I think that many people of my age got hooked on Dire Straits
\nthanks to their groundbreaking video “Money For Nothing,” and found
\na lot to like on their then-current album
\nBrothers In Arms<\/i>.<\/p>\n
But the further you dig, the more one realizes just how
\ndrop-dead boring Dire Straits can be. While the Mark Knopfler-led
\ngroup constantly prove themselves to be talented musicians, the
\nperformance of their music is quite sterile. This leads us to
\n1993’s
\nOn The Night<\/i>, the second live album from the British group
\n(and, the way things have been looking, the last album from them,
\nsave for another greatest hits repackage).<\/p>\n
I don’t know what happened in the translation from the stage to
\nthe tape. I mean, I saw Dire Straits perform in Chicago on their
\ntour for
\nOn Every Street<\/i>, and the show was anything but boring. But
\nthe ten songs on this set don’t always light up the speakers the
\nway that Knopfler and crew do in the flesh.<\/p>\n
Ah, maybe I’ve already hit upon the problem early on in the
\nreview! Often, I’ve heard bands live who just plain kicked ass, and
\nI’ve gone back to their studio efforts and have been incredibly
\ndisappointed. Maybe this is the case with Dire Straits; nothing
\ntakes the place of seeing them live.<\/p>\n
And it’s not that everything on this album will put you to
\nsleep. When the band relies on selections from
\nBrothers In Arms<\/i> and
\nOn Every Street<\/i>, things do take off. Renditions of “Walk Of
\nLife” and “Heavy Fuel” are very interesting, and the live version
\nof “Money For Nothing” has a livelier tempo, even if the vocals
\nsound a bit jaded. What I don’t understand is that “On Every
\nStreet” gets one of the loudest ovations from the crowd (these
\nshows were recorded in France and The Netherlands); I never thought
\nthis was a song to go ape over (though the version here is not bad
\nat all).<\/p>\n
But not all the material from the blockbuster albums lights the
\nspeakers up the same way. “Calling Elvis” sounds rather uninspired,
\nand the jams at the end of the song almost prolong the torture. (In
\nthe band’s defense, they did the same thing when I saw them in
\nconcert; again, this might be something that translates better when
\nyou can see it.) The closer, “Brothers In Arms,” is another track
\nthat just plods along.<\/p>\n
For that matter, maybe this is the problem I have with
\nOn The Night<\/i>. Many of the “for the fans” tracks tend to
\ncrawl. “Romeo And Juliet” (I liked the Indigo Girls’ rendition
\nbetter), “Private Investigations” and “You And Your Friend” all
\nseem to stall in first gear – not the best thing to happen on a
\nlive album. However, there is a hidden gem in “Your Latest Trick,”
\nwhich features Dire Straits sounding like they’ve finally tapped a
\nvein of musical energy that they had been searching for. More songs
\nin this style would have helped this album immensely.<\/p>\n
And I can hear the obvious criticism: Where is “Sultans Of
\nSwing”? Hey, you want that one, go buy
\nAlchemy<\/i>. (Now that I think about it, I think there are some
\nrepeats from the earlier live album on this one.)<\/p>\n
Of course, the diehard Dire Straits fan will find every note of
\nthis disc to be pure ambrosia. For the rest of us,
\nOn The Night<\/i> has some moments of glory, but it’s not the
\npinnacle of what Dire Straits is all about — and that’s the
\ngreatest disappointment of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5751],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-36119","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dire-straits","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36119"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36119"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}