SOTD #55
Today’s song is Millionaire’s Blues by Dire Straits
Well, so much for breakfast, I couldn’t face lunch
I thought I’d raise my spirits with a little champagne brunch.
I take the Lambourghini, the flunkie parks the car
Can you believe it, man, this other monkey won’t let me in the bar!
I said, I said, don’t you know who I am, man? and he says, no.
No! Can you believe it?
I’m as low as the heels of these alligator shoes
You should know how it feels to have these millionaire blues
Millionaire blues, to have these millionaire blues
As far as CD singles can have a B side, this track was a B side to Calling Elvis which was the first single off the On Every Street album which was Dire Straits 1991 follow-up to the mega successful Brothers In Arms from 1985. In the intervening six years, Knopfler’s style had changed quite a bit and the album was not as well received as BIA had been. A more country-tinged sound (that he would explore further in his solo work) seemed to put a lot of people off.
This little gem, though, is pure blues-based (if a little over-produced and tongue-in-cheek) and worth a listen.
[not available on iTunes] [YouTube]
SOTD #28
Today’s song is Where Do You Think You’re Going? by Dire Straits
Where do you think you’re going?
Don’t you know it’s dark outside?
Where do you think you’re going?
Don’t you care about my pride?
Where do you think you’re going?
I think you don’t know
You got no way of knowing
You got no place to go
I understand your changes
Long before you reach the door
I know where you think you’re going
I know what you came here for
Just because it’s Mark Knopfler’s birthday today, I thought I’d make SOTD one of the best (and hardly ever heard) Dire Straits songs there is. Enjoy.
SOTD #5: Simon Bates would be proud
Today’s song is Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits
Well, you can fall for chains of silver you can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold
You promised me everything you promised me through thick and thin
Now you just say “Oh Romeo? Yeah, I used to have a scene with him”
Juliet, when we made love you used to cry
You said “I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you till I die”
There’s a place for us, you know the movie song
When you gonna realise it was just that the time was wrong Juliet?
Do you remember that ‘Our Tune’ feature that Simon Bates used to have on Radio 1? Where people would write in with often quite tragic stories, all of which were personified by one song? It often made for quite maudlin listening, but it was addictive. Just after 11am, Monday to Friday the nation would tune in to hear about the love story gone wrong, the brave but doomed fight against terminal illness, or whatever. As cheesy as it sounds, it actually could be truly heart-wrenching.
This song turned up quite a lot in these stories and I imagine there are a lot of couples out there who would consider it their tune. I know that me and my first serious girlfriend did. But when you really think about it, it’s a lament from one half of a couple that has already split up. Is that really the best song for a loving couple to have as their song?
It’s the song, not the singer
At one time or another, a lot of us have been in bands. And we’d probably rather forget some of first musical foot-steps. Luckily, for most people that isn’t too difficult especially all you really did was just goof off in your mate’s garage.
Some of us, though, have documentary evidence that comes back to haunt us. I was going through some old tapes a little while ago, converting them to mp3, when I came across some gems (?) from my youth. Listening to them again, I was reminded how bad they really are but I can finally listen to them without too much embarrassment.
I don’t remember quite how it came about, but back in ‘85 (when I’d just left secondary school) a friend and I got together and started to do covers of Dire Straits tunes. As a guitarist, Ian was much influenced by Mark Knopfler and the year before he’d got me into the group. So when he said he was looking for a singer, I said I’d have a go.
I don’t know why I volunteered, but I suppose it’s that thing that makes all those complete no-hopes on X Factor think that they can be the next Kylie or Robbie or Elvis. We’d get together at weekends and run through stuff in Ian’s lounge (where he had the largest set of speakers I’d ever seen for a home stereo), practicising - supposedly - for some fabled time when we’d get up in a school concert and do a couple of numbers.
In the summer holidays, the music teacher from the school that we’d just left suggested that we use the recording equipment at the school to “lay down some tracks”. By this stage, it was clear that for one reason or another the intended public performance was never going to happen so the three of us (me, Ian and our producer - the music teacher who’d suggested it) got together and recorded two tracks - Sultans of Swing and Expresso Love - as a document of what we’d been trying to do.
Listening back to them as I write this, it’s a good thing we never got the chance to perform publicly - I was really paralysed by nerves just singing in front of two people and it made my voice even worse that was before, and Ian’s guitar playing was probably not as good as he’d have liked it to have been. But it was a fun thing to do and I’m actually glad that I’ve got those two tracks to remember that time by.
If you really feel that you want to put yourself through the torture, you can listen to Sultans of Swing - but I take no responsibility!
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