https://www.mcall.com/entertainment/lehigh-valley-music/mc-ent-mark-knopfler-review-met-philadelphia-20190818-eixociqjvbec7exibto7yz3ady-story.html
Thanks for posting the review link, unfortunatelly it is unaccessible in Europe.
Thanks for sharing, here is the old and precious copy/paste... a great article.
REVIEW: Mark Knopfler at The Met Philly shows ‘That’s the way you do it’By JOHN J. MOSER
“Look at them yo-yos/That’s the way to do it,” Mark Knopfler sang on his band Dire Straits’ biggest hit, “Money for Nothing.”
The Knopfler who played at The Met Philadelphia on Saturday was neither the rock star he described in that song, nor a yo-yo. But he emphatically showed how to do it.
In a wonderful two-hour, three-encore show that sampled his recording career of more than 40 years, backed by an intuitive and talented 10-member band, Knopfler by turns played sympathetically and powerfully over several genres, and displayed not only his talent at guitar, but at songs that touch emotions.
The opening “Why Aye Man,” the lead track off his 2002 album “The Ragpicker’s Dream,” showed that power – immediately establishing Knopfler’s distinctive sound, but also later in its nine-minute presentation also showed the nuances of his band, with fiddle and muffed trumpet.
That song helped establish the mood of the show, which offered just 16 songs that averaged nearly seven minutes each – many of them virtual soundscapes.
That wasn’t the case for the second song, the far more straight-forward, chugging country tune “Corned Beef City,” on which Knopfler played sharp, stinging guitar over boogie-woogie piano.
But it was especially true of the third song, the appropriate “Sailing to Philadelphia” – the sold-out audience of about 4,000 cheered with recognition at the first notes – with its gentle vocals and sympathetic music.
On it, Knopfler displayed his absolute mastery of the music. Playing in a red spotlight, his seemingly simple, supple notes were perfect for the feelings the song wanted to impart.
The same was true for “Once Upon a Time in the West” – the first of just five Dire Straits songs Knopfler played. It started with military fife and drums, but over its seven-minute run was a guitar showcase. And Knopfler – unlike “Guitar George” in “Sultans of Swing” – definitely made his instrument cry and sing.
The show’s clear centerpiece was another Dire Straits song – a nine-minute “Romeo and Juliet,” on which Knopfler’s singing was at its most expressive, matching the song’s heart-rending lyrics, and the band at its sharpest.
For the first half of the show, Knopfler literally let his music do the talking, but finally spoke to the crowd before two songs from his most recent disc, last year’s “Down the Road Wherever,” telling how he first came to Philadelphia on a Greyhound bus, then later with Dire Straits.
“Back then I was just a young dude,” said Knopfler, who turned 70 five days earlier and finally sat to play.
Those new songs were very good: “My Bacon Roll” was an achingly sweet, sweeping soundscape. And the far better “Matchstick Man,” played after a story about hitchhiking with his guitar on Christmas Eve, was a lovely, nostalgic story.
Knopfler displayed his versatility, playing resonator guitar (“All I wanted when I was a kid was one guitar,” he said. “Now guitars everywhere”) on the largely acoustic and very Celtic “Done with Bonaparte,” then the slow, whimsical waltz of “Heart Full of Holes.”
Another Dire Straits song, “Your Latest Trick” from the watershed “Brothers in Arms” disc, was very jazzy, opening with a long sax solo, and “Postcards from Paraguay” was a fun calypso number that had the crowd clapping along and moving in their seats.
But his Dire Straits material still might have been his best. His guitar on “On Every Street,” the title track from the band’s 1991 album, was excitingly recognizable, and the two-minute instrumental run that closed the song was piercing and soul-touching.
Knopfler closed the main set with another song from “Sailing to Philadelphia,” the mean and burning “Speedway at Nazareth” – a tip of the hat to Martin Guitar, just 75 miles away. Knopfler’s guitar was incendiary.
The encore was an equally hot version of Dire Straits’ biggest hit, “Money for Nothing” that was even more muscular than the original version – Knopfler’s guitar so hot, it was no doubt giving him the blisters on his little finger and thumb of which the song speaks as it stretched to eight minutes.
The reaction to that song suggested there was room for other Dire Straits hits. It was a disappointment he didn’t play “Sultans of Swing.” “Skateaway” or “So Far Away” or even “Walk of Life” perhaps would have added more fun to the show.
But Knopfler returned again for a far more subtle sendoff: the gentle “Piper to the End” was sad in the way the end of a great night always is, Knopfler capturing the essence in his lyrics “Now the day is almost done … Someday here we will meet again.”
And the audience even cajoled him out for a third encore, a lovely five-minute instrumental coda as the crowd clapped along.
Earlier in the set, during his first words to the crowd, Knopfler, now gray and bespectacled, said he has thought about retirement. “But then I think, I just love this.”
And that’s the way you do it.
