#21

Soundtrack to my Dad’s car growing up. Don’t know the albums as he just had the Greatest Hits. Used to be pretty bored by all of them bar Money for Nothing.

1 Like
#22

I mentioned these in the who do we want thread the other day, because I thought it might be interesting to look at them now the 80s I’ve just got a CD player and a copy of Brothers In Arms thing has died away. So that afternoon I did, went and listened to some tracks I remembered liking.

It’s a weird thing. I don’t think I can think of another band whose output is so sharply polarised between stone cold 5/5 bangers and absolutely awful 1/5 rubbish, with barely any middle ground. Weighted toward the latter as well, I’m sorry to say. For every piece of inspired brilliance like Telegraph Road or Tunnel Of Love there are two pub rock plodders like Solid Rock or Industrial Disease, and let’s not even mention Les Boys. Probably averages out as a 3 out of 5, at their best they are terrific but you don’t see their best anything like often enough. Might go up to 4 because Mark Knopfler is an excellent guitarist, and I like the way he walked away from one of the biggest acts in the world just so he could do what he wanted (even if that was making boring country records).

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#23

Deserve a 5 just for that riff tbh.

And the wolf howl .

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#24

Not that I’d ever listened carefully to the lyrics but I always thought it was a song about an ordinary working man dreaming of being a rockstar but that verse, as you say, basically makes it into a whinging haters gonna hate song. Pathetic.

Also just really horrible lyrics obviously.

#25

Isn’t that song massive in America due to baseball or something. Was never a fan as it wasn’t Money for Nothing

#26

Here’s the 59 minute 9-song playlist I did in the thread about trying to promote uncool bands btw

#27

You’ve put Walk Of Life on by mistake

#28

Also Sultans of Swing is just about a bunch of boring blokes playing a gig in a park?

#29

No Private Investigations?

#30

But Tunnel Of Love and Telegraph Road are :fire::fire::fire::fire:. I’d have slipped the Local Hero theme in as well, I reckon

3 Likes
#31

Have a soft spot for them because I remember my dad driving me to a university open day and they came on the radio and he spent ages talking about how great they were, then when I met up with him at the end of the day to drive home he’d been to HMV and bought me a best of CD :sweat_smile:

Don’t know anything aside from the hits, but R&J is an all time MOR classic.

Also, Walk of Life is the perfect ending to every film:

8 Likes
#32

CHECK OUT GUITAR GEORGE, HE KNOWS ALL THE CHORDS

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#33

Found out recently that it was these cunts who made ‘Walk Of Life’. 0/5.

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#34

Dad’s buying the Brothers in Arms CD was such a big thing if you are a certain age.

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#35

So the point was to ‘sell’ the band in under 13 songs and/or 60 minutes, whichever came first. It’s a hard task for a band with long songs like DS, particularly when a lot of those long songs are classics.

I tried to get a spread of their styles and sticking Private Investigations in there would probably have knocked me down to only 8 songs unless I lost another long one and frankly it was a close thing.

Walk of Life…I ummed and erred and in the end I reckon it’s actually a banger. Overplayed but equally maybe not as overplayed if you’re 10-20 years younger than me. It’s a different sort of piece and I stand by it.

Technically a solo MK number, though. I realise it’s immortalised on Alchemy (and other live albums I guess) and they did play it but I had to be ruthless and stick to the brief.

(Similarly, does Blaze of Glory deserve to be on a similar Bon Jovi playlist?)

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#36

Was going to abstain but that was before I realised they did walk of life. 1.

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#37
  • Knopfler
  • Knoppers

0 voters

#38

I’m sorry, you’re wrong, it’s terrible.

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#39

Blaze Of Glory deserves its own, dedicated playlist named “Awesome Songs Called Blaze Of Glory”

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#40

When I was a kid I loved Money for Nothing for some reason. Loved it. I didn’t understand the concept of ‘bands’ though so when my dad tried to play me the new Dire Straits single I got upset, insisting that only Money for Nothing was Dire Straits. Looking back I think wee colossalhorse was onto something with his ruthless one band one song rule.

28 I was etc.

This is my Dire Straits anecdote, a fond memory that’s the only thing stopping me from giving them a 1.

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