Great post, Mr. Mod, and timely because I just heard "Walk of Life" on WXPN a few days ago and was surprised at how much I liked it, despite the cheesiness of the synth line and the slickness and the headband and the baseball-themed video (which is actually kind of cool, come to think about it), which I watched on YouTube yesterday.

Anyway, I'm not a major Dire Straits/Knopfler fan, but I will admit that I also enjoy about a half dozen songs from their 1st couple of records as well as "Walk of Life".

As for your question as to why Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen get a free pass and Knopfler doesn't, that could change if an indie band comes along and openly proclaims the first couple Dire Straits Lps (sonically not far removed from the Springsteen and Lou Reed Lps of that same time period) as prime influences much like The Hold Steady and The Arcade Fire have given Springsteen even more credibility in the indie world. As for Tom Petty, touring with Dylan (albeit in the '80s) and the whole Rickenbacker/Byrds influence has kept him from losing credibility, I think. And now iTunes is playing The Moog Cookbook's version of "Free Fallin'". Ha ha.

I'm not sure the key to Dire Straits acceptance is indie cred. Springsteen/Petty acceptance pre-dates the current indie gestalt we finds ourselves in.

(However, I do find it odd how revered Bruce is in such circles these days. I remember the early '90s, when he was one of the most uncool people in rock.)

I remember when I'd buy new stereo equipment in high school, and inevitably the CD the salesman would pull out to show off the wares would be Dire Straits. Not Steely Dan or Pink Floyd. Usually either Brothers in Arms or Love over Gold.

I think Dire Straits aren't considered cool because they basically look like stereo salesman. For all the RTH blather about Look, we often forget about a basic truth: a good rock Look is one that makes people want to either be you or fuck you. And if that's not possible, the least you can do is get some kind of zonked-out, cynical hipster (in the olden sense of the word) thing going, which is exactly what Steely Dan pulled off.

As for Dire Straits, there are other factors. The early stuff is mumbly "tasty lick" stuff; latter-day Straits is mumbly "tasty lick" stuff that's a little too besotted with digital technology for its own good. Springsteen has way more myth in his music; Petty has more "jangle cred."
Plus, if you watch old live clips, Petty and Springsteen had a sense of responsibility as frontman to put on a show, something I don't think Knofler was too concerned with. Dire Straits don't have cool cred for some the same reason Terry Williams' other band, Rockpile, don't. Live, they had little to no mach shau. This gets back to my points about Look.

That said, of course DS have some great songs, like "Romeo and Juliet" and "Skateaway" and those songs might be rediscovered by The Kids. But don't expect a full overhall of their legacy to ensue.

Oats wrote:

For all the RTH blather about Look, we often forget about a basic truth: a good rock Look is one that makes people want to either be you or fuck you. And if that's not possible, the least you can do is get some kind of zonked-out, cynical hipster (in the olden sense of the word) thing going, which is exactly what Steely Dan pulled off.

BINGO! So Richard Thompson's beret is actually an attribute to some degree?

To be clear, it's not The Kidz whom I'm concerned about as much as the Aging Hipsters.

Charisma is an interesting and nebulous commodity, but Oats is right, Dire Straits didn't have it live. Nick Lowe had some, but wasn't able to pull up the rest of Rockpile with him (crack band though they were, they just didn't have much stage presence). Now take a look at Petty and the Heartbreakers in this clip. It's not a question of moving around more, but they certainly seem much more engaging to me here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbgfvtGuVE

Would've been nice to have seen this band back in their 1978-80 days.

Funny thing is, for a couple of years Mark Knopfler somehow mustered enough charisma to move more product and fill more seats than just about anyone we're comparing him to. Did he have more charisma with the headband and pastel sweatsuits than we give him credit for having?

I dunno, Mod. Straits had one huge album, but they still weren't as big as Springsteen at the same time. I think Brothers in Arms is a "right place, right time" album, a perfect convergence with MTV, radio and the rising CD format. It's a one-off in a same vein as that first Hootie and the Blowfish album.

Am I suggesting there should be love for Dire Straits? No. Oats, the reason I've posed these questions is to examine the shame rock nerds collectively feel over this band's very existence. I'd rather we continue looking within than comparing Billboard data. Sorry to have suggested we go down that path.

I know of no evidence regarding shame. I just think they've done nothing distinctive enough to merit more than a pleasing nod, which is the general reaction to their best songs.

Funny enough, last week I heard "Skateaway." I was starting to enjoy the minimalistic groove (reminded me of a better late-album Stones track), when I started concentrating on the chorus. That was the deal-breaker. It's not just that the lyrics are dumb, but they're pretentious. It's like George W. Bush trying to explain a plausible strategy for the Middle East.

Dire Straits fail to deliver. You can see what they're trying to do with the Dylan influence, but unlike Petty or Springsteen never succeed. And please don't even bring in Richard Thompson: he may have coasted now and then but he's made any number of great albums with mindblowing fretwork.

Dire Straits are kind of like Bob Seger, minus "Ramblin Gamblin Man"

Dr. John wrote:

Dire Straits are kind of like Bob Seger, minus "Ramblin Gamblin Man"

Good analysis! We're getting somewhere now.

Funny thing is, for a couple of years Mark Knopfler somehow mustered enough charisma to move more product and fill more seats than just about anyone we're comparing him to. Did he have more charisma with the headband and pastel sweatsuits than we give him credit for having?

I think Oats basically hit it on the head with the right place/right time convergence thing. Beyond just the “I want my MTV!” touchstone from “Money For Nothing”, berlyant mentioned the “Walk of Life” video and that shouldn’t be overlooked in terms of their window of success. It came at the right time, at the dawn of that Sports Illustrated football phone commercial era. Bon Jovi, or course, would later sweep in and steal away that crucial demographic when SI used “You Give Love a Bad Name” for one of those NFL year-in-review video offers. “Shot to the HEART!” [insert Joe Montana clip] “And you’re to BLAME!”

Overall, I’m in agreement with what seems to be the consensus so far: there’s nothing wrong with Dire Straits and no shame in liking them, but there’s also not much there to get worked up over positively or negatively. Perfectly pleasant rock that I can’t be moved to care about either way. Shrug Rock?

I do, however – based on this and some past usages here – think I may have a natural aversion to music that can be described as “tasty” and the idea of “tasty licks.” I’m also pretty sure I may not like the word “tasty” at all. If Steely Dan ends up falling under this header, I’m going to have to assume that it’s their lyrics and the welcome abrasiveness of Fagen’s voice that makes me a fan. So perhaps those are missing from the Dire Straits package, too.

I think Dire Straits, like R.E.M., is in that deadening mid-period: too close at hand to rediscover, but long since making no new converts either. Not really around and not gone simultaneously. I have to admit that last year I almost bought a Dire Straits greatest hits CD, thinking, I wonder what they'll sound like to me now. But I decided I wasn't ready to care.

Will they, ten years from now, have a 2-CD retrospective that will make a case for their historical importance? I'm actually not sure.

I don't know how many of you remember the arrival of "Money for Nothing" and the companion video on MTV. What a horrid stink they cast upon the planet. It was a real smack in the face for me, a big fan at the time of side one of Making Movies. I'm still nursing the wounds. Sure, after that, Knopfler records were as inoffensive as beige chinos or recent Eric Clapton recordings, but "Money for Nothing" was one of those moments when I realized that mainstream pop culture had bottomed out in a big way.

I have no aversion to tasty licks. In fact I have a soft spot for Knopfler, because he plays without a pick as I do. I remember hearing Sultans of Swing on the radio and immediately going out and buying that first album, which didn't have anything else of that stature on it. The same thing happened to me with Bruce Hornsby, who seems to have ended up in the same place career-wise without ever having reached the highs Dire Straits did. And right before Knopfler pulled the plug they were briefly huge, reportedly the arena rock draw of that era.

I think the key may be that Knopfler is a romantic at heart, and for a time he let the lyrical romanticism lead him into a concomitantly big sound. It was a dead end, and thank god he realized it, but he managed to take it to the bank first. Nowadays his romanticism tends towards the wistful, as befits a man of his age and Look.

I think their music still sounds good when you I happen to hear it, Sultans in particular, because their original drummer was swinging. And the guitar tone on Money For Nothing still tickles my ears, even though the metaconcept and video drag me back to an era I'd rather forget.

Tvox, I felt a similar sting of betrayal when the "Money for Nothing" video launched. Perhaps that is - justifiably - a huge part of the damaged legacy.

BigSteve, great summary of where Knopfler went with all this. I knew you lot would take this discussion to the next step!

My opinion is that Knopfler doesn't care about how he's singing enough. He settles into a limited range and dynamic. His voice is a metronome. Hornsby is similar, but he seems to start every phrase with one big fwaaah, like he's like Christopher Cross with more hair. Those guys are cranking out their taste o' tweedle on piano and guitar and nothing in the vocals seems to demand attention. Not that I don't find these songs bland too. If he's a romantic at heart it's not showing up in his voice in these examples. I'm not asking for Freddy Mercury, I just wonder if he cares.

I think Knopfler would have been better as a key sideman (what I call the Ron Wood role). I like his playing on Randy Newman's records and his own soundtracks.

Actually, you know, aside from "Money For Nothing" itself, the rest of that album is pretty good -- "Your Latest Trick" and "So Far Away" verge on Great, even!

I will fight for Dire Straits as a perfectly serviceable AOR band with two genuinely terrific albums (MAKING MOVIES and LOVE OVER GOLD), up through BROTHERS IN ARMS. However, the album after that was so utterly forgettable that I have done just that: I could not tell you what it's called, or the names of any of the songs.

And I heard Knopfler's solo single "What It Is" somewhere a couple weeks ago, and speaking of Richard Thompson, there's more than a little RT in there.

alex wrote:

"Sports Illustrated football phone commercial era".

I write:

in the words of lisa simpson, 'I know what all those words mean, but not when they're together.'

but seriously folks....

i remember thinking of the straits as a "seeeerious" band before the whole "walk of life" head band thing started happening.

but i was also always suspicious of them.

their albums had these pseudo heavy titles. and knopf affected this laid back thing that extended to their sparse arrangements, unusual for the time: he sang a little like dylan, and the band sounded like someone took the grateful dead, stuck them in london for about ten years and gave them a "no drugs! make singles or die!" edict.

but that minimalism didn't sound like a choice as much as it sounded like they didn't know what to do or how to sound.

their lyrics didn't mean shit ("she's makin' movies...on location...she don't know what it means"? hey mark, if she don't, and you don't, then neither do i).

"all them fancy chords"? "got a day time job"?

at least, with "brothers in arms", they...uh...said stuff. I figured that album finally marked the point when they had gained confidence (and for the worse, I might add).

So, to answer your question, mod...I think if they had slammed their tour bus into a wall and all died the minute before they donned their mid 80s annoying as fuck ubiquitous phase head bands, then yeah, they probably would've garnered some cred and lovin'....not that they deserved it, but there would've been some mystique.

sorry if i've replicated anything that's been going around in this thread. the thought of reading more than ten posts about the dire straits didn't exactly goose me if ya know what i mean. but i felt like throwing in a few thoughts.

steve, i also play without a plec!

it doesn't make me love knopfler more, though.

saturn, great dissection of the Straits. Glad I'm not the only one who finds fault with their lyrics.

Never was a fan, but really liked what Knopfler did with the production on that second Aztec Camera album.

To me, they were always a faceless band, like supertramp. In the era of punk/new wave, here comes this band that was not cutting-edge in any way. I think time has dulled that distinction, to show the craft and quality of their albums, but I remember being pretty repulsed by their music at the time.

And six years to do a follow up album to their big breakthrough? They didn't strike while the iron was hot, and probably Knopfler didn't care - and I can respect that.

Really? Someone actually LIKED the production on the second Aztec Camera album? This demands a digression!

Knife? What's not to like?