Thank you very much Dusty, for the kind words. My mother will get her share as well, even though the only rock record she had and passed on to me was "Every woman i know is crazy about automobile" by Sam the sham and the pharaohs (7'').
Rollergirl you do have a point about DS in the nineties, at least that is what i received from people in Greece. But it has to do with the big explosion of brit pop (and grunge and the resurrection of heavy metal and the rediscovery of rap and Hip-hop and the Bristol scene+++ ) that took the world by storm. Most of these new bands were hugely influenced by the older generations, like The Who, Kinks, Beatles, Rolling stones, even Horace Andy or John Martyn. I don't know why but the new, always tries to push over the old and that is what happened to Dire straits. Let's not forget that DS were still in existence in 1992, with merely 15 years of history behind them, but still they were the old guard, or at least they represented the old without being "holy" as the Beatles or Eric Clapton. They were the easy target. I have to admit, that at times, the new sound was great. A new breath of life, that it actually helped the older artists more than hurt them. But the values that DS represented were the ones of "traditional" sound and structure of songs, a bit of guitar hero on the mix and the backing of the big record companies. At least that's what they saw.
Of course what these bands didn't know was that all these things they blamed about would be offered and accepted by them as well. To name but a few: Oasis were playing a game that was most unfitting for them. Apart from their first two albums, that were great but lost their magic because they were overplayed, the rest was music "new today, old tomorrow". Blur stood the test of time, or at least they aged much better, with their members delving into music and giving the tabloids little compared to Oasis. I could go on but i can't leave out the fantastic Scots :Belle and Sebastian and the remarkable Darren Hayman's :Hefner. Even though their heyday was around 2000, they are still young and active and never cease to amaze me.
The rewarding part after all these years of slagging off, came in 2008: When MK played in Athens and the theater was absolutely packed with people younger than me, many in their early 20ies, others obviously into heavy metal and the older ones probably visiting for the DS period songs, 15 years after the end of DS! I came across some friends guitarists that probably weren't aware of MK's solo career, but came to see him play. And 6 months later Dandy Warhols asked MK to play in one of their songs and Killers issued a rendition of Romeo and Juliet, stating that they adore this song. The new generation finally recognized the DS influence. (Of course both Killers and the Dandies come from the US, but we have a saying here in Greece: nobody can become a saint (or prophet) in his birthplace. That would explain it...
)
