I bought the record album, and then the CD when it became available. It was the first major album to be recorded digitally.ġ985 was a time when vinyl albums were still the norm. Brothers In Arms won Grammys for Best Rock Performance (by a duo or group), and for Best Engineered Album. Fueled with radio and MTV hits “Money For Nothing”, “So Far Away” and “Walk Of Life”, the album spent 9 weeks at the top of the American charts, and was #1 in nearly every country. Who knew they had this in them? In May of 1985, Brothers In Arms was released, and I doubt even Mark Knopfler could have expected the reception. Somehow, someway, Dire Straits then released one of the best albums of the 1980’s, and one of the all time best sellers. Now, we can cherry pick individual songs on iTunes, or check them out on YouTube or audio streaming services. It used to be we had to buy a complete album to get a good song or two.
Or, just download two of the cuts, “Skateaway” and “Romeo And Juliet”. I can’t really recommend any of their next three albums, except maybe Making Movies.
Then Dire Straits albums got a bit sketchy. It reached #2 on the Billboard album chart.
It’s not that the album is full of hits, it’s that it has a lot of really good songs that hold up well. Other standout tracks include “Down To The Waterline”, “Setting Me Up”, “Water Of Love”, and “Southbound Again”. “Sultans Of Swing” is the song that introduced Dire Straits to the world. Mark Knopfler was the songwriter, lead guitarist, and lead singer for this British band. I remember thinking how different it was from everything else, and how thankful I was. Rather, it was bass, drums, and electric guitars with a pure lead, and a vocal that wasn’t buried in the mix. No, not raucous distorted-guitar rock & roll. The modern art simplicity & clean lines of the Dire Straits cover. In October 1978, Dire Straits released their first album.Īs their songs came out of the speakers, it was like music could breathe again. In September 1978, “Boogie Oogie Oogie” was #1 for three weeks. In early 1978, “Saturday Night Fever” dominated. Everyone thought they could have a hit if they just put a continuous disco drum beat under their song. There were some good Disco songs, but mostly Disco was annoying, and some songs had way too much falsetto screaming. I mean, even The Rolling Stones (“Miss You”), and The Eagles (“One Of These Nights”) dabbled in Disco.
It was a time in the late 1970’s when disco was dominating everything. Like when I first dropped the needle on a new album… Dire Straits. As their career progressed, Dire Straits became more refined and their new maturity happened to coincide with the rise of MTV and the compact disc. The band's music was offset by Knopfler's lyrics, which approximated the winding, stream-of-conscious narratives of Bob Dylan. Cale, but they also had jazz and country inflections, occasionally dipping into the epic song structures of progressive rock. Led by guitarist/vocalist Mark Knopfler, the group built their sound upon the laid-back blues-rock of J.J. If anything, the band was a direct outgrowth of the roots revivalism of pub rock, but where pub rock celebrated good times, Dire Straits were melancholy. Dire Straits emerged during the post-punk era of the late '70s, and while their sound was minimalistic and stripped down, they owed little to punk.