Telegraph Road: Difference between revisions

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}}One of the many consolations about running your own not-for-profit<ref>I should say this is not necessarily by choice, and this may in some parts be due to my desire to put whatever the hell I want on it.</ref> wiki is you can decide what the hell to put on it. The JC loves guitars as you all know, and does like a good rock song.
}}One of the many consolations about running your own not-for-profit<ref>I should say this is not necessarily by choice, and this may in some parts be due to my desire to put whatever the hell I want on it.</ref> wiki is you can decide what the hell to put on it. The JC loves guitars as you all know, and does like a good rock song.
===Radio with pictures===
===Radio with pictures===
As a young fellow growing up in the 1980s, the rock band Dire Straits was about as uncool as could possibly be. Not only because it was a colossal global dinosaur (“''so'' commercial”, we [[sneered]], and went back to our bootlegged tapes of Joy Division gigs in Belgium),<ref>[https://www.joydiv.org/G3.htm Gruftgesaegne], as I recall.</ref> but because its music was so unapologetically ''middle of the road'';  its band-members so ''square''.
As a young fellow growing up in the 1980s, [[Dire Straits]] was about as uncool as could possibly be.   Not only because it was a colossal global dinosaur (“''so'' commercial”, we [[sneered]], and went back to our bootlegged tapes of Joy Division gigs in Belgium),<ref>[https://www.joydiv.org/G3.htm Gruftgesaegne], as I recall.</ref> but because its music was so unapologetically ''middle of the road'';  its band-members so ''square''.  


You mellow as you get older. It took me until my twnties: sometime, I think, in the 1990s. In this case enlightenment came by way of epiphany: watching a documentary about the Australian painter [[Brett Whiteley]]. In it, Whiteley was filmed at work in his studio, an enormous canvas on the floor, Jackson Pollock style (I recall it was of sea-birds, but I may well be confusing that with something else). Before he started work, he cued up Dire Straits’ 1982 epic ''Telegraph Road'' on his turntable, and turned it up very loud. ''Seeing'' the song in this way — seeing how, a troubled, gifted artist like Whiteley heard it, put it in a very different context.<ref>I’ve not been able to find the documentary online if anyone recognises it, let me know. Whiteley died of a heroin overdose in 1992, so it may well have been some retrospective documentary of his work published around that time.</ref>
''Ensuring'' square. ''So'' square that no-one has — yet — managed to get round to redeeming Dire Straits, not even by way of ironic post-modern statement, in the 30 odd years since it ran out of road. A lot of fairly skanky acts ''have'' been redeemed since then. Even Bros. But not Dire Straits. Not to be sure, those who got it, stuck with it: call them okay; I admit it, ''us'' – “Shy Dire Straits fans”. Mark Knopfler still sells out wherever he goes. Anyhow.


I’ve seen the song, and the band, in a completely different way ever since. Their music is not perfect — Knopfler aspired to grandiosity when he might have avoided it, and most of his songs after ''Communiqué'' are too elaborate and too long, but if you can see through that there is real fibre and real muscle behind.
You mellow as you get older. It took me until my twenties: sometime, I think, in the 1990s. In this case, enlightenment came by way of ''epiphany'' during a documentary about then recently deceased artist [[Brett Whiteley]]. In it, Whiteley was filmed at work in his studio, an enormous canvas on the floor, Jackson Pollock-style (I recall it was of a sea-bird).  Before he started work, he cued up  ''Telegraph Road'' on his [[gramophone]], and turned it up ''very'' loud.
 
''Seeing'' the song in this way — seeing how, a troubled, gifted artist like Whiteley heard it, put it in a very different context.<ref>I’ve not been able to find the documentary online — if anyone recognises it, let me know. Whiteley died of a heroin overdose in 1992, so it may well have been some retrospective documentary of his work published around that time.</ref>
 
I’ve seen the song, and the band, differently ever since. Their music is not perfect — Knopfler aspired to a grandiosity he might have avoided without great loss, and most of his songs after ''Communiqué'' are too elaborate and too long, but if you can see through that there is real fibre and real muscle behind.


So, short advice: to get the most out of ''Telegraph Road'', put yourself in a place of maximum potential exhilaration — up a high mountain, or driving fast through the desert ([[Otto Büchstein|our]] favourite locales include the Desert Road in New Zealand’s central plateau, or the McKenzie Country, in her southern wilds, and the Mojave desert between L.A. and Vegas).
So, short advice: to get the most out of ''Telegraph Road'', put yourself in a place of maximum potential exhilaration — up a high mountain, or driving fast through the desert ([[Otto Büchstein|our]] favourite locales include the Desert Road in New Zealand’s central plateau, or the McKenzie Country, in her southern wilds, and the Mojave desert between L.A. and Vegas).