I love your honesty. I knew that this track would throw you a little. I think of it as an observational track of something that Mark observed, but I can understand your reaction.. I'm sure that you'd enjoy Mark's first solo album from 1996 called Golden Heart. The title track is beautiful....

For me the best Straits records are Communique, Self titled and On Every Street. When they play Love Over Gold songs live or anything live you tend to not go back to listening to studio versions. They are fantastic live. Mark actually said " I think we're doing it better live. When you play so much live and you go back listening to studio stuff it just sounds so rinky dink compared to the live stuff." Also Mark writes about everything and its observational. Money For Nothing a typical example. All the words came from someone else. They're not his words in this case. Thats not to say he doesn't have his own. Many of his songs are. His whole catalogue is like a huge library of stories of so many subjects. Anyway loving your channel. Cheers all the best from Oz 👍🎸🎸

My ranking of the DS records: 1. Dire Straits 2. Alchemy Live («Making Gold») 3. Communique 4. Love Over Gold 5. Brothers In Arms 6. Making Movies 7. On Every Street 8. On The Night / Enchores

The song is not mocking gays at all, rather the oposite. As MK has said in some interviews, the band needed something to eat after a gig in Germany and was directed to a club which happened to have a cabaret by Les Boys on at that night. It’s all just observational, they had fun, and I guess for instance that the band found it a bit amusing and ironic in so many ways that the German male cabaret group wore SS caps («but they got no guns now»).

@dg76

Ай бұрын

This is absolutely correct and Mark said this before playing the song in concert. It's an observational song in the vein of Sultans or Money for Nothing.

Being gay in the 70s and 80s was acceptable in the form of art and entertainment but not in general in society. I don't think this song is homophobic at all, it just describes that lifestyle at that time. Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was very famous for his depiction of being gay and sexual as art. Robert was bisexual and Patti Smith's boyfriend for a few years. They were part of the bohemian scene of the East Village in NY in the late 60s and throughout the 70s and 80s. The vocals and lyrics here have a Lou Reed flavor to them imo. Glam Rock was a big part of that scene with it's stage depictions of androgyny and forms of dressing in drag, The Stones, Bowie and other more mainstream Rock artists also flirted with it. Drag began to become chic in music and among some elites in the 1970s in subtle to more extreme ways. The director John Waters was and has been a part of that scene since the 70s, his B movies rose to the mainstream.

"On Every street" is certainly worth a listen,a very underrated album. And Mark wrote great songs in his solo career, he just released his 10th solo album.

"The track 'Les Boys' is something of an eccentric anomaly, a light comic song inspired by a gay cabaret act from Birmingham which we saw in our hotel bar in Munich late one evening after a gig. Gay Brummie cabaret acts were not a staple of pub or hotel entertainment back in the UK in the late seventies, and these lads had come to Germany, which was way more open-minded, to seek work. For us, but not for the dozens of portly middle-aged German executives in the bar and a smattering of hookers, it was bizarre and very amusing to watch them talk and sing in their heavy Midlands accents. They came and joined us after their performance and they were highly amusing company." - John Ilsley, Bass Player

Musically the song could come straight out of Caberet the musical set in Weimar Germany in the 30s (except SS reference maybe). It also references Tom Robinsons "Glad to be Gay" in an oblique way contrasting his bleak representation of 70s gay life in Britain with this continental view. "Les Boys" is also a bit of light relief among the heavy seriousness of the other tracks....

From your ranking of Dire Straits albums you have reacted to, I get the impression that you might still enjoy Communique and On Every Street. They both have something different to offer and since you have already dug into the band's discography this far, it would be shame to miss out on two of the best (in my subjective opinion - besides the debut) albums.

@alphajava761

2 ай бұрын

Agreed. Deni would love Communique and On Every Street.

I've seen a lot of people rank this album as one of (or maybe) their best, can't see how is that possible, for me it's somewhere in the middle as well. Not sure if you found the info, but in some places, this song was not part of the record, and it was closed with Solid Rock, I guess you can see the reason why. About the next album: if you put their debut album at first place, you should definitely go with Communique. Some critics and fans say it's the copy of their debut album, some say it's better, some say not so much. There is like a definite one-to-one mapping between songs on their first album and Communique, it's like they wanted to create the same thing again. The guitar-heavy hit (Lady Writer - Sultans of Swing), the groovy opening song (Once upon a time in the west - Down to the waterline), the slow closing (Follow me home - Lions), the soft ballad (News - Wild West End). On Every Street is more like a collection of different sounds, more experimenting, different genres, you won't find any cohesion there. I think that shows how MK was at his songwriting and experimenting best during that time in the 90s. He played a lot of different music, he played country-blues with Notting Hillbillies and Chet Atkins, he was really into movie scores, he started his solo career which had a lot of Celtic - folk influence, and finished Dire Straits. That album is highlighting that stage of his life. About live albums - a lot of people love Alchemy, however I think 'On Every Street' is just a bit better, the sound quality, the maturity, the songs, the band. But if you choose to go with a live album, you should do it with the video, not just the audio, because seeing them perform live, and their stage presence is a big part of their success. If you prefer earlier DS (first two albums) then Rockpalast '79 is also a great recording :) I hope I helped with your decision, have fun! :)

@deepdivemusicreactions

2 ай бұрын

thanks so much for taking the time to elaborate on each of them. let's see what comes next 😎

4 / 5 Bon !