POLLIN' for nothing and yer chicks for free - Dire Straits - BROTHERS IN ARMS

Haha yes!

Those paintings really are a marvel

is there Mark Knopfler fanfic?

said this on another thread, but I think Dire Straits is the secret special sauce of the War on Drugs. No one in the US or UK wanted to sound like DS for 30 years after BiA, but the standard WiD long jams sound like Love Over Gold/ Making Movies' more expansive tunes.

This helps explain how Knopfler tickets are like $100 when he tours to my local downtown theater.

there's gotta be a Princess Bride element to Knopfler fandom

I tell you what would improve this record is if they had steve ignorant reciting the lyrics of 'how does it feel to be the mother of 1000 dead' over the top of the guitar solos on the title track

Re-listening to 'Your Latest Trick' again now... ah, now that's a sax lick.

i think this album hit at the precise right time, it has a bit of everything for everyone who was a major record buying audience in 1985. some slick roots rock, MTV sheen, Miami Vice moodiness, and even that sax lick...it sounds like Dire Straits but it also sounds like half a dozen other major, vv popular acts (and evokes other pop culture touchstones) hitting right around the same moment in time.

lots of aspects of the album sounded familiar to me even as a ten year old hearing it for the first time when my parents spun the vinyl. i'm also pretty sure this was the last record my folks bought, and the first they'd bought in awhile for themselves and not for my brother and i.

I hadn't noticed until recently how many rock songs are about a befuddled, probably overweight/out of shape singer throwing his love away on loose women and prostitutes. How many prostitutes do rock stars meet? It represents the paucity of their imaginations, the sorry state of their sex lives, or both.

Well, yeah.

I think it's more that they think all women are whores, regardless of whether they actually are or not

xp

it's this thing where they're acting like the raconteur admiring women from afar, appreciating them, commenting on their appearance, playing the gentleman but acting the possessor, ah don't you know women are just these beautiful mysterious things who we can't comprehend and sometimes they do these baffling things, but we love them anyway....wanting the solid home base but also wanting the mystery lady who's out there in a bar somewhere waiting for you. i mean that's obv a common rock star thing but boy i know a lot of men (especially from my parents' generation, it seems) who are like this IRL all the time.

just be thankful he's not singing about les boys again

I really like the extended outro on the full version of 'Why Worry' - the vinyl version just feels like half a song to me now. They could have easily have lopped off 'Walk of Life' to make room for it.

If I remember correctly, Neil Dorfsman argued with the band over 'Walk of Life' because he felt it didn't warrant a place on the album. He was right.

It's the title song for me. When "Brothers in Arms" came out I was studying in Munich and a friend who was a big Dire Straits fan taped it for me. I listened to it when I went to bed. And I usually got to the last song before falling asleep and it was always a perfect lullabye and so tender, I loved it to pieces. I think this song was also playing in the car stereo of that guy we had met in a Munich pub. We had not slept the night and were coming back from the Starnberger See in the afternoon and the guy fell asleep for a second and missed the curve and we went straight into a field. In that moment my sister's friend who was the 4th passenger thought about our poor parents who were about to lose their two only children in that accident. It didn't happen though, the car stopped in the middle of that field without turning over and somehow we even succeeded in putting it back on the road. As you see that album and especially that song is linked to sleep in my memory.

wow

just be thankful he's not singing about les boys again

― plp will eat itself (NickB),

that's the way to do it!

great post

voted the title track, I wonder if Gilmour ever heard "Brothers in Arms" and was like damn headband boy beat me at my own game

ugh Knopfler is about as sexy as a moist jockstrap

.. odd i was just thinking today that i could go the rest of my life not hearing "Money For Nothing" ever again.

xpost otm

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that this album was one of first albums I ever bought with my own money, based on the 3 catchy singles that open the album. Then it turned out those were the only 3 songs I liked on the album. An early lesson in record-buying disappointment.

The title track works great in that Miami Vice episode, which is also the only Miami Vice episode I've ever seen.

Btw I didn't even know sting was on "money for nothing" ! What's the story ?

Sting sings the line "What's that — Hawaiian noises?"

that ain't workin

the intro to money for nothing is breathtaking in a special fx fireworks kind of way

most of these songs are just too damn long and not interesting

really sad that every Dire Straits discussion has to devolve into a discussion of their LOOKS, they are actually not just pieces of meat for you to rate in your online beauty contest they are TALENTED MUSICIANS who WRITE THEIR OWN SONGS

as a child, i was not aware that sting was a native english speaker

Sting actually can only speak English phonetically

most of these songs are just too damn long and not interesting

― brimstead, Wednesday, September 6, 2017 10:54 PM (twenty-five minutes ago)

otm -- it's as simple as that for me.

tbh I like this album and generally like this band, though for me they're strictly an atmosphere and mood band who sometimes managed to get a good hook in there.

i really just like listening to those dudes kill it on their instruments on the earlier albums and they don't sound like much of a band here.. plenty of atmosphere but it's just interspersed with too much lameness, imo

tbf this album def sounds like the MOR radio of my childhood

tbh I like this album and generally like this band, though for me they're strictly an atmosphere and mood band who sometimes managed to get a good hook in there.

― nomar, Thursday, September 7, 2017 3:54 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM - Dire Straits always seemed a weird stadium band, pretty much the majority of their output is downbeat.

the intro to money for nothing is breathtaking in a special fx fireworks kind of way

eheh, otm.
I remember being so impressed by it as a kid with the dad's hifi system at high volume !

This was the first album of Dire Straits' "headband era", wasn't it? (He started wearing it circa 1983) ... Apparently, it was for practical rather than aesthetic reasons.

Talking about Sting, I find him singing "MONEH FOR NOTHING! CHIX FOR FREEEEEEE!" over the outro in his falsetto rather comical, given how pretentious his own lyrics can be.

i really just like listening to those dudes kill it on their instruments on the earlier albums and they don't sound like much of a band here.. plenty of atmosphere but it's just interspersed with too much lameness, imo

― brimstead, Thursday, September 7, 2017 4:52 AM (six hours ago)

By this album, they'd become The Mark Knopfler Project. 1st DS album is superb esp. "In the gallery"

otm. Pretty funny how anonymous the other band members were/are for such a stadium-sized band

OTM - Dire Straits always seemed a weird stadium band, pretty much the majority of their output is downbeat.

― more Allegro-like (Turrican), Wednesday, September 6, 2017 11:04 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's weird they're like Pink Floyd but with this fake american heartland thing going on

and headbands

Funnily enough, the title track of this album kinda reminds me a little of Gilmour-era Floyd.

Heh, I see upper mississippi said as much upthread!

Knopfler has a really narrow range as a singer, too.

Funnily enough, the title track of this album kinda reminds me a little of Gilmour-era Floyd.

also the floyd album that came out prior to BIA is obviously about the falklands war too

Related to guitar, there are stories that Knopfler was going for Billy Gibbons' ZZ Top guitar tone for "Money for Nothing."

I think Knopfler may have asked Gibbons about his guitar tone? Well, according to Gibbons anyway. Unsurprisingly, Gibbons didn't tell him anything - guitarists are generally a bit funny about how they achieve their guitar sounds.

I waaaant myyyyy
I waaaant myyyyy eeeemmm teeeee veeeee!

*drum solo*

I really hope there is an earnest academic treatise out there on the Geordie creation of late 20c adult oriented pop rock - from Ferry through Sting to Knopfler and Mcaloon. If not I may have to write it.