Dire Straits 45th Anniversary- Mark Knopfler 6-5

There was no hype, no fanfare, nothing even on the cover of the first Dire Straits album to demand inspection of the musical contents within when it quietly, unassumingly was released in June 1978. But by November, the unique sound and subject matter of “Sultans of Swing” was seemingly everywhere all at once.

And there was more where that came from, as we would soon discover, a lot more: the languid singalong”Water of Love”, the chicken-pickin’ guitar of”Southbound Again”,the Tulsa twang of the oft-covered “Setting Me Up”, and the Dock Rock of “Down to the Waterline”. Mastermind of Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, is my guest In the Studio for the forty-fifth anniversary of the Dire Straits debut the week of June 5. –Redbeard