I have been waiting for about 20 years for the most obvious collaboration album to occur. My question is what is stopping it. It could be any of the below:
1. They are really the same artist.
2. Despite surface level similarity, they are actually too different to combine well.
3. Knopfler is the more successful commercially and doesn’t need Thompson
4. Thompson can’t be in the room with the person who allowed Walk of Life to exist
But I’d love to hear them play and sing together. Have they ever actually performed together?
Gatz says
Knopfler present Thommo with a British Folk Award a few years ago (lifetime achievement or something similar), which suggests had settled since Thommo famously dismissed Dire Straits as ‘a very dilute entertainment’ in Q many years earlier.
For what it’s worth, I can’t see where their playing would leave space for the other. I enjoy Knopfler, but any time he took the lead I would be waiting for him to shut up and let Richard have the ball back.
Skirky says
A clue as to what might do best may lay in Fairport’s “Hanks for the Memory”, which is basically RT and Jerry Donahue swapping Shadows licks. Mind you, MK and Chet Atkins found room for each other, so it might work?
hubert rawlinson says
Would have loved a Thompson and Swarbrick collaboration alas it shall never be now. Thompson did a piece on whistle test where by setting the controls could emulate various guitarist’s sounds, Knopfler was one of them, I seem to recall that he said something like ‘ Sorry Mark’ as he did it.
Gatz says
Young Mr Hepworth does the honours
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
And it doesn’t sound particularly like Knopfler and even less like Hendrix.
Colin H says
Oh, I dont know… it seems like he captured a fair bit of their playing style and as much of their ‘sound’ as he could with an off the cuff demonstration without being set up with those artist’s amp settings etc.
Here he is with a Hendrix song a couple of years back – an interpretation as much as a cover:
Bartleby says
Kewl. Best tone RT has had in years
Colin H says
There’s new Dave Swarbrick 2CD set coming soon on Cherry Red (I annotated it) combining for 1976-83 DS albums including several tracks with Thompo.
hubert rawlinson says
Splendid Colin, is there any new stuff? I know there are clips of Swarb and Mr Thompson on you tube as a duo is there anything like that?
Just checked no is the answer.
Colin H says
But the 3000 wd notes and copious booklet illustrations are pretty good (even if I say so myself)! Plus new mastering…
hubert rawlinson says
Sold. Despite having it all. What are the four tracks not on CD before? @Colin H
Colin H says
I’m not sure, Hubes. I did a lot of research with contemporaneous press coverage of the albums and DS’s little-known parallel solo career of sorts towards the end of the full-time Fairport era (1976-79), so the notes are substantial on that aspect, but I’m hazy about what was/is new to CD. I believe some tracks were dropped from a couple of the albums on previous 2 on 1 releases.
Skirky says
*How* new? Asking for a friend.
Colin H says
I wondered if the curious lack of imagination on the title might be noticed! I was commissioned to annotate that Sanctuary 2CD compilation ‘It Suits Me Well’ back in 2004 or whenever it was and to compile a single CD selection from the 4 Transatlantic/Logo albums. (The second CD was BBC live recordings.) I had nothing to do with the title or artwork.
This time around I was asked to annotate a straight 2CD set of the same 4 albums. I had no idea what the title would be (I didn’t ask, actually) until I saw the final artwork – the same as the previous one! I had made a point of discarding the original sleevenote and starting from scratch – going through the folk pages/ads of every issue of the Melody Maker from 1976-81 for news stories, reviews, interviews and scattered quotes from Dave Swarbrick and scanning a couple of dozen headlines/pics and adverts for the booklet designer to use if he/she wished in a montage. I also accessed two recent DS interviews where he talked a little about those albums.
I think the designer of the new set, Andy Morten, has done a grand job with the booklet – typeface, illustrations, spacing, etc. There are lots of period photos of DS and he has indeed used many of the MM scans in a montage, which gives a real flavour of the era. I haven’t A/B-ed the mastering of the material between the previous comp and this, but I did audition the mastered discs before pressing and they sounded good.
The four albums have been out before in various combinations/compilations – some in the UK, some in Australia. If someone is saying 4 tracks have been edited off previous releases, I can imagine this might be the case but beyond confirming to myself that most previous CDs containing the tracks/part thereof were long out of print and expensive, I wasn’t looking at that aspect.
Sometimes, when you’re asked to contribute notes to something, you are 100% familiar with the artist and the works concerned; sometimes, you’re familiar with the artist in a big picture way and have several of their works, but not everything. The latter was the case for me with DS.
I’m researching a magazine piece at the moment on a British jazz artist (whom I will interview once I’m confident I know enough), but in this instance it’s a big learning curve. I’ve probably already spent the three-figure prospective fee simply obtaining (pricey) second hand vinyl and CDs of just *some* of his output (some others being beyond justifying price-wise) and also copies of 30-50 year-old magazines featuring relevant pieces. But in the process, I’ve also been able to nudge several prospective or definitely forthcoming reissues into being on three different labels, so it’s a process – you start collecting pebbles then you see if you can roll them down a few hills.
So that’s a bit of an insight into the mind of an obsessive reissue annotator!
Skirky says
Thank you Colin, very much appreciated.
NigelT says
Hi Colin – just a thought (which you’ve probably had!?), but can streaming services like Spotify help research old material rather than shell out large sums on old records? I’m working through the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before Shuffling Off book, and most are on there….
Colin H says
I’m not a Spotify user but you mustn’t assume that everything is on there. For instance, I recommended the Rendell-Carr Quintet to a friend recently. When he looked on Spotify only a posthumous compilation of early 60s demos plus a few Antibes Festival live tracks and a 1966 amateur live set were available – two (non representative) CDs’ worth. Their five albums proper were reissued by BGO a while back and I had picked up normal price copies of these – but clearly BGO, in their license arrangement, did not have digital rights, hence those albums are not on Spotify. I’m sure this is common.
NigelT says
Yes, I have found gaps and I guess this explains it, thanks!
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Always seen Knopler , good guy as he seems, as Thompson Lite so not sure any collaboration would work!
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
I think that some do see Knopfler that way but putting Dire Straits aside for a sec (and I liked the band) I think that Knopfler’s solo work is of a very high standard. There are quite a lot of pretty interchangeable jigs in RT’s work – fall back songs (Two Left Feet; Tear Stained Letter); some fairly tuneless pieces as well. Lots of great stuff of course but I’m wondering how much of MK’s work has been recognised post Dire Straits.
Colin H says
Tear Stained Letter and Walk Of Life are basically the same – both awful, mid-tempo, accordion-wheezing estate-agent boogaloos.
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
Indeed. And that gets to the heart of the more universal regard for RT (around here) compared to MK.
Skirky says
Really? It doesn’t sound like he rates either of them very highly.
Everygoodboydeservesfruita says
True enough. I’m grabbing anything though.
retropath2 says
Back under the bridge, Col, WoL shit notwithstanding, TSL is wonderful.
Colin H says
I have a lot of regard for Thompo – a really brilliant, truly individual guitar stylist, a brilliant solo live performer, and an occasionally brilliant songwriter. I just don’t like Cajun-flavoured R&B/R’n’R!
retropath2 says
I sort of got that. One day, maybe, one day, bearing in mind you are but a boy. In the meantime have some even more uber-cajunisation of the old TSL.
retropath2 says
Hell, or even both together, writer and interpreter:
Colin H says
Dreadful, Retro, dreadful. There’s something wretched about 70s artists in 80s suits, isn’t there? And there is NOTHING more 80s than a sax solo. Thank goodness it’s largely disappeard from popular music.
Jorrox says
I like that. But I would. Cajun-flavoured R&B/R’n’R is one of my favourite things.
Skirky says
To be fair, with a quarter of a century’s hindsight, it’s possibly unfair to criticise someone for wearing an eighties suit in 1990.
Colin H says
Well, at least there weren’t any rolled up sleeves…
Skirky says
He tended to leave that to his employer back then… 🙂
Moose the Mooche says
In 1990 they should have been wearing baggy dayglo t-shirts. I was going to suggest centre-partings but that would have been a stretch for RT even in the pre-beret years.
Junior Wells says
sax solos @Colin-H – you mean like on your latest disc?
Colin H says
Soprano sax, Junior – that’s different: a sublime sound, practically an oboe!
Mavis Diles says
I think it’s a cliche to criticise Walk of Life. It’s nothing more than a slightly naff pop song. I have some regard for it; when returning home on the tube after another unpleasant day at work, and passing a busker I often find the line “after all the violence and double-talk, it’s just a song in all the trouble and strife” pops into my head. That’s a good line.
I do think it was heavily influenced by Tear-Stained Letter actually.
Shit Knopfler songs, real stinky ones, are things like Les Boys – what the jiggins was he thinking? Sailing to Philadelphia and Way Aye Man have a slight whiff of Reeves and Mortimer about them also.
Moose the Mooche says
What’s on the end of his Pick, Withers?
Bartleby says
Oh Hal, Lindes a fiver ’til the end of the week?
ewenmac says
I’m excited about Mark Knopfler’s RT collaboration. I still have the first two Dire Straits albums on moderately-heavy rotation. They lost me after that but I heard this the other day and it rubbed my buddha;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd7hR02P_Kg
retropath2 says
@ewenmac : i think it is a hope, a wish rather than an expectation, much as I may love to be wrong. Indeed I googled it and the only pointer was a blog message board for elderly fantasists with too many records.