Random Thoughts on Dire Straits

Memories are often attached to music, usually a specific song or performance by a favorite band. Music – the best music, in my mind – can trigger that memory just by hearing it again, even decades after the connection was first formed.

I have always had mixed feelings about Dire Straits. The band's breakthrough hit, "Sultans Of Swing," from their self-titled 1978 debut album, was catchy enough, and frontman Mark Knopfler's post-punk, pub-rock amalgam was supported by his fluid guitar tones. Still, the band's first couple of albums just didn't knock me out. They were awkward, clunky, and stylistically stood between eras...I was much happier listening to the Clash.

Then came 1980's Making Movies, the band's third album, and still their best in my humble opinion, though not their biggest commercial success. The album's first side – remember, this was back in the glorious days of vinyl – with songs like "Tunnel Of Love," "Romeo & Juliet" and "Skateaway," was better than most band's entire albums. With MTV right around the corner, a video for "Skateaway," if I remember correctly, received heavy airplay.

For me, "Romeo & Juliet" became connected to a too-brief romance with a girl that broke-up with me to go back to her abusive ex-husband. They stayed together a few months, until his teenaged and very pregnant girlfriend showed up at their door. Whenever I hear the song, I think of that girl....

The band cranked out another couple of albums before 1985's Brothers In Arms blew the doors off the joint. With MTV firmly entrenched in popular culture (back when they actually played music videos), Dire Straits delivered the perfect namecheck with "Money For Nothing." On the basis of the video for the song, "Money For Nothing" became wildly popular, but it was just another Dire Straits song that I could take or leave. From the same album, I found "Walk Of Live" and "So Far Away" to be much more impressive.

It was the title song that I would latch on to the strongest, however, "Brothers In Arms" being used in a particularly strong episode of Miami Vice. Sure, it sounds stupid when you read it like that, but in reality Miami Vice was one of the first television programs to use music as more than a soundtrack throwaway. Creator Michael Mann understood the power of music as an appeal to emotion, and that episode's use of "Brothers In Arms" has stuck with me for better than 20 years.

Thus, for your viewing/listening enjoyment, live video clips of two of my five favorite Dire Straits songs....

Dire Straits - "Romeo & Juliet"


Dire Straits - "Brothers In Arms"

(Click on the CD covers to buy Making Movies or Brothers In Arms from Amazon.com)