Mark Knopfler | dual personalities

August 11, 2017

Well, I’ll be a brown-eyed beagle

by chuckofish

Another big weekend ahead! The OM and I will be driving to Columbia with daughter #1 in her new car and the boy in his new truck–both packed to the gills with her stuff.

Life in the fast lane, right?

Meanwhile, it is the “Summer Under the Stars” month on TCM, so each day the schedule is devoted to a different star. Tomorrow is John Wayne day, so set your DVRs!

Screen Shot 2017-08-10 at 11.51.54 AM.png Check it out if you feel so inclined.

Screen Shot 2017-08-10 at 1.40.09 PM.png Happy belated birthday to Snoopy whose birthday was yesterday. Perhaps you will recall that this was revealed in a comic strip on 8/10/1968. I did not remember that, even though I was a huge fan of Peanuts back in the day.

Speaking of birthdays, tomorrow is the birthday of one of our favorites, Mark Knopfler. He’s turning 68!

Mark has played with all the greats from Bob Dylan to Chet Atkins and Eric Clapton. He’s the greatest and we love him.

Have a good weekend! Listen to some good music, watch a good movie, read a good book, enjoy the great outdoors! Smell the pine in your nostrils.

2 Comments

October 11, 2016

Drawing the line

by chuckofish

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed surveying for the “Mason-Dixon line” separating Maryland and Pennsylvania on this day in 1767. The work was done between 1763 and 1767 in order to resolve a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

In popular usage, the Mason–Dixon line still symbolizes a cultural boundary between the North and the South.

Reading about this, it suddenly occurred to me that the name “Dixie” (used as a historical nickname for the southern states) must derive from Jeremiah Dixon’s name!

Mind-blowing that I just thought of that. Did you know that?

Anyway, here’s a great song by Mark Knopfler (with James Taylor) about Mason and Dixon, which was itself inspired by the book Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon.

P.S. I read that book back in the 1990s and liked it.

4 Comments

March 28, 2015

Sometimes you have to lean into the wind to stand straight*

by chuckofish

Mark Knopfler has a new CD out, and, to no one’s surprise, it’s full of sad melodies, mournful guitar, and stories about a wide variety of down and out characters struggling through life a day at a time.

I haven’t had it long enough to become familiar with all the songs, but the one called ‘Basil’ (track 2) has been running through my head steadily since I first heard it. Despite the melancholy, Mark Knopfler’s music always puts me in a good mood. Simply put, he makes the world a better place and improves the quality of my life. Here’s to you MK. Long may you play.

In other news, we’re impatiently awaiting spring here. It snowed yesterday. The temperature is not due to rise above freezing today and it’s making everyone restless and cranky. We all have cabin fever. Yesterday, as I avoided doing the things I needed to be doing (grading, cleaning, writing…), I kept finding myself perusing the internet and looking at beautiful landscapes like this amazing photograph of the Isle of Skye by Emmanuel Coupe:

or this one of Glencoe by Angie Latham.

You can buy her photos, etc… on Redbubble. She’s got some superb images of Scotland and Wales. Don’t they make you want to go walkabout? Smell the pine (or heather) in your nostrils and shake the winter out of your bones? Well, I may not be in Scotland, but I’m going to go for a walk today even if I do have to wear a hat, mittens and galoshes! I suggest you do the same wherever you are.

Have an excellent weekend.

*Winter in the Blood, by James Welch

2 Comments

August 12, 2012

Happy Birthday, Mark Knopfler!!

by chuckofish

Guitar god and song-writer supreme

I’ve been a huge fan of Mark Knopfler since the 1980s and I’m pretty sure I own every album he’s made except the odd live performance or ep. He was the first musician to make me appreciate the electric guitar, which I had previously considered loud, unmusical, and even tacky. How wrong I was — just go listen to “Brothers in Arms”! Douglas Adams once wrote, “Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink.” True, but it’s not just his guitar playing that’s great; it’s his song-writing.

Mark Knopfler has an incredible feel for people’s stories and their history. Not many people write historical songs these days and his stand out. Who else could write songs about the discoverers of the Mason Dixon line, a mail order bride, a soldier in Napoleon’s army, a farmer driven to the edge, a ship dismembered for scrap iron, or a piper at Dunkirk and with a combination of simple lyrics and great music make them come alive?

It’s impossible to choose an all-time favorite, but I think my current one is “Before Gas and TV” — I love what it says and the music is perfectly mournful. You can hear it here: