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    #51
    Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
    ...the reference to a "faggot" in the lyrics sheet (all the more so since that verse isn't actually heard in the single/radio edit on the compilation)
    It's in the official upload of the video on YouTube. Yes, I did turn on private browsing.

    3,000th post and I waste it on Money For Fucking Nothing.

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      #52
      According to the song's wiki, Knopfler revealed it was indeed an American (New York) store in which he overheard and documented a conversation between a delivery man and a store employee.

      It is alleged the Dire Straits management had put out some feelers to MTV about what it would take to get airplay, and this, with accompanying expensive video was the result.

      It's Sting who sings "I want my MTV", and who gets a songwriting credit due to its resemblance to "Don't Stand So Close To Me".
      The prosecution rests its case.

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        #53
        One song, or more like one song and video, sums up both the strengths and the very notable weaknesses of Dire Straits for me:- Tunnel of Love. For three minutes or so it's a so-so power pop effort and all a bit empty for that, but for the last four it gets nostalgic and personal and begins to feel like it's telling of actual people and emotions. There is something of proper value in the later half of the song, a genuine connection to the world.
        Then there is the video, which is completely tone deaf to the song. We have a bloke singing about youthful experiences visiting coastal fairgrounds in the Newcastle area. But for the video they haven't gone to these places. No they are recording on basically empty and antiseptic sound stage, probably at Elstree or maybe even in LA. There is no sense at all of the spit and sawdust (and rain and wind) nature of the places being referred to, and they have employed a model to star in the vid who couldn't look less like the young women who are being sung about. Her style and particularly make-up and clothes are just wholly inappropriate. She looks very good in her own highly 80s big city fashionista way, but the teenaged girls who looked so pretty to him would have had a wholly different way of being so. It's a northern story that the video has repackaged and sanitised for London yuppies.

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          #54
          Three pages about Dire bleedin' Straits. In 2018.

          Gawd 'elp us all.

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            #55
            The title track of Brothers In Arms could be read several ways. From the lyrics, I infer: anti-war and/or the brotherhood of the military. War as hell or character building. Don't kill your brother could mean don't kill your Vietnamese brother or don't fight with your military pals.
            Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 14-08-2018, 09:36.

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              #56
              Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
              Three pages about Dire bleedin' Straits. In 2018.

              Gawd 'elp us all.
              Apologies for my last post then.

              1) starting a third page and

              2) just in general.

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                #57
                Apologies are sometimes just not enough...

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                  #58
                  I'm only defending one track, but people conveniently forget that John Peel used to regularly play Dire Straits.

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                    #59
                    So?

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                      #60
                      What's your specific beef with the band GO?

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                        #61
                        They were a gateway drug for unreformed progs to pretend that they were still with-it. See also the Stranglers.

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                          #62
                          Really? I never saw them that way, but then I wasn't at Ground Zero. Nevertheless I'd have thought that was more Supertramp territory.

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                            #63
                            Nah, Supertramp were unreconctructed prog. And all the better for it...

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                              #64
                              Always liked Supertramp.

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                                #65
                                Perverts

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                                  #66
                                  I'm with WOM.

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                                    #67
                                    Dire Straits played the Rock Garden when I worked there, so about 1978. I liked Sultans of Swing, it would have sat with Jonathan Richman, sort of.

                                    1977, just looked it up. Unsigned, then.
                                    Last edited by MsD; 15-08-2018, 13:03.

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                                      #68
                                      I once sat in a pub in Mallaig for an entire day, with enough money for a single pint, waiting to be picked up at the end of the wettest, most miserable camping holiday you could ever begin to imagine. This was the summer of 1985, and the pub had what it thought was the newest, bestest form of pub entertainment - the video jukebox. Only, none of the punters were biting, and so no one was putting any cash in. So the video jukebox would play - as a demonstration of its powers - 'Money For Nothing' on repeat every ten minutes or so. All day fucking long.

                                      So please excuse me if I mildly disagree with the opening post.

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                                        #69
                                        Hello Hataz, apologies for lateness. I was practising a three-chord extended jam on my ukulele.

                                        A Top 10

                                        So far away
                                        Two young lovers
                                        Industrial disease
                                        Skateaway
                                        Tunnel of love
                                        Angel of mercy
                                        Portobello Belle
                                        Down to the Waterline
                                        Wild West End
                                        Sultans of Swing

                                        I love the Straits, me. Did ye know their first gig was supporting Squeeze in that strippers pub dahn the old Surrey Docks

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                                          #70
                                          Originally posted by imp View Post
                                          I once sat in a pub in Mallaig for an entire day, with enough money for a single pint, waiting to be picked up at the end of the wettest, most miserable camping holiday you could ever begin to imagine. This was the summer of 1985, and the pub had what it thought was the newest, bestest form of pub entertainment - the video jukebox. Only, none of the punters were biting, and so no one was putting any cash in. So the video jukebox would play - as a demonstration of its powers - 'Money For Nothing' on repeat every ten minutes or so. All day fucking long.

                                          So please excuse me if I mildly disagree with the opening post.
                                          Jesus, I thought my 1985 summer was pretty miserable, but that sounds like f***ing purgatory.

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                                            #71
                                            Originally posted by imp View Post
                                            I once sat in a pub in Mallaig for an entire day, with enough money for a single pint, waiting to be picked up at the end of the wettest, most miserable camping holiday you could ever begin to imagine. This was the summer of 1985, and the pub had what it thought was the newest, bestest form of pub entertainment - the video jukebox. Only, none of the punters were biting, and so no one was putting any cash in. So the video jukebox would play - as a demonstration of its powers - 'Money For Nothing' on repeat every ten minutes or so. All day fucking long.

                                            So please excuse me if I mildly disagree with the opening post.
                                            I was working in a supermarket in 1985/86. The piped music consisted of "Don't Pay The Ferryman", "Give A Little Bit", "I'm A One-Man Band", "Wouldn't It Be Good?", "What Is Love?", "Money For Nothing" and half a dozen other tracks which will, in the next few days, cause me to wake up screaming when I remember them in my sleep.

                                            Every day, Monday to Saturday, from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm (8:30 pm on Thursday and Fridays).
                                            Last edited by treibeis; 25-08-2018, 09:23.

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                                              #72
                                              Originally posted by MsD View Post
                                              Dire Straits played the Rock Garden when I worked there, so about 1978. I liked Sultans of Swing, it would have sat with Jonathan Richman, sort of.

                                              1977, just looked it up. Unsigned, then.
                                              I suppose any music derived from pub rock done a certain way can sit with Jonathan Richman.

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                                                #73
                                                One of my brothers is a near obsessive fan of Mark Knopfler and I've consequently seen him live a few times. His shows are pretty much what you'd expect; workmanlike, nothing flashy, pleasant enough. There's maybe half a dozen DS tunes that I don't mind hearing on a jukebox at the frequency they're likely to come up now. '80s level rotation wouldn't be so bearable. My memory is that it was the omnipresence of the Brothers In Arms material together with their adoption as the sound of 'compact disc in association with Philips' that really killed any residual sense of them as acceptable in discerning circles, although double live album Alchemy had already done some solid groundwork on that front. To be fair to MK, over the years he has turned down enormous piles of cash offered to tour under the Dire Straits banner.

                                                Edit: an acquaintance did once suggest that Walk Of Life was the least sexy record ever made, which could well be true.
                                                Last edited by Benjm; 25-08-2018, 10:39.

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                                                  #74
                                                  I think "The Laughing Gnome" and "Yellow Submarine" beat "Walk Of Life" in the sexilessness stakes.

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                                                    #75
                                                    But both of those tunes were knowingly whimsical - and each offers up a certain low-level charm on the back of that.

                                                    Something that really couldn't be said about Walk of Life. I think liked Dire Straits even less when they were doing that stuff: Twisting By the Pool, Industrial Disease...eechh.

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