A Mark In Time
Mark Knopfler Discussion => Mark Knopfler Discussion Forum => Topic started by: Millionaire Blues on October 08, 2010, 11:50:31 PM
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The album has not resolved itself in my brain atall. I dont know whether its is Mark's greatest album or worst??? Such mixed emotions.
For example sometimes I think Whoop de doo is crap but other times I think it is the most amazing song ever?? I just dont know!! Is dont crash the ambulance a true masterpiece or not? again i just dont know!
I DO know that Back to Tupelos first chorus is sheer genius though...that i know!!!
Whats everyone elses view on this perfect/mediocre album??
Mark
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In my (very personal) opinion I think every MK album that was released after "The Ragpicker's Dream" is mediocre - as an album. Although every single one
contains really great songs (5.15 am, Back To Tupelo, The Scaffolder's Wife, In The Sky, So Far From The Sky, Piper To The End and so on), the albums as such are just a collection of songs whereas STP and RPD are more have a "real" album concept feeling. I know a lot of people do not like RPD, but it is unique in style and atmosphere from Mark's complete Oeuvre which is what I expect from a real artist. Every Dire Straits album had this special album feeling, but with Golden Heart Mark started to change this. GH was great but an overview of every single style he could think of at that time. Then he had a great creative phase from 2000 until his motorcycle break. I also sometimes think that Chet Atkins' pass away changed something in and took something from Mark's music.
The exitement of listening to a new MK album gets less and less over the last years for me because I always find more and more quotation from the own work and more and more scaling down of composition, production and not at last guitar playing which is a pity.
LE
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In my opinion, Shangri-La is a very good album that contains some songs that are not good enough for it, or don
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The album has not resolved itself in my brain atall. I dont know whether its is Mark's greatest album or worst??? Such mixed emotions.
For example sometimes I think Whoop de doo is crap but other times I think it is the most amazing song ever?? I just dont know!! Is dont crash the ambulance a true masterpiece or not? again i just dont know!
I DO know that Back to Tupelos first chorus is sheer genius though...that i know!!!
Whats everyone elses view on this perfect/mediocre album??
Mark
I can understand how you feel. Shangri-La is the album I'm having most troubles with. Overall I feel that it lacks both the energy of STP and the emotion of TRD - Aseptised would be the right word. BLT is a great single, but it is repetitive, it does not have the power of WAM. I can't stand Sony Liston, really wonder why Mark liked it so much live. I came to like Donegan's gone more after the interesting 2010 live versions. But luckily in every MK album you have some gems: Postcards from Paraguay is very sweet, it reminds me of my favourite anime from my childhood, "The Mysterious Citie of Gold" :) Too bad there is no live soundboard version of it...
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In my (very personal) opinion I think every MK album that was released after "The Ragpicker's Dream" is mediocre - as an album.
A bit harsh of a statement, but I understand where you come from. MK himself seems to think that way composing the set lists for the Get Lucky tour: STP and TRD were cleary favored, in the end the GL album was reduced to two songs, and GH,SL and KTGC were almost non existent.
Still, I think GL was a bit of a revival - a nice mix between STP and TRD. and that KTGC is underrated - it is a finely crafted album.
Let's not forget that Dire Strait's biggest success by far, "Brothers in Arms", was not at all a "rocking" album: only one song can qualify as a rock song (MFN), 2 mid-tempo songs (TMSTS, OW), 1 stupid song (WOL), the remaining 6 songs are sweet and soft !
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We do have the televised Berlin and Basel promo versions of Postcards though and they are both excellent! BTW "Shangri-La" is one of my favourite albums. The only song I have tired of is Donegan, but I loved it on the Get Lucky tour! :)
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We do have the Berlin and Basel promo versions of Postcards though and they are both excellent! BTW "Shangri-La" is one of my favourite albums. The only song I have tired of is Donegan, but I loved it on the Get Lucky tour! :)
True, I have them, but they lack the flute and the "Paraguuuuuuuuaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii !" of the 2008 tour that followed ;)
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We do have the Berlin and Basel promo versions of Postcards though and they are both excellent! BTW "Shangri-La" is one of my favourite albums. The only song I have tired of is Donegan, but I loved it on the Get Lucky tour! :)
True, I have them, but they lack the flute and the "Paraguuuuuuuuaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii !" of the 2008 tour that followed ;)
If you listen carefully, there is a Paraguayeeeeeee! on the Berlin promo. ;D
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I like GH & STP best, his style has changed gradually after that.
I think there are still some star pieces in all of them tho'
'no wonder he's confused'
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We do have the Berlin and Basel promo versions of Postcards though and they are both excellent! BTW "Shangri-La" is one of my favourite albums. The only song I have tired of is Donegan, but I loved it on the Get Lucky tour! :)
True, I have them, but they lack the flute and the "Paraguuuuuuuuaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii !" of the 2008 tour that followed ;)
If you listen carefully, there is a Paraguayeeeeeee! on the Berlin promo. ;D
Ah ok, I have listened only to Basel... still, the 2008 tour added something to it, don't you think ? there is even Paraguayeeeeeee ! on the album version actueally ;)
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Yes, I was lucky enough to hear Postcards a couple of times on the 2008 tour and I agree, the flute and the Paraguayeeeee! sounded great! ;)
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I like GH & STP best, his style has changed gradually after that.
I think there are still some star pieces in all of them tho'
'no wonder he's confused'
Funnily enough my favourite solo albums are the later ones, RPD (No1), Shangri-La and Get Lucky. :)
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The best song from this album! And this version is so wonderful :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spu66V3H1bc&feature=related
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Thanks for that clip and there is a "Paraguayeeeee!" at 3.40! ;D
There was a really beautiful BIA at this concert too! :)
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The best song from this album! And this version is so wonderful :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spu66V3H1bc&feature=related
100% agree, wonderful indeed. I wonder what Mark was thinking when he decided to drop this for the 2010 tour, and play "the fish and the bird"' a couple of times instead ? anyway.... the ways of the Lord... :)
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Until Get Lucky Shangri La was my favourite MK solo album and it's one of my all time favourite albums. The only slightly low spots for me are Boom Like That, Don't Crash the Ambulance and the repetitive nature of Sonny Liston on the album.
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not confused either, like Dusty, it's my favourite after Get Lucky.
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always liked it lots.
postcards sooooo rules, but i also like the ambulancem, woop de doo and so on, the only one i don't much care for must be....our shangri la.
oh man, just looked at the cd again, tupelo boy oh boy....or sucker row, beuatiful, a great record imho...
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Not my all time favorite, but I LOVEEEEEE Postcard veryyyyy much. The tunes to this song is so outstanding, it's hard not to love it.
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Actually the MK
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Actually the MK
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As an album, Sailing doesn't work, but it's still a great collection of songs. :) Whereas Kill To Get Crimson has a real feel running right through it, but the songs just aren't as good as any of the other albums (IMO).
But this is what makes KTGC work as an album, and it makes it very nice to listen, at least to me :)
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But this is what makes KTGC work as an album, and it makes it very nice to listen, at least to me :)
Yeah, the production and "theme" of the album are fine, the siongs just fall well below MK's normal standards.
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As an album, Sailing doesn't work,
I have to disagree very clearly! :lol
LE
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KTGC is my favourite album of Marks solo work, beautiful stuff.
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Kill to get Crimson is probs my fav knopfler album...so relaxing!!!! Cant put my finger on why i love it so much.....
:lol
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As an album, Sailing doesn't work,
I have to disagree very clearly! :lol
LE
Each to their own. To me, a great album needs to be an experience in itself. Sailing to Philadelphia is a collection of great songs, and a therefore a good listen for sure, but no way does it hang together thematically like the first album or Making Movies.
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Of course everybody on his own, I would never try to coax, but for me it HAS a beautiful theme: it is the story of what Mark often told us, how the music came from the Tyne, going to America and coming back... And of course it is all meant musically, this record is really putting it into geography: It starts in Edinburgh, than we are really travelling with M&D across the ocean... El Macho is the south of America, Wanderlust is the theme itself, Speedway is starting as a little bluegrass and shows the development of the music, especially the second half of the album is breathtakingly americana, great atmospheric album-vibes from track 8 to 11, and it all ends again in Leeds, in the past... Travel, horizon, endurance, sun, dust ..
Oh, I could talk about this album for ages.
But to get back to topic: Shangri-La has an overall theme, too, let's call it "vision" and "dreams", how they come up, how they develop and how they are destroyed, so this album, too, has a theme. But these themes are more expressed by lyrics than by music, whereas the first two Dire Straits albums had more real musical character and "theme".
Whereas "The Ragpicker's Dream"'s theme is "Home". That is what the dream is. And almost every song is about home, about not having it, having to leave it for different reasons (WAM, DGTK), remembering the home in the past (A place where...), do not want to leave it (FTWN, YDKYB). And the
title track itself really shows us the idea in a very almost "cheesy" way: looking through a window on Christmas Eve through the eyes of a rover...
LE
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I don't mean a lyrical theme, it's a musical theme, Sailing to Philadelphia is too disjointed musically with all sorts of different styles going on.
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That's right!
LE
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I think STP is Mark's best record (my 2nd favorite is definitely GL)! MK records don't have a 'concept theme' in general, although some have a kind of a central atmosphere (like KTGC and TRD). For me, STP works more as an album than KTGC. KTGC is too much of the same 'feeling', not the same songs (it contains some brilliant songs), SL has some songs that really sounds similar.. I like the variation on records like STP and GL. I think there isn't really any song on STP that's weak or shouldn't have been released on it.
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Atmosphere is a good word. You can tell Sgt. Pepper has the same "atmosphere", same with Dark Side of the Moon or Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Sailing to Philadelphia, not so much. Lots of great tracks though. :)
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STP is definitely the best as far as I'm concerned, it's just a damned good record. The styles vary, but I think the songs go very well together, the song order well thought-out. I think that GH is more dramatic in its varying styles in that sense.
SL is just a bore to me. Why was Summer of Love left out, it would have been the best track!? I like the title track and songs like Tupelo, which is fine, but in the end it just kills my spirit. Gimme RPD with its wonderful grooves any day of the week.
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As with all CD's there are songs you like, but there are also songs you want to hear over and over again, even after listening hundreds of times! All the CD's have favourite songs for me and that is why it is hard to say which CD is the best!
The CD Get Lucky has only 1 or 2 songs who are not as good, but the rest are great! That is why I think I have to choose GL as best album! ;D
Fieneke