Album Eight: dIRE sTRAITS

Age fourteen I was a painfully shy teenager.  My mum had tried to break me out of my shell through the years.  She signed me up for clubs from drama to tennis, from swimming to scouts.  I would go along obediently but hated it and would more than often tearfully beg my mum not have to return.  Then one evening my dad told my brother and I that he had a surprise for us and to get in the car.  This kind of thing was a rare occurrence, but curiosity lead me to jump in the passenger seat.  On a swelteringly hot summer night I found myself at a Mark Knopfler gig.  The next morning I asked my mum for guitar lessons.

When I was eighteen it was deemed cool to say Slash from Guns and Roses was your inspiration, Knopfler was so called dad rock.  I didn’t care, I have loved everything Knopfler has done.  He has the unique triple: Guitar God, Lyrical poet and Melodical Tunesmith.

I already had a connection with dIRE sTRAITS, my dad went to school with Mark and Dave Knopfler, Mark was slightly older but my dad recalls playing hide and seek with David.  My dad’s mum, my grandma sent me their first album for my birthday when I was about twelve and even then I remember playing air guitar in the mirror, I had been bitten by the bug, a seed had been planted.

So why was this band so great?  Mark was a journalist before the band had formed and I believe this contributed to his skill at telling stories.  He has at no point fallen into the trap of being autobiographical and running out of interesting tales as some bands do, leading to tedious lyrics about hotel rooms.  He discovered something that may seem obvious but is so often a mystery to the mediocre songwriter: put your focus outside of yourself and you’ll have an endless supply of things to sing about.

His songs are beautiful, you only have to listen to Romeo and Juliet (as I am right this moment) to hear his knack at pulling out a great melody.  As a guitar player he does things on this album, notably at a point in ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ and one in ‘Telegraph Roads’ that are so beautiful it almost makes me cry.

Why this album? It’s a live performance of a tour that occurred right before the release of ‘Brothers in Arms’.  They were on the cusp of becoming the biggest band in the world.  This showcases them at their best and I defy anybody not to be moved by this performance.  Enjoy!