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Dire Straits vs Chris Rea

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Thought I’d start a good old-fashioned ‘vs’ thread, just for fun.

I’ve always found Chris Rea and Mark Knopfler to be sonically very similar, particularly in their eighties heyday. I bet a lot of casual listeners wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

So who’s better?

I say the Dire Straits frontman has the edge. Love Over Gold and Brothers In Arms were genuine masterpieces that I still listen to. Mr Rea always had a whiff of kitsch about him (although I still love Nothing To Fear).

Fight!

3

Comments

  4. Both are pretty snoozeworthy, but if you put a gun to my head I’d go for Knopfler. He’s a fine guitarist (although not much of it finds its way onto his records) and he’s always good value when discussing vintage guitars.

    As for Chris Rea, I reviewed a Birmingham show of his for the blog a few years ago and it was dull beyond words. The lack of anything approaching excitement was something to behold.

  8. I prefer MK`s solo music to his DS music which I don`t dislike. The first album is very good as is a lot of the music on later DS albums.

    Now CR is new to me, yes I was/am aware of his `80`s output which I never bothered with but it was his blues stuff which I found to be good. Yes he ain`t from the Mississippi delta or wherever you have to do your bluesman apprenticeship but I like what he does.

    MK vs DS, it`s MK for me.

    MK vs CR, once again it`s MK.

    I have to add that I don`t listen to them a lot but only because of other listening preferences.

  9. MK has put out a lot of good stuff since he got his inner rockstar out the way. CR had a greatest hits sorted by about 1995 and that’s all I need. In fact, Stainsby Girls and On the Beach are probably enough. Later stuff dull dull dull.

  10. I picked up all the Dire Straits studio LPs at various boot sales last year, and after a recent clearout only the the first album and BIA (the latter for semimental reasons) survived the cull. The others are still languishing in the local chazza, the snoozesome buggers.

    Mr B persuaded me to get a Chris Rea LP at a car boot one time. That got snuck into the chuck pile too.

  11. Funnily enough, I just started listening to my Dire Straits albums last week after a 30+ year hiatus. They were so uncool and reviled by the late 80s that I was genuinely curious at what I’d find.
    Some observations:
    – they definitely peaked at Making Movies and Love over Gold, but even these have a couple of duff tracks each
    – the first two albums are OK but bland. Very little textural variation.
    – their long-form songs have weathered better than the rest (Tunnel of Love, Telegraph Rd etc) as Knopfler works best with a bit of narrative space around him
    – they got hit badly by the 80s ugly stick around Alchemy and BIA. The sound of the latter is horrendous. I used to love the former as a 13 year-old, but the production (I.e. synths) have aged badly.
    – he really was a fantastic guitar player, and like most of the greats, the giveaway is in his rhythm playing- effortless but intricate.
    – I’ve never listened to their last studio album. Calling Elvis seemed monochromatic and uninviting.
    All in all, a typical double-disc greatest hits band.
    Rea, on the other hand, bores the shit out of me.

  12. Chris Rea went up somewhat in my estimation recently when, during an interview in one of the Guitar magazines, he admitted that he started playing slide solely because of Ry Cooder. He appears curious detached from the rock scene in general though and I’ve never seen him mentioned in the same breath as any other musician.

    As for Dire Straits, over Christmas 1978 my (future) brother-in-law came from Australia to stay with my (future) wife and I in London. He brought with him a copy of the first Dire Straits LP which he told us was number one in Perth at that time. Puzzled, I asked if this was the same little-known band who were playing pubs around London at that time. It was indeed. Turns out that, thanks to some heavy FM radio play, the debut DS LP had taken off in Western Australia before anywhere else in the world.

    I enjoyed the early albums, but it was a case of the bigger they got, the worse their albums became, until towards the end Dire Straits had almost become an ambient music band.

    I’ve still got the first LP but otherwise all you need is the best of CD.

  14. A friend of mine has the CR history of the blues set in which our man goes from the cotton fields through delta to the city through all the blues sub-genres, accompanied by a book and original paintings. Whilst it’s clearly a labour of love, it was hard to get through it all. Didn’t he do another one of early 60s stuff – I vaguely remember a competition in Word to win it on vinyl together with a reissue Dansette record player ? I think there was a film too? I’m not hating on him but none of this moves me at all. OOAA.

    • The friend mentioned above who took me to see Chris Rea in Birmingham had the multi disc set you speak of (11 or 13 CDs I think), but as you say it was hard to listen to. There wasn’t much spark there.

        • I remember both those sets coming out. At the time they were creatively marketed as an artistic rebirth. I’ve browsed them both, and been disappointed with the blandness and lack of the promised ‘authenticity’ – same old slow-tempo, synth-laden noodlery as always.

          • Likewise when Dire Straits Alchemy double LP appeared in 1984 it was a huge deal. It was pre-CD so there was a lot of taping going among friends if one person managed to buy a copy.

            Hard to imagine now, but DS were about to become the biggest band in the world.

            • I was 11 when Brothers In Arms came out, and it made an impact on me even then. It seemed like proper grown up music (my uncle had one of those new CD player things in his car). They definitely touched an MOR nerve in the mid eighties. Rea must have been kicking himself to have missed that boat!

              • I went to a teenage party that summer. Took my Roy Harper/Jimmy Page ‘Whatever Happened To Jugula’ cassette with me, resplendent with actually Rizla pack design that I had added for extra cool. Only one other dude listened to it with me in the kitchen,as the rest of the eejits boogied to Walk Of Life in the sitting room. I knew then that there was no hope for them.

  15. Not much love for Chris Rea! I think I overestimated the loyal cult following which I assumed might be hidden in these ranks.

    I also feel duty bound to defend Brothers In Arms. Sure, it’s overplayed, but the lesser known tracks (or as ‘lesser known’ as it’s possible to be with such a ubiquitous album) like The Man’s Too Strong and Your Latest Trick are still capable of giving me a shiver.

    • I remember The Tube did a film to go with the title track which was filmed in Israel with lots of footage of the troubled times there in the mid 80s which was tremendously affecting (I’d just spent 3 months there). Probably on YouTube somewhere.

  16. No love for Shamrock Diaries here..? He got everything right on that album, it has a lovely elegiac feel. The one after was On The Beach, where he consolidated the sound, then after that was doomed to repeat it forever.

    The Dire Straits song On Every Street is a beautiful composition, as is the Local Hero soundtrack.

  17. Mark Knopfler’s solo work is actually very good. He’s delivered a series of low key folk-ish albums which, while they are never going to set the world alight on originality, are examples of sturdy songcraft, and there’s nowt wrong with that. Tunnel Of Love is still one of my favourite Dire Straits songs, and I do think they were essentially a singles band, as most of their albums contained quite a lot of filler. Knopfler’s solo work, on the other hand, works better on whole albums which often create a tone or mood. As for Chris Rea, er Stainsby Girls, that’s about it.

  18. Re: “a lot of casual listeners wouldn’t be able to tell the difference..”
    The ladies of my acquaintance used to go all aquiver at the sound of Mr Rea’s voice whereas headband guy had exactly zero effect in the downstairs moistening department..

  19. In terms of number of listens, I would estimate the score to be (at least) 20 to 1 in favour of Dire Straits.
    Dire Staits spent a long time being (unfairly) maligned (Twisting By The Pool and Walk Of Life were perhaps contractual aberrations) and have a catalogue of genuine greatness. Alchemy would/should make any list of “Best Live Albums”
    I find Chris Rea to be very patchy, and from about 1987 very samey and safe.

  20. I’ll admit to having that CR Blue Guitars box and it’s hard to disagree with the comments above. A heroic effort made in the aftermath of serious, life threatening illness but that doesn’t justify the sameness of so much of it. However, it is very different from On The Beach and its ilk and there are a few standout tracks. Law of averages, I guess.

    I was never a DS fan, but have grown to like MK’s later work – Sailing to Philadelphia – and his collaboration with Emmy Lou Harris – All The Roadrunning – is sublime. Far, far better than the roughly concurrent, truly dirge laden Raising Sand.

    For me, the result is a score draw.

  23. Both superb guitarists in their respective interests. I really don’t understand the OP’s and subsequent posts to conflate/compare one with the other. One bases their career on a singular finger picking technique the other on a slide technique.

    Enjoy both for their unique strengths.

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