Aagh, I Forgot Dire Straits!
What a dipstick! I did a whole post on comedy saxophone in the 80s and did I mentioned Dire Straits or the splendidly be-headgeared Mark Knopfler even once? Did I bollocks. What a tool.
Well that needs to be put right, because they were truly hilarious – the band, the headband and the brilliantly overblown saxophone molesting. It’s so conflicting. The thing is, I loved Dire Straits at the time, but they have become so ludicrous in retrospect that it’s impossible to disentangle the guilt, the shame, the love, the nostaligia, the humiliation and all the rest of it and produce anything like a coherent evaluation of my feelings towards the band.
Visually, they are as hilarious an anachronism as it is possible to be. The sound, too, is that kind of soft rock with clenched-face guitar solos and deeply soulful sax that may end up being the great sniggering point of any 80s music retrospective. But it must be said that Making Movies is a genuinely excellent album – I feel I can start there without really saying anything controversial. Love Over Gold isn’t bad either. Brothers in Arms, well that’s harder. I’m sure I remember some good bits on that album, but it is so hated and ridiculed and I am so ashamed of ever having listened to it that I don’t know if I could ever unclench my ears or my dignity for long enough to really say which bits.
And then there’s nostalgia. Anyone of my age remembers them being hue during our youth, and it is impossible to disentangle real opinions about anything so woven into your childhood like that. So I can’t say, but I will confess, snigger though I’m sure you will, that I loved plenty of Dire Straits when I wa, erm, that age. And I will even confess to really liking plenty of it in retrospect, but while my appreciation starts at one end of their canon, raucous and gleeful mockery starts at the other, and where the two collide I really just don’t know anymore.
Anyway, this all started because of comedy sax, and the theme to Local Hero is not only a classic example of this kind of thing, but the movie itself is something of a Scottish favourite, so it just had to go up. Then I got sidetracked and confessed to far, far more than I should have.
Mark Knopfler – Going Home (Theme of The Local Hero)
More comedy (really comedy) sax: Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick
And a couple of decent tracks:
Dire Straits – Hand in Hand
Dire Straits – Private Investigations
That theme from Local Hero is a mess isn’t it? It’s simply not good enough to be movie music. It’s less Local Hero, and more Local TV Gameshow.
Not only does it have comedy sax, but in amongst all those lush 80s synthesisers gently going “wah” and “hah” at each other during the quiet intro passage, there’s another crime against 80s music: The Synth Whistle.
Most notably used on Wind Of Change by The Scorpions, it’s one of the most cringe-inducing sounds you’ll hear. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Shut up. I hate you.
Me or Dylan? I hate him, that’s for sure, but I think I myself am lovely. But that much should be obvious.
Is that a pro- or an anti-Dire Straits comment? Or the Scorpions? Come out with it, man!
I think Dan likes a bit of synth whistle..
Dan, you’re breaking my heart here. Say it ain’t so..
‘And a couple of decent tracks’
Really??????????????????