Sitting on a fence - that's a dangerous course

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

08/07/79 : Communiqué - Dire Straits

Skipping over a James Last horror compilation (#9) which includes "Rivers Of Babylon", "Y Viva Espana", "Mull Of Kintyre" and many other tunes too dreadful to contemplate, brings us to an album I feel I must have heard, but can't categorically state that I have.

Nope, definitely not heard this because I don't recognise this version of "Once Upon A Time In The West", which is one of the stand-out tracks on Alchemy (which we'll definitely be meeting if we get the chance, even though it's a live album) - it's a completely different version here with a weird reggae-ish feel to it here, which still works pretty well. The only other track I recognised was "Lady Writer" which is a decent track elevated by some absolutely stunning guitar work - Mr Knopfler is still no slouch these days, but the stuff he put out around this time was out of this world.

The rest of the band were all pretty good as well and that's very much on display here, but, well, I'm afraid to say that most of the songs are actually pretty average. They're certainly not bad and they are definitely elevated by the playing, but if you compare the general level of quality here with what you get on the following two albums, Making Movies and Love Over Gold, then it's just nowhere near. I don't think I've ever listened to their eponymous debut album, so it will be interesting to compare that when we get there - Dire Straits are an unusual band because we're going to get to visit all their studio albums provided we stick around long enough to do all the right years. But this is a decent enough album, but no more than that, I'm afraid.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a decent 18 week run, with it having peaked at #5 in its second week. Somewhat oddly, it also recharted in '86, which I could understand if it was one or two weeks because that was peak Brothers In Arms time, but it spent fourteen weeks in seven separate runs between January and August - and then popped back for one more week in May '87, so I've no idea what was going on. The top five this week were ELO (finishing up a five week run at the top), Tubeway Army, Queen live, Blondie and the John Williams album I couldn't track down and the highest new entry was Neil Young And Crazy Horse (#22).

Wikipedia tells us it's their second album and the last to feature David Knopfler - I get the impression there was somewhat of a sibling spat. There's not a load else of interest in there but I was somewhat surprised by the statement "after the Dire Straits Tour finished in Hitchin on 18 November 1978, Dire Straits set to work on recording their second album" because Hitchin isn't the most rock and roll kinda place - setlist.fm (which is a great site if you've never been there) tells me they played 106 dates on that tour in some very unusual locations including the Hitchin College of Further Education (although it seems to suggest that the tour didn't actually finished there). 

Critically, the reviews were nice enough even though there was a definite "not as good as the last one" feel to them, but commercially this did way better than I was expecting, getting to #1 in Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden and even #11 in the US - lordy! One other fun fact for you from my time in the Dire Straits rabbit-hole - Mark Knopfler's middle name is Freuder.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a copy for £2.50 but if you want one signed by Mark Knopfler and Pick Withers (the drummer) then it's gonna cost you £180 - which actually seems pretty reasonable if it's really their signatures. I'm glad I caught up with this album, but I feel the only reason I'd ever come back to it is to listen to the original version of "Once Upon A Time In The West" - which isn't exactly a whole-hearted endorsement.

01/07/79 - Fun and educational
15/07/79 - Definitely not good