinum-selling British rockers Dire Straits, DSL Dire Straits Legacy features four Dire Straits band members – Alan Clark (piano/keyboards), Danny Cummings (percussion), Mel Collins (saxophone) and Phil Palmer (guitar/musical director) – along with revered musicians, drummer Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty) and producer Trevor Horn of The Buggles and Yes (ABC, Tom Jones, John Legend, Cher, more) on bass, as well as Italian musicians Marco Caviglia (vocals/guitar) and Primiano DiBiase (keyboards).

Kinda wish Knopfler had shown up at the RnR Hall Of Fame, played Les Boys and then cleared off again

As one of the few bands to break up and stay broken up, Dire Straits has sort of gotten brushed into the dustbin. Which, combined with the punchline ubiquity of their blockbuster years, kind of leaves them ... underrated? I just listened to Communique and Love Over Gold for the first time in ages and I think I enjoyed every minute. Some great mood, lovely playing.

I have mixed feelings about Dire Straits, but I love this version of Portobello Belle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sQO-CDV_LA

I still like Making Movies and Love Over Gold a lot, as well as the live album Alchemy. But as far as ongoing presence, it's pretty much reduced to "Sultans of Swing" and "Walk of Life" on oldies radio as far as I can tell.

after a night on the booze, my goto 'end of session' album is now 'love over gold'.
i used to actively hate this band due to their omnipresence when i was a teenager.
clearly i have got old.
that said, it is a bloody cracking late night album.

Trying to remember how the song ‘Love Over Gold’ goes, but every time I sing it in my head it turns into ‘Private Dancer’

I think they're an easy band to overplay. I listened to them a lot as a kid and never listen to them now as a result, although there are a lot of things I like about them.

I do love Mark Knopfler's guitar playing. I don't play any instruments or know anything about music at all, so I can't really comment on these things in any kind of meaningful way, but Knopfler's guitar always sounds to me like it's speaking a language that I'm just on the verge of understanding. And I don't think the lyrics are great, but I don't think they're terrible either. But somehow the actual songs usually seem to me like less than the sum of their parts. I'm not totally sure why. Maybe they just feel too comfortable.

The language his guitar speaks is Strat.

Well, I did know that, if only because Douglas Adams felt the need to include that information in an awkward sex scene in one of the Hitchhiker's books.

One of the more interesting attributes of the band is the length of the songs. They are almost like a jam band, moody platforms for his playing.

The 1st Dire Straits album is superb. Knopfler writes some great lyrics too - "in the gallery", " telegraph road"

I recently had to work up a mandolin arrangement of "Romeo and Juliet," and realized that the version in my head was not the Making Movies version, nor the (pretty ubiquitous) Indigo Girls cover, but rather a live version that for some reason I can't find anymore.

They are almost like a jam band

That's the aspect I actually like about Alchemy, 10-minute version of Sultans of Swing, 14-minute Tunnel of Love, 13-minute Telegraph Road.

I'd rather listen to Chris Rea play and sing.

For the longest time I thought Rea's "Working On It" <was> Dire Straits.

he no doubt got his Poppy Bush Interzone-era stateside push by emphasizing the comparison.

is there anybody who doesn't recognise the guitar on this?
http://play.publicradio.org/mprstory/d/podcast/minnesota/the_current/song_of_the_day/2019/09/24/20190924_pieta_brown_the_hard_way_128.mp3

I’m very suspicious of Chris Rae for some reason. I should check him out.

1st DS album is really solid, great production too. I like their sound as a “unit”.
Communique is really good too. Maybe it does depend on how much you like Knopfler’s playing? Again, really great group interplay
I haven’t actually listened to Love Over Gold apart from “industrial disease”, I need to correct that
Making Movies - first two tracks are dope
Brothers In Arms - fascinating from the perspective of taking a band with a pretty distinct sound and feeding them into the corporate pop machine so as to make them almost unrecognizable

I adore the first 5 tracks on Making Movies.

The sax on Your Latest Trick is my Proust Madeleine

I was about 10 when Brothers in Arms came out and it was still huge during my first year of (Australian) high school. Everyone I knew was into it, and the local family who had the first CD player in our neighborhood used to attract kids specifically for the purpose of listening to it at insane volumes in Perfect Sound. They played like 15 nights at the biggest venue in town. It was in the Proper Pop Phenomenon space for us, one of those things that is hard to convey after the event.

Now I can't stand Money For Nothing and Walk of Life but still enjoy the rest very much. Partly nostalgia and partly appreciating the insane production values. It feels like a good vehicle for appreciating the bands latter strengths - creating a sense of atmosphere and crafting a sympathetic platform for Knopfler's guitar playing, which I still find emotionally affecting despite having very little time for guitar solos elsewhere in my life. It feels like it has reasonable continuity with what they were doing on Love Over Gold? A bit more bloodless, sure, but recognisably the same band who did Private Investigations & Industrial Disease. And the extended outtro to Why Worry is a huge peak for me, immaculately played and recorded corporate rock shooting for a weird kind of new age serenity. Love it.