I'm glad I'm not alone in this.
None of what I have said is intended as criticism of MK. I like the floky-bluesy-rocky mixture of his recent sets. He does what he does and he does it well but there is a certain predictability about it. I rarely turn up to an MK show asking myself, "I wonder what we'll get tonight?"
To get back to where I started - Mr Bob doing a Sinatra song. If memory serves, he's done a few such in concert and he certainly played quite a few Sinatra records in his "Theme Time Radio Hour" shows (there were 100 of those, by the way - another indication of his work ethic and his sheer love for music and, indeed, his love for a vast range of different musical styles). He also performed at Sinatra's birthday bash, apparently ready to sing a Sinatra song but doing one of his own at Mr Frank's request. So Dylan and Sinatra do have what I might call some kind of track record together. Nevertheless, I would not have expected a Sinatra-style album from Dylan, which is what we are going to get according to reports. It's another example of Mr Bob pushing the boundaries, of confounding expectations and of taking risks. Love Mr Bob or hate him, he's out there doing what he wants to do, come what may.
And it should be the same for MK. He should not do anything other than what he himself wants to do and not just that but also in the way that he wants to do it. My intention here is not to criticise him for that but I just feel that there is more to him and his talent than we have seen or heard to date. There is something untapped there. If he wants to go along in this fairly predicatable way, fair enough. That will be fine with most of you, I'm sure, but it's like he's selling himself short, sticking to what he knows best and limiting his potential in consequence. In the DVD "No Direction Home", Mr Bob says, talking of his early days, "I was a musical expeditionary" and, I would argue, that he has remained a musical expeditionary over the years and still is.
And Mark admires expeditionaries - Mr Bob, of course - but not just musical expeditionaries. He has written about Mason and Dixon going out from here over to the new lands. He has written about privateers, roaming the seas in search of fame and fortune. But writing about it is one thing; doing it for himself, in a musical sense, is quite another.
Musically and lyrically, I am sure there is more to Mark Knopfler than we have seen to date but does he have the will, the self-confidence and the sheer bloody-mindedness not just to nudge at the doors ahead but to kick the bloody things down?
