Dire Straits - When It Comes To You (Live in Nîmes, France / 1992 / Visualiser)

[quizzaciously]

Sometimes I don't care, and sometimes I'm annoyed why MK is overlooked and rarely quoted. It's unfair and incomprehensible.

I know what you mean. Life's not fair and I have a liftime of following underrated artists, listening to underrated music and even choosing underrated occupations (like teacher, sound designer, editor, or even defender in football). Somehow, I always felt like fighting on the side of the underdog. But life is also extremely predictable and you're not going to become famous if you don't want to become famous. A known fame hater, Mark did everything he could to be as underrated as possible, and hence become the perfect "musician's musician". I usually don't care, too. Mainly becasue I talk about his music virtually every day and damn, can he write good songs. Good songs he writes, he can write good songs. Boy, what a songwriter.

[Brunno Nunes]

Sometimes I don't care, and sometimes I'm annoyed why MK is overlooked and rarely quoted. It's unfair and incomprehensible.

It's clear to me that the reason for this is that Mark worked tirelessly to bury the band that made him famous, DS, and continued his solo career in a low-profile manner. There's no way to plant beans and harvest watermelons. I find it impressive that DS's official channel has 2.4M subscribers, and even more impressive that his solo channel has 1M subscribers.

The paradox is that we're talking about a band that has sold over 100 million albums. It seems to me that not even Van Halen has reached that figure, also Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Nirvana... Dire Straits is on a similar level to Bruce Springsteen, something close to 120 million. There's nothing modest about that. They're undoubtedly among the 20 best-selling bands on the planet. That's pretty significant even if they were in the top 30 or 40 best sellers.

Dire Straits just doesn't have the relevance it should and deserves to have, because the band's leader spared no effort to diminish its importance and legacy. I don't know if this is related to some trauma from the last two tours the band did (especially the OES tour 91/92), but, looking back, when it comes to DS, "MK ran away like the devil runs away from the cross." Nothing is by chance, if DS's rights were bought and managed by someone else, I believe things would start to be different. Who knows if the future will show if my point of view is correct?

[Robson]

Sometimes I don't care, and sometimes I'm annoyed why MK is overlooked and rarely quoted. It's unfair and incomprehensible.

I know what you mean. Life's not fair and I have a liftime of following underrated artists, listening to underrated music and even choosing underrated occupations (like teacher, sound designer, editor, or even defender in football). Somehow, I always felt like fighting on the side of the underdog. But life is also extremely predictable and you're not going to become famous if you don't want to become famous. A known fame hater, Mark did everything he could to be as underrated as possible, and hence become the perfect "musician's musician". I usually don't care, too. Mainly becasue I talk about his music virtually every day and damn, can he write good songs. Good songs he writes, he can write good songs. Boy, what a songwriter.

It's all true. I increasingly think that Mark has created a niche for himself and feels good in it. It's incredible what a journey he's taken.

[hunter v2.0]

DS is dead, and Mark wanted to fly under the radar. Like a silent fart. And now he's an old fart. An old silent fart. And you wonder why he's not in vogue?

[Love Expresso]

You can relate obviously?

LE

[hunter v2.0]

You can relate obviously?

LE

I can pass silent farts, if that's what you meant.

[Rolo]

I partially agree with Hunter.
DS is dead and MK flies under the radar.
However, every artist (musicians) that made some success on the past could be reinserted on the market.

What needs to be reinserted is the comunication with the audience.
Look at Kate Bush as an example. She is great and was introduced to the new generation, briefly, because Netlix's The Stranger Things.

Bob Dylan (after selling his rights) now have a movie on cinemas and, of course, will reach to the young people much more that the Scorcese's doc. People want profit and it's all about profit.

What happens its that DS/MK speaks a completely different language (audio or video) of the current generation.
Music as product needs comunication with the current audience. MK's doesn't.
I think that most of all on this forum are 40+.
The way that we consumes music is dead.

If MK sells his rights, the buyer will reintroduce his music to make profit.
I cannot see Mark's music appealing even for musicians. Rick Beato is possible the greatest vehicle of "true musicians" and he barely speaks about DS/MK. There is no "What make this song great", "Quick lesson", Interviews.... nothing. Perhaps because Mark's music, for a skilled musician, is not that challenge.

I don't know.
I am a hopefully pessimist.

[Rolo]

Thanks for your inputs, Rolo, it's refreshing to see at least some people sometimes agreeing with me

I like this "5% of good music and 95% of crap" quote as much as I like another famous quote/axiom, "There's two types of music — good music and bad music."

This "today's music is crap" debate propelled by the likes of Rick Beato and other "boomer" journalists is highly misleading, I think, because good music has always been a victim of survivorship bias. You may think most of today's music is crap, Spotify sucks, and most YouTube videos are lousy, well, in fact, it's always been true, now you just can see all this crap unfiltered. Which is... Even better, in a way?

People who grew up with better filters and a higher chance of good content getting to them think young folks today can't distinguish between talent and mediocrity. One of the most important things about upbringing and learning is the ability to see both sides of life, so in a way, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, my Spotify and YouTube feed consists of amazing creators and contemporary music, I don't know about you.

You can always detect talent no matter what, and there is tons of good music nowadays, and I'm happy to have such a large ocean to go fishing for good stuff.

Good points, Pavel.

I think that music, as we know, it's a niche.
The current star is the person who attends a concert. Not the artist.
People want to register his own moments during the event. They don't want to remember how great was some concert. Paying attention to an artist is boring.  As the world bacame more selfish,  music is secondary.

Unfortunately, people don't have time do do anything.
There is a critic that says: "Years ago, when we took a cab, the journey was a free time. Nowadays, at the cab, we answer some whatsapp messages, read 4 emails, post on instagram, organize a work's presentation..."

It means that, the very short period that people have "free time", they don't want to listen do Debussy. They want to listen the simplier and viral thing that is possible. Or they wanna listed the same old shit just because is comfortably. All of that, if those people want to listen to the music.

Spotify and Youtube, for me its GREAT. Almost 100% that i want to see or listen is there. I like to listen/watch interviews with musicians. These cats ALWAYS brings a great amount of knowledge about music and musicians (new and old). So, after that it's easy. Is just check them out. Worth almost every time.

It puts me on a niche. And this post repeats again.

[ds1984]

I heard Rick Beato speak once about Dire Straits and it was positively so I am OK with that. I don't need him to speak about him every week or so.

Regarding YT suscribed number I feel disparity between these figures and their real band success. I don't explain these.

I would also point out that Mark kept playing during his whole solo career songs from the Dire Straits catalogue.

[Rolo]

I heard Rick Beato speak once about Dire Straits and it was positively so I am OK with that. I don't need him to speak about him every week or so.

Regarding YT suscribed number I feel disparity between these figures and their real band success. I don't explain these.

I would also point out that Mark kept playing during his whole solo career songs from the Dire Straits catalogue.

Rick did a "Sultans" episode.
In my opinion, it was forced.
He talked much more about his former guitar teacher, Jimmy Page and Stairway than Sultans or MK itself.

That's ok. He is not obligated to like DS/MK.
However, I only saw 2 musicians speaking very briefly about MK on Rick's show: Keith Urban and Guthrie Trapp.
He is a vehicle for another kind of music. I really like when he talks about Allan Holdsworth or Pat Metheny, per example.

I don't think that Social Media subscribers reflects a artist popularity. React channels are way more popular than bands ones.

About DS/MK, I always laught about the citation of my dear friend Brunno Nunes.
"After DS, MK worked hard to buried his band"

[quizzaciously]

If MK sells his rights, the buyer will reintroduce his music to make profit.
I cannot see Mark's music appealing even for musicians. Rick Beato is possible the greatest vehicle of "true musicians" and he barely speaks about DS/MK. There is no "What make this song great", "Quick lesson", Interviews.... nothing. Perhaps because Mark's music, for a skilled musician, is not that challenge.

Mark's music is simple only on the surface. Everybody who tries to play it knows it's as deep as you want to fall into this rabbit hole, and even the greatest of players suddenly fail when trying to play some of Mark's riffs and songs. With playing single-note solos, people became very good, but it's serving the song and playing riffs that I personally see the most problematic. If you want to impress me, I don't want to hear the Sultans' solo; I want to hear Song For Sonny Liston.

Rick Beato hinted at a possible interview, and actually, funny enough, Mark was mentioned in his recent interview with Hans Zimmer in the first 5 minutes. But he was mentioned alongside Jeff Beck as an example of a distinctive Stratocaster sound, so even freaking Hans Zimmer respects Mark as a player of Sultans Of Swing and not as a songwriter, it seems. That, if anything, has become so old it's not even funny anymore. I'm sure for Rick, it's also all about Sultans. His most recent video about Knopfler is complete garbage, and I mean it. Apart from the entire video being a shameless plug for Rick's courses, the rest of the video is the shallowest analysis of Mark's work you can find. But the video has got more than a million views because it's Rick Beato talking about underrated Mark Knopfler. End of rant.

I'm not worried about Mark's legacy, and I'm sure it will be better after selling the rights if it happens. The way I think about it is simple: if you love good songs, you'll like Mark Knopfler because he writes good songs, nobody can take it away from him. What we should do is make sure people around us can learn about good music and can open their ears to good music, and sure enough, and I can guarantee it, everybody can find something to love about MK's music.

[Rolo]

The way I think about it is simple: if you love good songs, you'll like Mark Knopfler because he writes good songs, nobody can take it away from him. What we should do is make sure people around us can learn about good music and can open their ears to good music, and sure enough, and I can guarantee it, everybody can find something to love about MK's music.

Sultans, to me, is THE guitar song. Ever.
As many, I decided to learn guitar because of Sultans.
Everything about Mark's music, to me, is about his guitar playing and the musicianship athmosphere thru the songs. I love his lyrics, however, to me, his playing is much more powerfull than his lyrics.

It's all about Sultans, after all.

When MK started to deliver simpler songs focused mainly on lyrics. I lost a huge part of interest about his music. For me, Mark's music lost 'the magic'

Mark's music could be considered "hard" just because his distictive playing. He made all his cons into pros. Well, he holds the guitar like a plumber ahahahah.
You can pick a great band to cover the hardest DS song ever. All musicians can copy all the detais, except the guitar player. You can be a flawless picker like Greg Koch, but he'll not sound like MK.

I am saying that because I like complicated and visceral music as I like good songs. I love John Mclaughlin and Allan Holdsworth as I love Bob Dylan and George Harrison. I listen to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme with the same enthusiast that I listen do DS first album.

[JF]

I can't find it anymore but I remember that Rick Beato put MFN as the #1 guitar riff of all time

[quizzaciously]

I can't find it anymore but I remember that Rick Beato put MFN as the #1 guitar riff of all time

Right! I forgot about that one. Rick has made so many lists videos it's hard to follow. Let me say for the record — I hate list-type videos. But that perfectly encapsulates the entire discussion: people are willing to place MK on the podium or even give him the 1st place for his achievements in specific categories and yet outside of that ignore him as if he's not on the list altogether. Truly superhero moves from an old silent fart

[vape68]

Sometimes I don't care, and sometimes I'm annoyed why MK is overlooked and rarely quoted. It's unfair and incomprehensible.

It's clear to me that the reason for this is that Mark worked tirelessly to bury the band that made him famous, DS, and continued his solo career in a low-profile manner. There's no way to plant beans and harvest watermelons. I find it impressive that DS's official channel has 2.4M subscribers, and even more impressive that his solo channel has 1M subscribers.

The paradox is that we're talking about a band that has sold over 100 million albums. It seems to me that not even Van Halen has reached that figure, also Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Nirvana... Dire Straits is on a similar level to Bruce Springsteen, something close to 120 million. There's nothing modest about that. They're undoubtedly among the 20 best-selling bands on the planet. That's pretty significant even if they were in the top 30 or 40 best sellers.

Dire Straits just doesn't have the relevance it should and deserves to have, because the band's leader spared no effort to diminish its importance and legacy. I don't know if this is related to some trauma from the last two tours the band did (especially the OES tour 91/92), but, looking back, when it comes to DS, "MK ran away like the devil runs away from the cross." Nothing is by chance, if DS's rights were bought and managed by someone else, I believe things would start to be different. Who knows if the future will show if my point of view is correct?

Absolutely agree with you

Also I heard that 120 million DS figure sales many times already 25-30 years ago, It must be much higher now, just never been updated