Speaker 1: Welcome to Surely for Nothing, A dramatic reading. Oh look
at those oakings. That's the way you do it. You
create a podcast focused primarily on the nineteen eighties. No,
that's not working. That's the way you do it. The
episodes cost nothing, but the Patreon isn't free.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm super excited this week. I have been
working all week on Brothers in Arms.
Speaker 3: That ain't working. That's the way you do it. You
do your podcast and you call it Shirley.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody back to the Surely You Can't Be Serious podcast.
We are here live and in living color, covering dire
Straits album Brothers in Arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you missed it, last week, we covered
Heart's nineteen eighty five album. We are comparing these two.
Do they have a lot in common?
Speaker 3: Maybe? I think they don't. Really. They're both a really
big and nineteen eighty nineteen eighty five. Yeah, they're both
celebrating their fortieth anniversary. How about that. That's it.
Speaker 2: Both hit number one in the fall of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they were inescapable if you were listening to
top forty radio in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about this particular album, Yeah, this is
at the birth of CDs. Yeah, the incredible time when
people were moving away from vinyl for sure, moving away
from tapes and actually buying CDs, and it actually produced
a sort of large uptick and money going to record
companies and bands.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, Yeah, the record companies were probably more powerful at
this stage of history than they had ever been before,
and probably that they will ever be again because there
was the downfall in the late nineties. Allah Napster and
LimeWire and all that other stuff. But these albums are
both they're both by bands who formed in the seventies.
Art formed in mid seventies. Dire Straits formed in nineteen
seventy seven. I mean they formed about a year apart really,
and then had both had kind of lulls in between
their debut albums, and then this nineteen eighty five album
that they both had, so they get a little more
in common than you might think.
Speaker 2: Okay, so before we dive into the history, yeah, I've
got just a few overview facts I want to give
you on Brothers in Arms. Okay, so number one, this
is the first album to sell one million.
Speaker 3: CDs, cdsds in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty five, wow.
Speaker 3: So like I didn't have a CD player I like
in the household, like my brother bought my parents like
a big gift of a CD player in nineteen eighty nine.
I think service merchandise, by the way, if you remember that.
Speaker 2: Old store service merchandise, I love service merchant.
Speaker 3: By the way, Guys, if this is your first time
here and you remember as a kid having a swatchwatch
or a Cassio watch, then you're in the right spot.
I gotta tell you. I was. I was at the
pharmacy the other day and the girl is like checking
my stuff, and she's got this little gold Cassio watch,
and I was like, oh, whoa nice Cassio. And she's
like thanks. All the older adults noticing, and I'm like, well,
screw you there, taking my compliment back, ma'am. Right, But
if you had a gold Cassio or a Cassio, maybe
even a Calculator watch, you're in the right spot.
Speaker 2: Or a calculator uh well, forget that.
Speaker 3: You know, I had something that in nineteen eighty five,
you might be able to tap into the flux capacitor
and tend yourself back to the future.
Speaker 2: Yes, I had a mister calculator like a cartoon face that. Yeah. Okay,
so this album first album, so one million CDs, right,
I've been fourteen weeks at number one in nineteen eighty five.
Yeah in the UK, seven in the US.
Speaker 3: It's still not bad. I mean it's killing it, right.
Speaker 2: Thirty million albums sold in nineteen eighty five. Do that
is smashing it. And the company that owned the record label, Phillips,
used this album as like a benchmark, saying you've got
to get a CD player because technology and sounds like
this will be soon coming out of your speakers.
Speaker 3: It was essentially their demo CD for the CD player.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons why it sold so many copies. Yeah,
people wanted to hear this coming out of their new speaker.
You got to have the benchmark CD.
Speaker 3: And I think once we've listened to a few of
the songs, we can discuss the other possibilities on why this,
of all albums, was such a big seller for CDs.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's dive into it, man, Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Do we want to dive into the first song or
do you want to go history?
Speaker 3: How do we want to do this? I would say,
let's dive in the first song and I'll talk history
as we go through it.
Speaker 2: All right. First song on the album is a song
called so Far Away.
Speaker 3: M Tired of making out on the telephone. This song
is fantastic, right, this is this is it's it's mellow,
but it's got a groove. The sound you can hear
the awesome sonic sound to it, and then the you know,
it's I'm tired of having bone sex with you, honey,
I want to I want.
Speaker 2: To see you for real.
Speaker 3: You're so far away from me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so far I just so far away.
Speaker 2: So here's the interesting thing. I think. This album was
released May seventeenth, nineteen eighty five. Okay, this was the
first single released in the UK.
Speaker 3: Okay, but the.
Speaker 2: Third single released in the US. All Right, I don't
really understand why they do that.
Speaker 3: Well, so their history is really interesting and I'll get
into more of that later. But there's it's this. They're
really I mean, they are a grassroots band from I mean,
from the get go, they're just as regular a bunch
of guys as you could ask for. They're all just
guys who are barely scraping by until they happen to
make it, which I'll talk about in a minute. But
then once they did make it, like they I mean,
making it is not an instantaneous thing. It's a it's
a build. And so the first place that they had
that they sent their album was the Netherlands because it
was apparently a good gauge of how the album would
perform worldwide. It depending on how it performed in the
Netherlands did well, there wasn't doing so well in Germany,
but they did some work in Germany, and then they
started to catch popularity and became even more popular in Germany,
and they were they were starting to it more and
more popular in different countries in Europe, and weren't even
that popular in the UK yet. And it's just like
it's this kind of weird matter of how one country
will have a different taste than another country. And you
will hear over and over with these guys that everyone says,
we thought you were an American band because their sound
is an American z ound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I heard John Illsley yeah say
that they sent the album to the Netherlands hoping to
sell five thousand copies. Yeah, and when word came back
that they had already sold twenty five thousand copies, yeah,
they were like, we might be onto something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might be time to start touring, right yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, So this song in particular reached number nineteen in
the States in April of eighty six. Yeah, I got
your top five that week. Oh yeah, okay, and this
is a Shirley top five. This is a strong top five.
Speaker 3: It's nineteen eighty five. Of course it's a Shirley top
Well it's eighty six, but oh okay, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: So number five is why Can't This Be Love? By
Van Halen, the first single with Sammy hay Right. Number
four is Manic Monday.
Speaker 3: The Beautiful Bengalsana.
Speaker 2: Has number three West End Girls by the pet Shop.
Speaker 3: You couldn't I couldn't get enough of that banger, right yeah.
Speaker 2: Number two Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer YEP and
number one Kiss by Prince Pretty solid right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, definitely great list.
Speaker 2: This album was recorded at George Martin's AI R Studios
in Montserrat. Yeah, and I want to talk more about
that later. Yeah, but I think already you can feel
the influence of the island on this song.
Speaker 3: It does have. I mean this song especially has a
very beach relaxed kind of feel to it. For sure.
It's way to it. It's a groove you can you
can almost see the palm trees waving in the breeze.
Speaker 2: No doubt. You know, I read that they had these
songs all written and rehearsed before they got to the island. Yeah,
but I still believe that the island impacted the sound.
Speaker 3: Of this this album, no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 2: Okay, lovely So I love it. It's one of the
I mean, top twenty hits.
Speaker 3: Yeah song, huge song, great, great one out of the gate.
I wouldn't I'd say it's more than an appetizer. It's
it's it's a solid appetizer.
Speaker 2: But oh my gosh, should we get to the to
the meal.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can leave everything else behind just I
I know what you're gonna do, like you're gonna start
the You're gonna start the music right about here as
I'm talking. Because it's it's a nice Yes, it's just
a nice it's a nice bill. That's the understatement of
the year. This is arguably one of the best builds
in all of music history, and we didn't get it
hot half of the time. Whenever we would hear the song,
they would start after the build, right, And it's so good,
it's so powerful, it's so perfectly timed. And to have
sting just happen to be next door and hey, would
you like to come and sing a little bit on
this song? Build? Build, Build, And then you come crashing in.
Speaker 2: With one of the great guitar intros of all time.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic. And I mean, even if you skip that
whole intro, that that boom of a guitar coming in
with Mark Knopfler's incredible fingerpicking style, the unique combination of
chords that he's got going on, it's just it is remarkable.
It is overwhelming. I cannot say enough good about this,
this intro and this song.
Speaker 2: So the genesis of the song is super interesting. But
almost as interesting is what happened while they're recording this song. Okay,
so the genesis if you don't know this, and you probably,
I mean I know you do because you've studied. But
Mark Knopfler was looking for the zz top sound for
this right. Yes, he even reached out to Billy Gibbons. Okay,
he's like, hey, Billy, I wanted to do this zz
top sound. And Billy Gibbons later said, you know, he
did a really good job it. Scenes how I didn't
tell him a gd thing. But they had this happy
accident when they were recording the song. Well, let me
back up. The genesis of the song is Mark Knopfler
was living in New York City and he was at
a department store like I don't know where it was exactly,
like Sears or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this probably was when they were recording their third
album because they were at the power station recording it.
That's when Dave ended up leaving the band was when
they were doing their recording in New York City. So
my guess is it was around that time.
Speaker 2: He's in there and he's buying a refrigerator okay, microwave oven.
He's buying a refrigerator. He's standing there in front of
this wall of TV's that's playing MTV and there's a guy,
like a delivery guy who comes up and he stands
next to him. He's like, that ain't working. What is
that Hawaiian noises?
Speaker 3: So that little queenie, Yeah right, So there's there's obviously
some language that has has not lasted things through the
through the PC of time. Yeah, that's but you got
to keep in mind this is he is, he's playing
a part here. This is not These are not the
words that he would use. I mean, I know these
having studied these guys, they hung out with that type
of folk all the time and would never use it
on their own. But he's he's playing the part of
this radio you know, refrigerator installer. Right. But the I
think the most fascinating thing that we covered this a
long time ago, the band that was that they were
watching on all those TVs Smartley Kurz, I know.
Speaker 2: Right, how about that he's looking at them saying, that
guy's a millionaire. Come on, what is this?
Speaker 3: I mean probably they were watching the Home Sweet Home
video that you referenced in our top five of eighty five.
I mean wow, I mean because because you know, you
got the almost the top almost coming off. Look at
her putting it in the camera. Man, the guys ain't dumb, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. Chicks for free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he.
Speaker 2: Was so impacted by this conversation he had with this
delivery guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, umps, Look at that Mama gonna limit camera man?
What's that Hawaiian noises on the boosh away?
Speaker 2: That he went around looking for a pin? In a
piece of paper he's writing down and I wrote down
things that he got from this guy. Okay, yeah, so
he actually got that ain't working, he got sticking in
the camera. Yeah, and look at that f f yeah.
Oh and also what are those Hawaiian noises? Which I
think is a hilarious line.
Speaker 3: Right right, because there's not a Motley Cruise song that
I can think of that has anything like a Hawaiian
noise at all.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter that ain't working. Maybe you get a
blister on your little.
Speaker 3: Finger, maybe you get a blister on your thumb.
Speaker 2: So that's an interesting story to me. But really the
fascinating part of this song is they're in Montserrat, which
is British West Indies. It's an island basically of isolation.
They move you there so you can concentrate on recording
and they're working on this song and one of the
ways that they get this incredible sound with the guitar
and he's trying to mimic Zzy Top. They leave the studio,
they come in one day and the microphones are all
messed up. Do you hear the story? No, So they
come in. One mic is pointing at the floor and
one one's like moved out over here and there and
kind of scattered, but it's making an incredible sound. And
so they're like, don't touch anything. Wow, it's a they
called the happy accident. It so literally they're like, somebody
moved all this stuff around, don't touch it.
Speaker 3: Little microphone fairies came out of the night and right.
Speaker 2: Cray And so he's writing this song from the perspective
of this guy watching MTV talking about how ridiculous MTV is, right,
and they're playing too MTV and Mark Knopfler makes the comments,
I'm sure wish Sting was here, Yeah, he'd be great
to sing this party. And they're like, what are you
talking about? Sting is here. Sting's windsurfing right now. They're
like what. And so Sting was in Montserrat because he
loved the island and had recorded Ghost in the Machine
and Synchronicity and was just there hanging out on holiday.
Speaker 3: They had just finished with Synchronicity just a couple of years,
I mean maybe a year too before this album was
being recorded.
Speaker 2: He's windsurfing, just hanging out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, we're not.
Speaker 2: So he came in and they invited him to come
up to dinner. They played Money for Nothing for him
and said, hey, what do you think He's like. The
comment was you bustard, You've done it right, And Mark
Knopfler's like, well, if you love it so much, why
don't you sing on it?
Speaker 3: Well, if you love it so much.
Speaker 6: When she's singing right, so Sting is like, fine, I
will uh huh right, and he sings the I Want
my MTV line to the tune of Don't Stand so
Close to Me.
Speaker 3: Now, listening audience, you must know, don't Stand so Close
to Me is my favorite Police song. It is my
favorite Police song. And this song is my favorite dire
straight song. Sultan's have Swing a near second, but this
one is top of the list. And not until you
told this to me about a week ago that I go,
don't stand so don't stand so, don't stand so close
to me. I want my I want my I want
my MTV. I was just like, wah, what yes, So
there's so no problem. Sting said, you guys can use.
Speaker 2: It right, right, except the record company is like, no, no, no, no, no, no no,
that belongs to us. They've got to pay us a
percentage of their song. What a crock and Sting was
very embarrassed by that. He's like, of course, saying, I
mean just asked me to sing a line.
Speaker 3: I sang a line, right, And it's not like it's
a super complicated melody right right, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone goted this the ninety fourth greatest guitar song
of all time, and a problem with that. Yeah, okay,
so let's talk about the music video. Okay, yes, okay.
Mark Knopfler hates music videos, but MTV is like, listen, dude,
this song plays to us. We will love it. We
want to play the heck out of it, but we
have to have a great music video to make this work. Yeah,
So they send some executives to go meet with him,
and he's not receptive to it at all. They later
go back a second time, but this time his girlfriend
is with him and they're like, we have to have
a creative video to go along with this awesome song,
and he's still like basically arms crossed, looking at his shoes,
says nothing. So they leave and his girlfriend, who happened
to be there the second time, was like, you know,
they're right, They're absolutely right. You have to make a
video worthy of this song. He's like, all right, fine,
they hire Steve Baron, mister music video, right, and they
come up with this idea of like like computer coloring,
you know, making those wild colors while they're playing this incredible.
Speaker 3: Song, right, kind of a takeoff on the take on
Me style.
Speaker 2: It's sort of rotoscoping. Yeah right, we're going to talk
about that here in just a second. Yeah, but this
song is the first song aired on MTVu August first,
nineteen eighty seven. Okay, I mean that's as monumental as
video Killed the Radio Star.
Speaker 3: You know in Europe.
Speaker 2: Sure, So this video goes on to win MTV's Music
Video of the Year for nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: And beats out Take on Me by Aha. Oh really yes,
really yeah. The other ones you had cry by Goodley
and Cream, which we've talked about multiple times. You have
Addicted but to Love by Robert Palmer, which you mentioned
as the what was the number two song Number.
Speaker 2: Two songs this week? Yep, And they got all the
babes in the background.
Speaker 3: And then Rode nowhere by the Talking Heads, which the
Talking Heads was the first group that Dire Straits toured
with when they very first started doing a European tour.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually made good friends with them. Cannot say the
name for Sticks Sticks. When they were touring with Sticks,
it went.
Speaker 2: Very badly interesting. Okay, yeah, okay, I hate to be
done with this one.
Speaker 3: It's so freaking good.
Speaker 2: That's the way you do it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you play the guitar on MTV.
Speaker 2: Okad. So, the next song on the album is a
song that was really big early nineteen eighty six, and
I loved it in particular because the music video was
nothing but NFL football bloopers. Third song on the album
is a song called Walk of Life. Okay, I've got
some stuff for you on this song, Okay, all right yeah.
So third single release released October fourteenth, nineteen eighty five,
right around the same time the Super Bowl Shuffle came out. Yeah,
go back and check out our Super Bowl chuff episode.
Speaker 3: Very popular.
Speaker 2: Episode reached number two in the UK, reached number seven
in the US Top ten hit here the top six
from so number seven is Walk of Life. Number six
is my hometown. Number five as I'm Your Man by
George Michael. Number four is talk to Me by Stevie Nicks.
Number three is Burning Heart by Survivor from.
Speaker 3: The the Vital.
Speaker 2: Rocky four Rocky four soundtrack. Number two is Say You
Say Me by h Liona Richie, and then number one
That's what Friends Are For with Dion Worwick, Stevie Wonder,
Gladys Knight and the Pips and Elton John, which I've
got a funny Monster Rat story to tell you about
Elton John. I'm gonna throw it in real quick, let's
do it. So they recorded in monts Rat. So just
some other artists that recorded in Monster Rat, Jimmy Buffett,
Jerry Rafferty, right.
Speaker 3: Check go check out our top five of nineteen at
seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Seventy eight, that's right, Yeah, the police recorded, I mean
goes to the machine and synchronousity. Elton John recorded there
which I want to tell you here in a second
Black Sabbath Rush Keith Richards and the last album recorded
there was Steel Wheels by the Rolling Stones. But the
interesting thing so monserrat not much to do basically windsurfing
or swimming at the pool, which they had a.
Speaker 3: Pool there or recording a top two hundred album.
Speaker 2: Or recording a top two hundred album, or you know,
staying up late with the locals and drinking. Okay, well,
Elton John and his crew stayed up way late one
night drinking. Everybody called in sick because they were all hungover,
like you know, still recovering from the night before. And
Elton John is standing there and he's mad that his
whole crew is not there, and he's like, well, you
know what's going on here? We're here to do some work.
Where is everybody? Well, you know, Jimmy's hungover and this
guy's puking in the toilet whatever, And like one guitarist
is like, hey, I'm still standing And guess what that
turns into a kit song?
Speaker 3: Wow, don't get still nice?
Speaker 2: Back to Walk of Life. Yes, this song mentions Johnny
down in the tunnels trying to make it pay, which
is referencing busking on the subway right. It also references
old songs like I Got a Woman by Ray Charles
b Bapa Lua, which is a song by gene Vincent
from nineteen fifty six. I Know what I'd Say by
Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis my Sweet by Robert
Knighthawk and Mac the Knife by Bobby Darren. I say,
I kind of love it when they kind of do
this little throwback thing. You know, def Leppard did that
with Rocket exactly.
Speaker 3: You know, that's what I was thinking of.
Speaker 2: What are you thinking of this song?
Speaker 3: Love it? I mean they've toe taber right. They have
come out of the gate with three absolute smashes, no
question about it. Fantastic first three songs, and songs that
were all over the radio and all over MTV for
nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Yes, and one of my favorite music videos just because
of the NFL bloopers. Right next song on the album's
called Your Latest Trick.
Speaker 3: All Right, I feel like we just took a hard left. Yeah.
I felt like we were going in a very specific
direction and all of a sudden, we are no longer
going south, we are going east. What happened?
Speaker 2: I don't really know. This song sounds like a Moonlighting
episode where Maddie is mad at David.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, it sounds it's like the it's like
in Mister Mom whenever he's depressed about a state of life.
That's what it sounds like to me.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yes, chef's gone to bed.
Speaker 3: So these guys are flexing their musical muscle here. All right.
So we've just we've known since nineteen seventy eight that
they can crank out some killer rock hits, and they
decide on song number four to go, Hey, guess guess
what else we can do?
Speaker 2: They throw on the jazz and it hit you like
a cold bucket of water. Yeah, this one doesn't do
it for me at all, right, but there is a
certain contingency of folks out there that love this kind
of music, right.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean that and a ton of them were
buying CDs, yeah in nineteen eighty five, probably right, Sure,
I mean, if any group of folks really wanted to
hear each instrument and every instrument as clearly and beautifully
as possible, it's the folks listening to jazz. Right.
Speaker 2: So here's what I will say about this particular song. Yeah,
so we've already heard pop, we've heard rock. This is
now jazz. I think we'll hear some hints of reggae
here in a second, We'll hear country here in a minute.
There's nine songs on this album, and that's five genres
of music. Yeah, these guys are just offering something to everybody. Yeah,
this is not my particular thing. Yeah, but hey, what
do I know.
Speaker 3: In the in the right time, you know, playing a
game of pool late at night maybe, or you know,
having a relaxing drink by the pool side something like that.
This is very kind of chill out kind of music.
Speaker 2: This was the fifth single released April twenty fifth, nineteen
eighty six. Wasn't released in the US, which is why
we don't know it. Yeah, but it was released in
the UK as the fifth single.
Speaker 3: So John Illsley, yes, the basis for the for the
band right right, So long before they were ever famous,
he graduated from college, he didn't have much money and
he and his girlfriend decided to start a record shop. Okay,
And so he didn't know, I mean he knew, he
knew a limited amount of music, right like he had.
He had grown up and was blown out of the
water by the new music that was coming out of
Radio Luxembourg and as many Europeans were of, like, wow,
you know this new rock music is our music, right,
do you remember.
Speaker 2: The last time we talked about Radio Luxembourg.
Speaker 3: I remember that we talked about it, but was it
was it Trevor Horn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Trevor Horren. Okay, it was our Patreon
episode we did on Video Killed the Radio Star.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was. I think that Radio Luxembourg
was a huge moving factor for all of those guys
born in the late forties and early fifties listening to
music at the time. As a matter of fact, John
used to he said that his brother actually the radio,
would buy the records or he haven't even got a
kit radio so that they could tune into Radio Luxembourg.
And his job was to stand guard at the door
so that if their parents were coming by, he was like,
and they would throw the pillow over their head and
turn the radio off. And then his brother was cool
enough to go, Okay, you go listen to it for
a little bit. I'll keep an eye on the door.
And so that's really how he learned to fall in
love with music. I love it. So he graduates from school,
decides to start this record business, but he doesn't he
knows his music taste has got limitations, and so he's like,
how do I know what records to buy? So there
was a guy named Charlie Gillett that was he did
Radio London, and he was the guy that was always
playing new music, like, Hey, every Sunday, this is the
new new music. So he was just like, I wonder
if I wrote him a letter. I just wrote him
a letter, if he might give me some advice on
what records I should get for the record shop. Nice,
And so that's what he did, wrote him a letter
at Radio London, and Charlie wrote back to this, I mean,
young twenties kid starting a record shop, and gave him
some ideas, just like, hey, you know, here's do this,
do that. The record shop only lasted a few months, okay,
But what was interesting was that he had made that connection.
He realized, Hey, I just I wrote a letter to
this world famous disc jockey and he wrote back to me.
And so he's poorer than dirt. He ends up catching
a roommate that's a friend of a friend who's just
started as a social worker. His name is Dave Knopfler.
Speaker 2: Davefler, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: And so one day he comes home late at night
to his roomy passed out asleep in his bed and
some guy passed out next to a guitar on the
floor in the living room. And that was Mark Knoeffler,
and so these I mean legitimately working stiff guys said hey,
let's let's put the band together there, let's see what
we can do. They picked up a guy named Pick
for drums. So it was Dave and Mark, John and Pick.
And the first show that they did it was nineteen
seventy seven. It was in the lawn at their apartment flat.
That was their first show. There is now a plaque
there that said Dire Strait's first gig played here.
Speaker 2: That is cool. I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really great. So the Pick is a guy
named David Withers that was a friend of Mark's, and
they play their first show, but they don't have a
band name. And so there's a guy named Simon cow
It was Simon Cowell, not Cowl Okay, not the British
idol American idol guy. No Simon cow it was. It
was Pick's roommate and he was like, you guys never
have any money, You're always in dire Straits. And so
they thought that that sounds like a good name for
the band, and they all just felt like old friends
from the beginning. And they played their first show at
the Farer House lawn and he said, we're all just misfits,
but we were with misfits doing our own thing at
the time. Wow, I love it. I had to use
another band's PA sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: That's right, all right, So let's go on to the
next song on the album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 2: Next song on the album is called why Worry?
Speaker 3: So this is a beautiful little guitar piece. It's almost
like a lullaby, has a you know, I think Jeff
Buckley probably borrowed this sound whenever he did Hallelujah. Has
a very similar style to the tone of the guitar
on this and the fingerpicking style that they both do.
It's lovely easily fall asleep in a hammock on Montserrat.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. Right, it's slow, it's beautiful, it's very long.
It's over eight and a half minutes, and this is
one of those songs I believe had to be influenced
by Montsrat.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, here's the interesting thing. I told you that Steel
Wheels by the Rolling Stones was the last album made
at this studio.
Speaker 3: That's a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty nine was when that was released. Yeah, okay,
so here's the deal. Hurricane Hugo hit direct hit on
montster Rat in nineteen eighty nine. Okay, okay, George Martin
was on TV. I was watching an interview with him.
He said, there's twelve thousand people on the island. Eleven
thousand people lost their homes. It was a absolute punch
in the face, devastation, nearly irre unrecoverable for anybody on
the island.
Speaker 3: So what happened with the studio?
Speaker 2: So the studio was hit hard. George Martin couldn't get
to the island for six weeks after the hurricane, and
when he got there, he was going through looking at
the damage. He said, when he opened the piano, he said,
the ivories were covered with like mold. He said that
that was the moment he said, We're done here. Can't
we cannot recover from this. Oh my god, there's no
island to go back to.
Speaker 3: So that recording studio had a knave board, which if
you've if you've seen the movie Sound City, or you're
familiar with the recording studio Sound City, the knave board
was the penultimate board to have if you're recording an album,
which is why there were so many great albums in
Montserrat and in Sound City. Did they's just still there
rotting away thirty five years.
Speaker 2: I don't know the answer that question, but I'd be
willing to go with you to check it out if
you wanted.
Speaker 3: To go, Buddy fly down there.
Speaker 2: You know you mentioned that need board, yeah, right, which
was the main mixing instrument for all these wonderful albums.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you go watch the video for every little Thing
she does its magic, Yeah, please, you will see Andy
Summers dancing barefooted on this board, like without care. I'm like, dude,
that's the soundboard. What are you doing?
Speaker 3: Wow? I get mad at my kids for throwing their phones. Wow. Achievement. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Here's the other thing. Hurricane Hugo, like I said, destroyed
home eleven thousand people's homes out of twelve thousand. Right,
and that was not the worst thing that happened to
that island.
Speaker 3: Okay, what happened?
Speaker 2: Well? Montserrat is there because it's a volcanic island. Oh
and in nineteen ninety five it blew its top and
the town of Plymouth where all it was recorded. I mean,
it's just it's buried in ash now like that. The
town is no longer there basically. Huh So, the hurricane
Hugo was the the you know, the right hook, and
then the volcano blowing up was the uppercut.
Speaker 3: Yeah for the count yep So, has there been any
development there since then?
Speaker 2: There has been. Yeah, I mean there's been some uh
huh so, but Plymouth as a city, it's not not
the thriving metropolis that it once was.
Speaker 3: Twelve thousand people metropolis. But so, but the recording studio
is just given up to the weeds.
Speaker 2: That it is being taken back by the jungle.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 3: No, really, I really do want to go down there
and look. Go. Wow.
Speaker 2: We need some more Patreon members.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you would like to support our
trip to montster Rot, you can go to patreon dot
com Shirly Podcast and for as little as five bucks
a month, you get access to all our one Hit
Wonder episodes and some other fan favorites.
Speaker 2: Join us on Patreon.
Speaker 3: Yeah absolutely, and uh if if if we get enough
people to send us down to Montserrat, we will.
Speaker 2: We'll go.
Speaker 3: One of our patreons will go with us. We'll have
a lottery system and let one of the patreons go there.
You go yeah, and.
Speaker 2: We'll go check out what looks like at the studio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fantastic, all right.
Speaker 2: D hit stop on your tape deck, kick it out,
flip it over for side to and we start off
with a song called right Across the River.
Speaker 3: So now I feel like we're going through the jungle
with Michael Douglas and Romancing the stone, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think this is another sort of reggae, kind of
island feel to it. Yeah, I'm gonna say something, tell
me if I'm crazy. I think this song was influenced
by the song Wrapped Around Your Finger by the Police.
Speaker 3: I can hear in that drum beat now that you
say that it's got a it's got a similar rhythm
to it. Yep. I can see that.
Speaker 2: Kay also recorded on Monsrat right right, yep.
Speaker 3: So these guys, as I said, working stuffs, really just working,
you know, for a living. But they had this they
had this pub that they would go to called the
Oxford Arms that was there in Deptford, England, where they
were all from, right, I mean they grew up in
different places. Knopfler was and his brother of course were.
Jordie actually had a guy who had played with the
band Jordie that had Brian Johnson in it. Come play
keyboards with them, okay, but you know they're they're scraping by.
They of course are going to see other bands play.
And one rainy night, Mark Knopfler walks into a basely
deserted pub. You know, there's and but there's a band playing,
and you've got a couple of kids over in the
corner who could care less about the band. They're into
rock and roll, not some trumpet playing band. And these
guys on stage are treating it like it's this big performance,
even though there's only three people in the whole pub.
And then at the end of the show, the lead
singer says, thank you good night. We are the Sultans
of Swing, and that's where he gets the idea for
this song. So that song, Sultan's of Swing, is one
of five songs that they have down pat like they're
just like, we've got these songs down, we need to
have a demo. They're playing the clubs hoping to be found.
But you know, the way John Illsley put it was,
you could be found that way. But it's like being
a beautiful woman in hope that some age and find
you walking along in the supermarket. It's not impossible. It's
just not very likely. And what they realize is that
they needed to have a demo. So after playing gig
after gig after gig and not really getting anywhere, there's
some unrest in the band. It's like, man, guys, you
know we're getting into be our late twenties now, maybe
it's time to be done. And John Ilsley gets a
letter from his dad and he's reading a letter and
it says, oh, by the way, your grand passed away.
She left all the grandkids five hundred pounds.
Speaker 2: WHOA just in time, thanks Graham.
Speaker 3: And so he's thinking, Okay, with five hundred I can
pay my rent for this many months, and I'll have
food for this many months and I'll be able to
I'll be set for quite a while. Or we can
make our demo. And he knew what the answer was
to that question right off the bat. And he goes
to the other guys and he's like, guys, I want
to do the demo. And they were they're elated, you know,
They're like, we will pay you back. If we ever
make any money as a band, we will pay you back.
And as it turned out, after they sold their first album.
He got paid back that five hundred bucks. I love it.
Speaker 2: Take your shot, and it pays off in spades. Yeah,
I mean huge dividends on that investment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. So they do their demo. It includes Sultan's
of Swing on it. It's actually a great version of
the song, arguably better than the one that came out
on the album that they ultimately re recorded later. It's
a tiny recording studio. It's basically a closet for the
sound booth. The guy who is helping them isn't even
a producer, he's just a sound engineer. And his name
is Chaz Harrington. All right, okay, and they make friends
with ch Has right off the bat, just get along
with him great. But he records. I mean, it's basically
like five mics, you know, three of them go on
the drum set, one of them goes for you know,
backing vocals, and then they double Mark's vocal. Right, But
they do this incredible version of Sultan's Swing and then
four other songs. And so now they have the demo
and they're like, okay, so do we send this to
record companies? And they start thinking about it, and these
guys have the wisdom of being over twenty five, right,
their brain is now fully developed, and so they're like, listen,
record companies get dozens of demo tapes a day. Day. Yeah,
Like it's just like, are we really gonna are we
gonna bet our five hundred quid on that? You know?
And so they're thinking about it and thinking about it,
and they're listening to the radio, and the guy on
the radio it's Sunday is Charlie Gellette, and Mark knows
the story of John writing to him about his record shop,
and he's like, wyonn't you just write to Charlie Gellett
again and see if he'd be interested in listen to
our demo. It's your pal, you know, he's your buddy,
he's your pen pal. And so he's like, okay, I'll
give it a shot. And so he just he doesn't
even send the demo tape, right, He just sends him
a letter at the studio at at the radio station, right,
And Charlie responds and he's like, sure, guys, here's my address.
Come on over to the house. And so they show
up and Charlie Gillette is like gives them tea and
biscuits or cookies as we call them here in America.
I mean, can you imagine, Like just Casey Kasem says, sure, Jason,
come on over, would you like some tea and some marios?
This is incredible story, right, And so he's like, guys,
I'm excited to listen to this. I don't ever listen
to people's demos in front of them. It just kind
of saves embarrassment for both of us here. But I
will listen to this, and I'll be honest with you. You know,
whatever it is, whether I love it or hate it,
I'm gonna be honest with you about what. If I
think it just needs something, I'll tell you what I
think it needs, right, Okay, good? And they're like okay, well,
thank you, and then they leave and they're thinking maybe
we'll get a phone call or a letter a little
bit later on from Charlie. And so that Sunday, these
working stiffs had a buddy who is moving furniture, and
he said, hey, i'll give you I'll give you ten
quid if you help me move today. So they spent
the entire Sunday moving furniture in and out of a
moving van and moving it to a different place. And
so they go to their pub, the Oxford Arms that
night with their ten quid so that they can drink
it away. And as they walk in, they get this
kind of hey, hey from the guys there. I mean
it's all their friends that they know, but they're like,
it's a little warmer than usual, you know. They belly
up to the bar, they order their pint, and this
as soon as they sit down, this guy slapping them
on the back and he's like congratulation, guys, amazing stuff amazing.
And they're like, what are you talking about? And they're like,
Charlie Gillette, he played your song on the radio this morning.
And they're like what. They had no idea that he
had played the song and that was not even the
best part. He goes, no, he didn't just play it.
He said this is the best new music he has
heard in years, and he is going to play it
every single Sunday until you guys are signed. WHOA like
W like you're expecting this and you get that. I mean,
it's just incredible.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 3: And so when he did play it, when Charlie played
it that morning, the A and R guys listened to
him because he's the guy who knows what's going to
be popular. He's the guy that can pick the good music.
And he said one of them was in a shower,
like they were calling him as soon as the song
was done. Like the board lit up as soon as
the song was over, and it was mostly A and
R guys. One was in the shower got out of
the shower so he could be sure and hear the song.
And when he heard it, he was like, I get
a call. The other guy was driving down the road
listening on the radio. He pulled over to find a
phone booth, found a phone booth, called him from a
phone booth. Wow and so literally, with one play on
one radio station on one Sunday morning, these guys had
the A and R guys from every record company calling
them up try to get them signed.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's an incredible story.
Speaker 3: Now, one of those record companies was Virgin Records. I'll
tell you that story in a minute.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go on to the next song.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The next song is called the Man's Too Strong.
Speaker 7: I'm just an age and drummer boy, and then the
wars I used to play and I've called you too
many adult decisions MM hmmm. Now they's see I'm a
criminal and I'm fade in a way.
Speaker 2: What does that sound like to you? Sounds like a
impersonation of Bob Dylan.
Speaker 3: Well when they hit when they after they played the Roxy,
they go up to the you know, the executive bar area,
right and they're like, hey, there's Rod Stewart leaning against
the bar, and hey there's Linda Ronstadt and oh she's
got her boyfriend, the governor of California and Jerry Brown
and is that Bob Dylan? And by that evening Bob
Dylan and Mark Knopfler were playing together. And by that
morning Dylan had said, would you come over, I'm doing
this album. He was in his big Christian phase at
that point. I'm doing this new album. I'd love for
you guys to work with me. And so Mark went
over and played with Bob Dylan.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Okay, before you tell
us the rest of the story, huh, Yeah, I've got
a little nugget I've got to throw at you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So at a charity event in two thousand and seven, Okay,
there was a Fender Stratocaster that was signed by Mark Knopfler,
Eric Clapton, Brian May and Jimmy Page.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, And it was going to auction and they expected
to get about twenty thousand pounds for this guitar. Keep
in mind some of the best guitars of all time. Yeah,
like it's it's the best England has to offer ever
given us. Yeah right, Yeah, it got lost in the mail.
The guitar was lost in the mail.
Speaker 3: That means stolen.
Speaker 2: Oh somebody out there has this guitar hanging on their
wall but can't really say anything anybody.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So the company that was in charge of shipping this guitar,
Parsal Force, agreed to pay fifteen pounds to that charity
in lieu of that guitar. How about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it would have gotten a lot more
money than that, And I think that's probably exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: If you own this guitar, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will not. Your name will be kept in confidence.
We just want to see a picture. So they've got
A and R guys calling them off the hook right now.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 3: Charlie Charlie Gillette has his own record label and they
hanging out with him a little bit after this too,
you know, and they're at a party with him and
he's like, you know, guys, I have a record label. Listen.
We love what you've done for us. You've changed our lives.
But it's kind of small. He's like, I understand, I understand.
I mean they're getting there, getting all kinds of offers.
As a matter of fact, they didn't have the voicemail.
They didn't have even answering machines back in the seventies,
so they had to write down the numbers of the
A and R guys that would call them so they
could call them back. And these guys, being twenty year
old guys living on the they wrote it on the wall.
There's the phone on the wall. He wrote it on
the wall. They had so many numbers up there, they
lost the number of the weed dealer up there. That's funny.
So one of the guys who was courting them was
Richard Branson from a relatively new record label called Virgin Records. Right, No,
I called you this morning. I'm like, do you know
the story? Like, yes, I do, Like awesome you telling well.
So they're getting they're getting guys who are like, hey,
we will give you fifteen hundred pounds, and they're like,
are you kidding right now? You know that we've got
like eight hundred people calling us, like, let's be realistic.
They again had that benefit of age, right, And the
other benefit of age is they were thinking with the
right head when they're talking to people. Because Richard Branson
played his cards wrong in this scenario, like they the
way Branson tells it, they were going to sign with
him the next day, but he decides the night before
to have them come meet him at a Greek restaurant.
When they come into the Greek restaurant, he is surrounded
by women scantily clad and looking good, ready to rock.
As they sat down, he said, there was a lot
of hand motion under the table, and it wasn't our hands.
And then they picked up the food plate and under
the food plate was a whole pile of joints. And
let's get there right what No, this was Greek, And
so Richard Branson thinks, Okay, I'm going to get these
guys stoned. I'm going to get these guys laid, and
they're going to be signing my record deal. But they
said they were asleep in their own beds, by morning
that morning, So it did not happen because they're not
going to be fooled.
Speaker 2: Don't mix business and pleasure.
Speaker 3: So they end up going with a guy named Johnny
Strains who's with poly Graham, and they said the reason
they went with him was because he didn't do any tricks.
He just was very straightforward. He said, we believe in
you guys. We've got the money to invest in you guys.
We want to give you time, and we want to
take that time with you to make sure that you're
a success. And that was what's sold them. Genuinely, good guy,
legitimate deal.
Speaker 2: You told me today what Richard Branson said of that deal?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he later said, that was the night that I
lost a billion dollars. Wow.
Speaker 2: Next song on the album is a song called One World.
Speaker 3: This is eighties blues at its best. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Crockett's taken the testarosa and he's rushing
to Tubbs's aid somewhere right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously they have to re record a full album.
I can't just use their demo reel. They re record
several of the songs from the demo though, including Sultan's
of Swing Okay, and then they end up having an
argument about which should be the first single, whether it
should be the demo version or the one they recorded
for their debut album. It's also called Dire Straits, and
basically the record label won and Sultan's Swing really didn't
do that well when it first came out, okay, but
later versions and of course they're touring. Oh, this is
a great story. So before they did the album, they
toured with the Talking Heads, who I mentioned they loved,
They got along with swimmingly, had a great time with them.
And then their next tour was supposed to be with Styx,
but Sticks showed up in the UK and they were
not touted as well as they had been being touted
over in America. And so just like two or three
shows in, one of them faked being sick and they
canceled the rest of the shows on the tour, and
so here Dire Straits is. They're like, well, I guess
we're just going to have to do a tour on
our own. So their first show on their first tour
was on the first Tuesday in June at the Club
Lafayette in Wolverhampton. They got paid fifty bucks, well fifty quid,
which is you know, fifty British bucks.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: They walk in, they set up their stuff and they
look around and there's one security guard and that is
all in the entire place and they're like, is it
what's going on? And they're like, ah, we'll treat it
as a practice session. It'll be fine. So then the
security guard goes to open the door to let the
crowd in. The crowd in being two guys who are
both stinking drunk, and he said, so, three songs into
our set for these two guys, one half of the
crowd leaves to go use the facilities. He comes back
a little bit later and before the fourth song can start,
he and the other half of the crowd or engaged
in a full on fist He was like, is not
that kind of you know, random drunken brough. This was
a full on, I want to hurt you fistfight between
these two guys. Fortunately the security guard was still there,
escorted both of them out and they finished the show
to the security guard. Then two weeks later they got
the return check which had bounced for that fifty quid
that they were supposed to get paid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nice, I love it. I love it all right,
let's go to the last song on the album, last song,
Let's do it. This song is called Brothers and Arms.
Speaker 8: These missed cons. Someday you is and you know longer
about to be brother.
Speaker 3: So this one, I feel like you could slip this
into the wall by Pink Floyd and nobody wouldn't even
know it is. It's got such a pink Floyd the
wall feel. I mean, even to me, even Mark Knoppolo's voice,
it's it's similar to Roger Waters. I mean, it's just
it's very pink Floyd to me, and I don't really
enjoyed it. This was a new one. I had not
heard this before. I know it was a single that
was a release, but it kind of missed my radar.
But I really really really like Brothers in Arms the song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think this is a great song.
This song was written in nineteen eighty two, the year
that Britain invaded excuse me in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: Wow, how about that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: This one that Grammy for Best Music Video in February
of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: Yep, and I watched the video.
Speaker 2: Did you watch the video for this? So if you've
ever asked yourself. Why didn't they do more videos like
take on Me with all that cool animation and drawing
and scheduling. Well, this is your video because it's it's
like the sequel to take on Me.
Speaker 3: That's right. I have seen this video and know what
you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of rotoscoping and it looks very similar.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This song has been played on the West Wing and
during many military funerals Brothers in Arms. Yeah, yeah, but
I love the song. I think it's a great one. Yeah,
I've kind of an undiscovered gym for me.
Speaker 3: So tell me a little bit about I mean, this
album obviously just absolutely blows up, right, I mean million
CDs sold, thirty million albums. They do just a couple
more albums and then they're done. Maybe one more.
Speaker 2: Well, they don't do another album until nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Right, so they go six years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just fizzle out. And the thing I can't
really put my finger on is every time they talked
Knapfhler about it, he's like, it just got too big,
got too big, and I became uncomfortable. And the guy
I saw interviewing him was like, could you give me
a specific example, like what bothered you, He's like, well,
we would go to eat dinner, like at catering and
we'd see people we didn't recognize.
Speaker 3: That bothered me.
Speaker 2: He was just uncomfortable with that size of success.
Speaker 3: Based on what I read, that actually makes sense, so
I understand it. Mark is a very quiet guy, very
contemplative guy, you know, even though he's center stage with
the lights on him on stage. Yeah, he's not that way,
and he gets awkward whenever people want to talk to
him about how good, how good his music is. It's
interesting to me. Obviously, this group started with Mark and
his brother. This their like second to last album, it's
called Brothers in Arms. When Dave has been gone for
a while and they don't I don't think they still
get along very well. It's kind of a tragic story.
But Dave was He just wasn't learning the songs and
wasn't doing well with the recording, and the producer would
be like, go out, you know, go outside, learn this song,
come back tomorrow or we'll figure it out, and they
would come back and he's still not know it. He
just wasn't doing it, and he just I think got
tired of living in Mark's shadow. He actually did they
sent John, you know, his roommate from when they were
both dirt poor, to talk to him and go, hey, man,
just you got to learn the music, you know, because
if you don't, you can't be in the band anymore.
I'm going to go home. Yeah, I'm out. So yeah,
it's it's just kind of weird to me that you
have this breakdown of the brothers and then their biggest
hit is called Brothers in Arms.
Speaker 2: So I think it's weird that this album sells thirty
million copies and they're like, that's it, We're out of here,
We're done. Fizzle now. They did have a lot of
solo projects. They even formed a country band, or Knoffler did,
So they've done stuff and had success.
Speaker 3: Well, and don't forget Mark Knopfler did soundtrack for The
Princess Bride. How can we forget that gorgeous? Right?
Speaker 2: So he's he's done a lot of stuff. Yeah, but
I heard John Illsley. They're like, do you think I
mean we'll dire straits ever He's like probably not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Marks the same way, unless there's some big reason
to do it, there's not a reason to do it.
It was that was a thing for that time, and
that time is over and we all would rather have
our own thing now.
Speaker 2: I told you I watched a video where Mark Knopfler
met up with Brian Johnson from ac DC right right right,
and they were in this specific town where they both
had common memories of playing and sort of success and
blah blah blah. And they're both you know, wearing jeans
and you know hats, and they look like a couple
of old tarts, old farts who are super excited to
see each other. There's really a sweet video, but there
are people walking by and have no care that they're
walking by the singer to one of the greatest rock
bands of all time and maybe the greatest guitar player
of all time, and have no idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no clue, just a couple of old dudes. Who.
Why's the camera filming those old dudes? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think we're time for final judgment.
Speaker 3: Okay, So here we are. We're at final judgment. We
have to decide walking out the door. Are we picking
up heart by heart? Are we picking up brothers in
arms by dire straits? You may go first. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I talked to our buddy James Buckley today and
I asked him. I was generally call him before we record,
and I say, hey, do you have any anecdotes for
me for this what we're doing today? And he's like,
I remember going on a camping trip with some of
my friends and a couple of my cousins, and he goes,
the fire was dying and we were listening to this
tape and it was time to go to bed, and
one of my cousins the last second decided to throw
an extra log on the fire and burned his eyebrows off.
He said, that's my memory of this album, which I
thought was funny. But if you're asking me to compare
the Heart album with all those sort of rock aquinet
covered hits that we had and compare to you know this,
you know one of the best selling albums of the eighties.
For me, I don't think Brothers in Arms was addressed
to me at age twelve. I think that's more had
somebody my uncle's age in mind. But for me, I'm
walking out the door, Spike the football. I'm grabbing Heart's
album over Brothers in Arms.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so let me mention Kevin Davis also good friend,
also Patreon.
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 3: Vin, how you young? Butte Kevin is a huge Dire
Straits fan. Remember talking to him about Sultan's of Swing
in detail when we did our best of seventy eight,
seventy nine whichever it was, and those songs. There's there's
the songs from the seventies, and then there's this this album.
I look at the Heart album and as I said
when we did the episode, seems like literally every single
song on the album could have been a single, right
And some of them are fantastic nostalgia for me, like
I'm going to turn them up every single time that
they come on. But with the Brothers and Arms album,
as I said, we've got three just absolute killer songs
sang out of the gate yep. Then you take a
hard left turn into some way different kind of music.
And it's not that I don't like that music. It's
just that, like you said, it's it's a different demographic.
It wasn't ten year old me back in nineteen eighty five,
but I'm not ten year old me anymore. I'm nearly
fifty year old me now, and so I'm listening to
it with a new ear. And those the songs that
are not the first three songs and not the last song.
They don't rank to the level that the Heart songs do.
All of those Heart songs could have been singles. Okay,
but if I look at this like across country, team
and Heart has has a strong pack, brothers in Arms,
has the leader that is so far ahead of everybody else,
that's time is so much better than everybody else that
it doesn't really matter what you got because this guy
just blew it out of the water. And Money for
Nothing is that song. It is the song. I mean,
I will I will disregard every single Heart song for
that song alone. And it's not only that song on
the album. I've got another. I got another four on
there that I really enjoy and another three and a
half that I can go I this could grow on
me over time. So because Money for Nothing is so strong,
so incredible, so ahead of every other song on these
two albums, it's the winner for me. Picking Dire Straits, okay,
I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it well, Guys, we want to hear from you.
Which one do you grab you're walking out the door?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Heart is a dire straits? We want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Guys, hit us up on Twitter now X hit
us up on Facebook. We're at Shirley Podcast on both
of those. You can email us Shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
If you do want to join our Patreon page, we
would love to have you. Those are some of our
best episodes and the other great part is we're a big,
happy Shirley family over there and we engage in fantastic
discussions on all of our threads over there. So go
check out our Patreon page, sign up for free, and
you can listen to the episodes for as little five
bucks a month.
Speaker 2: Next week d we have the John Cusack matchup of
Better Off Dead versus one Crazy.
Speaker 3: Summer Cannot Wait Savage Steve Holland at his best.
Speaker 2: I want my two dollars come back for that awesome matchup.
Speaker 3: See you guys. Then where are those guys? They were
supposed to be here like an hour ago.
Speaker 2: Somebody called a Shirley you can't be serious podcasts.
Speaker 3: I'm looking for a couple of guys named Dan Jason.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting here waiting for my Color TV and my
refrigerator to be delivered.