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Telegraph Road: Difference between revisions
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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, 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''. | ||
I was disabused of my foolish notion by way of epiphany, watching a documentary about the late Australian painter Brett Whiteley sometime, I think, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. 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 | I was disabused of my foolish notion by way of epiphany, watching a documentary about the late Australian painter Brett Whiteley sometime, I think, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. 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.</ref> | ||
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 ''Communique'' are too elaborate and too long, but if you can see through that there is real fibre and real muscle behind. | 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 ''Communique'' 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 | 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). | ||
Mark Knopfler is, of course, a virtuoso. What you learn from this is how less is more: his Fender amps, just ''gently'' clipping and the punctuating offbeats and syncopated stabs of his [[Stratocaster]] have more throat and more ''menace'' than a battalion of wildly saturated rectified amps that were in vogue with the metal bands of the day. | Mark Knopfler is, of course, a virtuoso. What you learn from this is how less is more: his Fender amps, just ''gently'' clipping and the punctuating offbeats and syncopated stabs of his [[Stratocaster]] have more throat and more ''menace'' than a battalion of wildly saturated rectified amps that were in vogue with the metal bands of the day. | ||