1 The End of the Straits
This is the video of the last Dire Straits' tour in the early 1990s. It was not, I read, as wildly successful as their tour of the mid 1980s and after the tour the Straits faded into history.
About one-half of the songs on the DVD are from the Straits last CD, "On Every Street." There is a country sound on many tracks, emphasized by Paul Franklin's steel guitar. I quickly tired of the opening rock numbers, "Calling Elvis," "Walk of Life," and "Heavy Fuel," but the mellow songs that followed made up for it. Mark Knopfler's moody and exquisite songs "Romeo and Juliet" and "Brothers in Arms" are here, as are superb versions of little known tunes such as "Your Latest Trick" "On Every Street" and "You and Your Friend." The bluesy, country solo of Knopfler in "You and Your Friend" is one of his best ever-- and that is saying something. "Money for Nothing" rocks and "Private Investigations" has the great guitar explosions at the end (although PI and "Local Hero" are both better in the other Straits live album "Alchemy").
Dire Straits was a tuneful high-quality group of musicians and Knopfler is a wonder on guitar. There's not a whole lot of flashy showmanship. They stand up Strait and play outstanding music.
Smallchief
2 The Live Rock!
This DVD rocks! Mark Knopfler does very heavy metal on "Heavy Fuel". Even "The Bug" is on this live DVD! "Walk Of Life" he does
perfect on this version and "Money for Nothing" is a pure hard
rock classic that you will need to listen to on the CD! But I rather get the CD in addition to the DVD! But where the heck is
Sting singing 'I WANT MY MTV'? "Calling Elvis" is a bit to long
and the other version is slight ly better!
Oveall great DVD!
3 I really enjoyed this DVD, but...
I really liked this DVD. It took a long time to get it upon its release (almost two months), but it is more than worth the wait.
The production value is very high. There is a nice opening sequence where the band and roadies arrive at the venue, and get ready to put on the show. The DVD uses this sequence to introduce the players, showing them getting off of busses, walking down corridors, and other mundane predatory actions. Knopfler walks out to a very enthusiastic crowd and after a few seconds of thunderous applause launches into the first song. I was very happy (as a guitar player myself) that many of his solos were shown in close-up detail. I like little things like that, seeing how he works to get that sound. I will not go over every song, but just be sure, there is not a single piece of filler here, although there would be a couple of songs that might be considered MIA. I could not imagine seeing B.B. King in concert without his performing "The Thrill is Gone", so seeing Dire Straits and not having them perform the break through "Sultans of Swing", the song that introduced them to the world is a bit strange. Oh well, you can't have everything. There is a good mix of rockers, softer more mellow songs and plenty of opportunity for Knopfler to let the other members of the band show off a bit. Overall, a great performance.
The one weakness that requires me to go with 4 stars rather than 5 is the fact that this is a medium that can offer so much more in terms of sound. That this is not offered in some form of 5.1 is a crime. I love concerts on DVD when you hear the crowds behind you and the music hits from many angles. If I gave this basic two-channel stereo rendering a 5 star rating, it would not be fair to the other DVDs out there that earned their 5s with terrific audio engineering. If this was a 1980s VHS tape, it would be a 5, but for a DVD introduced in the year 2005, two-channel stereo can't be given a perfect score for a concert performance.
4 Good show!
Having never seen the video, I was very happy with this DVD. It's Dire Straits live at their best. There is a spectacular version of Private Investigation that really makes the song memorable, thanks to Mark Knopfler's magical guitar work.
There are also great performances of Heavy Fuel and The Bug.
I enjoy this DVD very much. I have watched it a few times and it gets better each time.
5 Solid Rock
Mark Knopfler walks on stage and it's time to live on "solid rock". Very good performance by Dire Straits and fantastic opportunity to see the white Jimi Hendrix (Yeah baby!) do his "latest tricks" on the guitar. How can you go wrong listening to this?
Great show!
6 Not much here
I agree with the reviewer from Peterborough, not much here. 2.0 only mix. The same content as the original video released in the 1990s. On top of that no booket, no information on where the concert was recorded (it was actually from 2 locations if you have the CD of the same name). I was hoping for a few additional tracks. Only thing good was that the price was low enough!
