Latest news with #BrothersinArms
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Famous member of legendary British rock band coming to Stroud
A FOUNDING member of a legendary British rock band is coming to Stroud. John Illsley, bass player of Dire Straits, will do a live Q & A all about his band at the Sub Rooms in November. Dire Straits - who were mainly active in the 80s and the first half of the 90s and who are also in the rock and roll hall of fame - sold more than 30 million copies of their 1985 album Brothers in Arms. Illsley will be interviewed by the band's former co-manager and he will also perform other classic hits from the group. He will appear at the Sub Rooms on Sunday, November 2. For tickets visit the website.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The 5 classic Dire Straits songs that aren't on their No. 1 album 'Brothers in Arms'
Along with U2 and The Police, Dire Straits were among the most successful bands from the British Isles in the 1980s. Their fifth studio album, 1985's Brothers in Arms sold in staggering numbers, earning Platinum or Diamond status in 10 countries, storming to the No. 1 spot on album charts each and every time. Yet, in many ways, it was a last gasp for the beloved band; they'd take six years to record and release a followup, and by that time, popular tastes had changed, with grunge all the rage. (1991's On Every Street still made it to No. 1 in eight countries, no mean feat.) The overwhelming success of Brothers in Arms tends to overshadow the catalog of fine work Dire Straits had already created. So on the 40th anniversary of the release of Brothers in Arms, here are five great Dire Straits tunes from the records that came before it. 'Once Upon a Time in the West' from (1979) After the slow-burn success of Dire Straits' self-titled debut LP, Communiqué was met with a more modest reception. But the album arguably built on the first record's strengths. The understated 'Once Upon a Time in the West' added some reggae textures to the band's rootsy approach. The song would remain a staple of Dire Straits' live set; it featured prominently in an epic version, opening their 1984 live album (see below). 'Tunnel of Love' from (1980) Opening with the strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Carousel Waltz,' Dire Straits' 'Tunnel of Love' signaled Mark Knopfler's move toward grand, sweeping musical works. The evocative song showcases emotional depth, exceptional instrumental work and some of Knopfler's finest lyrics, rivaling Bruce Springsteen (who would write a 'Tunnel of Love' of his own a few years later). 'Telegraph Road' from (1982) Mark Knopfler's gift for creating wide-screen, epic songs continued on Dire Straits' fourth studio LP. The album's single, 'Industrial Disease' would be the only tune on the five-song album to come in under six minutes. Yet at fourteen minutes plus, 'Telegraph Road' never wastes a second. Knopfler's lyrics were inspired in part by the Nobel Prize winning novel Growth of the Soil by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. 'Twisting by the Pool' from (1983) Brothers in Arms displayed some playful humor in songs like 'Money for Nothing,' but the MTV hit wasn't Dire Straits' first tune with a bit of whimsy. A three-day recording session in Fall 1982 yielded four new songs for the group, including this fun and uptempo track. The uncharacteristic 'Twisting by the Pool' made it onto the singles charts in the U.S., UK and New Zealand; it reached the No. 1 spot in the latter. 'Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero' from (1984) While guitarist and songwriter Mark Knopfler formally launched his solo career after Dire Straits broke up in 1995, he had already been active outside the band for more than a decade. His first recorded work outside the group was composing, recording and producing the soundtrack for the well-received 1983 film Local Hero. On tour, Dire Straits featured the movie's stirring instrumental theme song in a full-band version; it's a highlight of the Alchemy album. Visit the Goldmine store for vinyl, CDs, box sets, collectibles, music history books and limited-edition, Goldmine-only exclusives. An online store specifically for music collectors. Click HERE!
Irish Examiner
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Culture That Made Me: Music maestro David Brophy picks his touchstones
David Brophy, 53, grew up in Santry, Co Dublin. In 2007, he was appointed principal conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He has conducted orchestras at major international events, including Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to Ireland in 2011. He was made principal conductor with Cologne's WDR Funkhaus orchestra in 2024. He will conduct the Irish Chamber Orchestra for A Midsummer Night's Dream, May 27-June 2, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival, Lismore Castle, Co Waterford. See: Brothers in Arms I remember aged 13 or 14 buying Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. The lyrics are great. There's outstanding hooks and guitar riffs on it. I can still hear that opening guitar riff on Money for Nothing, with those parallel fifths, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A world opened up to me – it was music you didn't necessarily hear on Top of the Pops. It's well put together – all the tracks lead from one into the other. It was the first album I got that made me listen to music differently. It's amazing. Vivaldi's Four Seasons I didn't do classical music at school. The first classical music thing I bought was aged 17. I stumbled across Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I listened to that so much the spool on the tape eventually gobbled itself up. They were the days when music was perishable. Riffing and the notion of a small group of notes that becomes arresting finds its beginnings with Vivaldi's Four Seasons. There's a lot of music in it that has been used by rock musicians over the years. Jon Lord Great musicians I've worked with over the years have listened to lots of different types of music. I worked with Jon Lord at the RTÉ Concert Orchestra many years ago. I remember having a drink with him after the gig, and we spent the whole evening sitting in the Shelbourne bar talking about Beethoven. He didn't wanna talk about everything else. He wasn't interested in talking about Deep Purple. I see music as a continuum. I don't see a huge difference between Vivaldi and Deep Purple. The Shining Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining The music in The Shining is amazing. Stanley Kubrick married music and tension in a scene in a way no other director has done. That scene where Shelley Duvall's character comes down the stairs – and Jack Nicholson has been writing whatever novel he's been writing – and she sees written across all the pages, 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' All that music you hear in the background is from Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. I love that film – the lighting, the cinematography. The acting is unreal. All the scenes are the perfect length. There's a look off it. It's cleverly done. It's one of those films I know inside out. Woody Allen Years ago, I was a big Woody Allen fan. I was first attracted to his films because he's the underdog. I identified with him. I was bullied badly at school and have all my scars that we all have from school. That dry New York wit, the droll underdog sense of humour made me laugh all the time. I didn't relate to swashbucklers in movies, but I related to Woody Allen as a teenager. Enda Walsh Mikel Murfi, Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea during a photoshoot for Ballyturk. I'm a big Enda Walsh fan. I remember in particular seeing Ballyturk with Stephen Rea, Cillian Murphy and Mikel Murfi, three legends on stage. I felt reassured leaving it because I felt, oh, somebody else sees the world like me. I find the world of his plays completely normal. He taps into the deep psychosis we walk around with all day long. Stephen Rea sang in the play. His mic came down, like one of those microphones that come down in boxing arenas. I spoke to Stephen afterwards, and he goes, 'Oh, Brophy, if I'd known you were there, I'd never have sung.' Benjamin Britten I did a foundation course in Dublin College of Music back in the late 1980s. I got exposed to Benjamin Britten. He was seen as being scary, very modern music. I remember buying his Sinfonia da Requiem and his Cello Symphony, which blew my mind. It wasn't atonal, but it was weird music, unlike music I'd heard before, using an orchestra with all the instruments. I don't know why somebody who had a diet of chart music and a bit of Vivaldi suddenly jumped into Benjamin Britten, that's quite a leap, but I became fascinated by his music. Under the Moon I started working with traditional musicians, and delving into the world of trad, in my mid- to late-twenties. I bought Under the Moon by Martin Hayes with Steve Cooney. I remember listening to it and pennies dropping, thinking there's a circle here between all the baroque music I'd be listening to and traditional Irish music. It's a seminal album for me, still a go-to. It's fantastic. Mise Éire Seán Ó Riada saw himself taking central European avant garde music to Ireland and exploring that world. He did something embryonic but simple, like that opening chord in the strings, which is just tremolo. Everyone's moving their bow very fast. That creates huge expectations straightaway. Then you get the opening horn solo on Roisín Dubh. It's very clever, very simple. He managed to distill traditional elements and put them in an orchestra context. He took trad – music from an oral tradition, domestic music, played in your house by your family, or played in the local pub – and he made it cinematic. That's the genius of it. He gave it a brand new canvas. BB King I went to see U2 on their Lovetown Tour. They played at Dublin's Point Depot in late December 1989. I was blown away by BB King and his band, who supported them, that night. At the time, I didn't realise the legend that BB King was. He had all these amazing jazz/blues musicians from America in his band, there playing at the Point. My jaw hit the ground.. It was unreal. I'll never forget the sheer sense of virtuosity. Grigory Sokolov Around the same time, I went to Dublin's Concert Hall to see the great Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov. He played music by Rameau, an eighteenth-century French composer. On the grand piano there are three pedals. The left pedal is called 'the una corda pedal', the softer pedal. He used that pedal in a way I've never heard in my life. The colours he got from the piano – I was completely mesmerised. One of the best concerts I was ever at. Simon Rattle I saw the English conductor Simon Rattle conduct in Dublin last September. He was on tour with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Germany. The magic is in what he doesn't do. He knows exactly what is the minimum he needs to do with the orchestra. Like, if you look at Usain Bolt's cheeks when he runs, his face is unbelievably relaxed. That sense of being able to let go to create something amazing is what Rattle has. The best people don't try. They just do. They've got that flow. Read More Matt Cranitch takes a bow for lifetime of musical achievement
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mark Knopfler on Dire Straits' Money for Nothing: ‘I wrote it in the window display of a New York appliance store'
I was in an appliance shop in New York and there was a big bonehead in there delivering gear. All the TVs were tuned to MTV and I overheard this guy sounding off about the rock stars on the screens. He had an audience of one – the junior at the store – and some of his lines were just too good to be true. Things like: 'That little motherfucker's got his own jet airplane!' And: 'He's banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee!' And: 'That ain't working!' That was just the way he spoke – and in that New York accent too. The bells were going off in my head but I didn't have a pen with me, so I borrowed one, got a bit of paper and I actually sat down in the window display area of the store and started writing out the lines to Money for Nothing as he said them. The guitar lick is just a stomp, a two-fingered boogie. It comes from the clawhammer style and it's got its own rhythm. It was just fun to do. But there were a whole bunch of fortunate incidents that collided with each other to create the song. For instance, I'd seen the Police on the MTV channel saying the phrase: 'I want my MTV.' But they also had a song called Don't Stand So Close to Me, so I put 'I want my MTV' to that melody and included it at the start. While we were recording the Brothers in Arms album at Air Studios on Montserrat, I remember thinking: 'Wouldn't it be great if I could ask Sting to sing that line?' We were on this tiny speck in the middle of the ocean but suddenly someone said: 'Sting's here on holiday! He's on the beach!' So he came up to the studio and when he walked in, the first thing he said was: 'What's wrong?' I said: 'What do you mean?' And he said: 'Nobody's fighting …' [unlike in the Police]. Brothers in Arms was huge. So many people wanted to see the band live. After we played Live Aid at Wembley Stadium, we ran across the car park to Wembley Arena where we were playing that night. In fact, one of the reasons why it felt like I had to scale things back was going into catering and not recognising the crew. That's when I realised the size of it. We'd already had four successful albums, so the expectations for Brothers in Arms were pretty high. Thankfully Mark's writing was sharp as a tack. At that point, we'd convene in a mews house in west London, just with guitars, an acoustic bass and a keyboard, and run through material Mark had been working on. The Money for Nothing chords and lyrics were already there – and obviously there was Mark's riff, which was pretty extraordinary. It's funny: when other guitarists try that riff, they play all the right notes but don't get the feel. We took our time, and it went from being a Mark Knopfler song to a Dire Straits song. I played the bass in a simple way, happily sitting on the chords, putting down that engine room. Its title is ironic, because we'd been working solidly for years to get to that point. But everybody viewed us from the outside. Like: 'Oh, look at them, that ain't working, that's just money for nothing – and they get the chicks thrown in for free.' But it was a bit like Picasso, when he'd do a quick drawing for someone and people would say: 'That only took you 10 seconds.' And he'd say: 'No, it took me 40 years.' Brothers in Arms was the first record we'd made with Guy Fletcher, who was a very technical musician. He knew how to work these modern keyboards, while Alan Clark was a wonderful piano player. The two of them created that Money for Nothing intro, and Terry Williams played the most explosive drum solo I've ever heard. Then the riff comes in. The guitar tone you hear on the record happened by accident: a microphone got knocked to the floor in front of the speaker and it changed the sound completely. Money for Nothing was No 1 in America while Brothers in Arms was No 1 on the US album chart at the same time. We really enjoyed that success, but the fame … not so much. After the tour, there was a definite feeling we had to put this to bed. We reconvened for On Every Street in 1991 and that tour was physically and mentally exhausting. Mark had definitely had enough. For everybody's sanity – but mostly his – we called it a day. But I honestly still enjoy playing Money for Nothing as much now as I did then. A good song is like a good picture – it never fades. Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms (40th Anniversary Edition) is released on 16 May on LP, CD and Blu-Ray. Pre-order here
Indian Express
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
These Sennheiser headphones could be great therapy for stress
It is only recently that I started realising that my appreciation of music has always been linked to my mental state. From my teens when I began discovering music to now, when I need to find time to sit and appreciate a song, a lot has changed. But, the fact remains that great audio quality always makes you pause whatever you are doing to enjoy the moment. The Sennheiser HD505 headphones are exactly the kind of headphones that make you forget daily stress and focus on the composition streaming into your ears. The HD505 has a familiar Sennheiser over-the-ear design with a synthetic leather headband and metal mesh earcup covers with bronze-finish accents that give it a very premium look. The HD505 is surprisingly light and very comfortable to wear for long hours. The cups completely immerse your ears and don't warm up much, even in Delhi summers. The 6-foot cable is long enough to connect from the source of your choice and comes with a 6.3mm adapter for those using music systems. The dual-tone finish makes the headphone look premium. (Image credit: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express) Whenever I am testing audiophile headphones, the first song I listen to is always the one that leaves a lasting impact. I started the Sennheiser HD505 journey with a FLAC version of Brothers in Arms by Club For Five. I could not have chosen something better. This cappella group from Finland has vocals at such a level that most headphones will struggle to make it palatable. But the HD505 managed the baritone so well, along with heartbeat-like thumbing in the middle. The HD505 has a custom 120-ohm transducer housed in an open earcup that gives all music a natural feel. It is with a composition like NTO's Petite that you get to experience the full range of this headphone's capabilities, from a punchy bass to rich details. This is the sort of music that can take you into a trance, and the HD505 gradually fades into the background, letting the music embalm you with its mystical capabilities. With something more vocal like With My Home in the Delta, the soulful voice of Muddy Waters is the centre of attention, though you don't miss any details, not the guitars or the regular drum beats. Each strum is as if someone is tugging on your heart… it is not every day you listen to songs with such intent. I had heard enough… I knew I had to listen to Leonard Cohen to seal my appreciation of the HD505. A live performance of his famous Blue Raincoat took me to the cold New York streets with music playing on the sidewalks, ushered into a surreal world far from my reality as only Cohen's voice and words can. This is that kind of headphone… one that does not need noise cancellation to shut out the noise of your life. A premium headphone for audiophiles. (Image credit: Nandagopal Rajan/ The Indian Express) At Rs 27,990, the Sennheiser HD505 might not be for everyone. But I would consider this among the best headphones at the moment for audiophiles who love their songs to be rendered without overpowering technology. I found my time with the Sennheiser HD505 both destressing and therapeutic… as long as I knew what songs to play. This therapy is strongly recommended.
