Originally Posted by
Jonny Come Lately
On the reverse side, the worst music documentary I've ever seen was something called 'Discovering Dire Straits'. There was a Pink Floyd episode in this series which was decent enough if hardly earth shattering for a big fan like me, so I watched this out of curiosity. Unfortunately, it completely missed the point, to the extent that I could barely recognise the band they were talking about as Dire Straits. It suggested that the videos for Tunnel Of Love and Romeo And Juliet were a major factor in the band's success (I could have understood this argument for Walk Of Life and especially Money For Nothing, but neither of those songs were true hits so I don't see why the videos were so important in those cases). More attention was given over to this than to Mark Knopfler's guitar work, which is a huge and lasting part of the band's appeal. Given the programme was only half an hour long too much time was wasted talking about how disappointing On Every Street was (I can't argue with that, but classic songs like Telegraph Road and Private Investigations were not deemed worthy of mention), and pointlessly contrasted them with the emerging grunge bands, which seem to me to have appealed to a very different audience. I was kind of annoyed after seeing it because the people involved with it just didn't seem to understand what it was that made Dire Straits a great band.