DIRE STRAITS c or d

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.

"Walk Of Life" is funny and dumb

Sorry, I will never not post this:

http://www.wolproject.com

Giving On Every Street a listen this morning for the first time ever, it's a very good album.

Yet another band that has gone from massive to ... underrated? The Knopfler solo albums I've heard have been really good, too.

if i was a completist these are 2 groups i would consider as they are what i would consider intelligent rock music!

I don't know about underrated as the catalog still sells very well by today's standards. I like them, but there's a lot of stuff that I don't like on all of their albums. Making Movies is probably the most extreme example of this - side one's awesome, but side two quickly goes to hell. I usually just listen to a compilation that boils everything down to their best stuff.

I recently realized that the "Telegraph Road" of that lengthy song is the same one I grew up on, in the Detroit area. Never made that connection because people in that region never verbally identify streets with "road", "street", "avenue", etc. 8 Mile instead of 8 Mile Road, like. We just knew/know it as "Telegraph."

Never heard On Every Street. They were my favourite band when I was 9 or 10 then by the time of that last album I'd moved on. There is great stuff on every record, yes and despite Making Movies being their best, it does indeed descend into hell.

I don't know, side two has "Expresso Love" and "Solid Rock," which are both driven by great riffs and licks. "Hand in Hand" is an OK ballad that sounds a bit like Graham Parker. "Les Boys" is pretty stupid, but it's the last song. But man, side one (three songs!) of that album ...

I like Hand In Hand very much.

it’s not as good as side A but it’s not bad or anything (Les Boys aside)

"Hand In Hand" is used very well in Everybody Wants Some!!!.

I heard the title track of On Every Street on a compilation. It's touching and much more low-key than most of their latter-day stuff, with an actually cathartic guitar coda.

Communique must win a prize for most blatant attempt to carbon copy a successful debut album. Another nominee: King Crimson's In the Wake of Poseidon.

side one of making movies is indeed peak straits

There's a vinyl copy of Love Over Gold somewhere here. Need to pull it out.

Love Over Gold is primo Floyd not Floyd.

I occasionally feel actual human emotions when listening to Knopfler guitar solos

some of the best are on his solo LPs IMO - there's one on a song called I think 'prairie wedding' that actually took my breath away the first time I heard it (YMMV naturally)

I don't know exactly what his trick is - but it really does a number on me

ha totally. it’s an amazing sounding album xp

back when I was a kid (in the 80s) I viewed Dire Straits as the exact midway point between Floyd and Springsteen

the solo (solos?) on “brothers in arms” is/are really moving

no pick!

Is it me, or is like Knopfler like really popular in Eastern Europe? That is a vibe I get from the videos and comments on Youtube vids about Knopfler and Dire Straits.

I have no idea why but that makes total sense

eastern europe, africa, dire straits is truly global

no pick!

the tone is amazing for sure! but there's also something about his melodic choices, and (crucially IMO) the way the songs are structured to create a sympathetic bed for the solos

I love how lyrical his playing is without getting bogged down in big, bent notes. He sort of skirts along the edges of country and jazz and blues without quite landing on any of them. Possibly in this thread but certainly elsewhere people have compared his playing to Richard Thompson, which never really occurred to me, though when I think about it I can see the occasional resemblances. Imo Thompson is more clearly the untouchable virtuoso, yet while I love every minute of his guitar playing it's just so ... playful and alive ... and eerily perfect, no matter the context. Thompson may write better melancholy, mournful songs, but Knopfler's playing actually captures that vibe better. He often sounds like he's searching for something.

Vocals aside, "Hand in Hand" used to remind me of Springsteen in spots, and sure enough Roy Bittan's on piano (with Iovine producing, fresh off of Darkness on the Edge of Town). It can be pleasant enough, otherwise it would never work the way it did in Everybody Wants Some!! "Solid Rock" always sounded like rote stuff to me, like throwaway lyrics applied to a band warm-up. "Expresso Love" never really goes anywhere, and it's probably the best cut on side B. Every time I put on that side, it felt like I was listening to B-sides or outtakes.

I recently realized that the "Telegraph Road" of that lengthy song is the same one I grew up on, in the Detroit area. Never made that connection because people in that region never verbally identify streets with "road", "street", "avenue", etc. 8 Mile instead of 8 Mile Road, like. We just knew/know it as "Telegraph."

Interesting... can confirm this (I also grew up around there).

back when I was a kid (in the 80s) I viewed Dire Straits as the exact midway point between Floyd and Springsteen

― brimstead, Tuesday, November 17, 2020 1:40 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Their strength and their weakness IMO....

xp from one of many links:

The Telegraph Road is a major north-south 70 mile thoroughfare in Michigan. Mark Knopfler was inspired to write this song while riding in the front of the tour bus, which made the journey down Telegraph Road. At the time, Knopfler was reading the novel The Growth Of the Soil by the Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and he was inspired to put the 2 together and write a song about the beginning of the development along Telegraph Road and the changes over the ensuing decades. This was a metaphor for the development of America and the ruining of one man's dreams in the wake of its decline, in particular focusing on unemployment.

Guessing the bus was on its way to Pine Knob, and they took Telegraph to Square Lake to 75.

Bittan is all over "Making Movies." His playing on "Tunnel of Love" is as important to the song as the guitar.

Is it me, or is like Knopfler like really popular in Eastern Europe? That is a vibe I get from the videos and comments on Youtube vids about Knopfler and Dire Straits.

His father was Hungarian, maybe that's in there somewhere.

Also I don't think I knew, till recently, that he was born in Glasgow and lived there till he was 7.

I’ll probably end up getting cancelled but I’ve never got why ‘Les Boys’ gets such a bad rap...sure it’s a bit dated and gauche but fundamentally it’s quite sweet and for a pretty huge rock band to write a LGBQT seems fairly progressive...I say fairly

Thompson may write better melancholy, mournful songs, but Knopfler's playing actually captures that vibe better. He often sounds like he's searching for something.

I like that way of putting it. His guitar often sounds to me like it's thinking. I think I said this upthread somewhere, but as a kid I used to listen to Knopfler's guitar and feel like I was [this close] to being able to decode what it was saying and put it into words. There's something in his solos that - to me - has the rhythms of human speech, like someone half-articulating a thought, pausing, saying "but on the other hand," and following the thought off through tangents that seem like they're going to resolve but never quite do. Idk if it sounds like that to anyone else.

And he never sounds to me like he's showing off, which is also pretty cool. I mean, impressive as his solos are, they always feel like they're central to the mood of the song and he's not just showboating.

this close was supposed to be in italics, obviously. Grr.

i have not really listened to any dire straits or mark knopfler, i tried that "prairie wedding" song someone mentioned above and that solo is definitely something, i would say it's thoughtful, articulate and searching but definitely low-key about it. kind of sells the song imo.

That whole album is really good, iirc. I'm not sure I've heard any of the albums after it, though, and there have been ... several. But from that album you also get this gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxl2YGDJEAM

(Album features guest backing vox from James Taylor, Van Morrison, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and the guys from Squeeze. Knopfler showing off his rolodex there.)

Wish he'd just turned up at the Hall Of Fame, played Les Boys solo, then left

Checked to see if I posted the live version of Portobello Belle that I really like; looks like I did, about a year ago.

I’ll probably end up getting cancelled but I’ve never got why ‘Les Boys’ gets such a bad rap...sure it’s a bit dated and gauche but fundamentally it’s quite sweet and for a pretty huge rock band to write a LGBQT seems fairly progressive...I say fairly

― X-Prince Protégé (sonnyboy),

Don't get defensive -- there's no point.

I don't find it sweet or dated -- it's a dumb heavy-handed attitude toward a slice of gay culture about which a casual Fassbinder fan would've had some insight. I find Rod Stewart's "The Killing of Georgie" awkward, gauche, and often stupid but way more empathetic.

agreed. the melody is nice, lyrics should be about lying in a field eating grapes or something

I think Mark Knopfler's lyrics are often dumb and heavy-handed. I think the guitar is really his native language; he has such lyricism in his guitar solos, and such nuance and lightness of touch, but he's much clumsier with words, imo. His choruses are often good, and sometimes he gets a kind of dark ominous vibe going in the lyrics that works for him, but there's a lot of really clunky try-hard stuff in there too.

I think that's one reason his star has fallen lately; the other, imo, is he's just not weird enough. Telegraph Road is a good song, but if you heard it described on paper, you'd think it was a lot stranger and more atmospheric than it is.

otm

Hate this band but great name

really? Pre-Brothers in Arms, it’s great bar music imo

Example please