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Undertoad · 11-15-2006, 09:27 AM

Yknow because you put all the Telegraph Road stuff into your sig and title, I hadda go back and listen to it. Now I tell you I have treasured this record for two decades, but only this morning did I put it on and realize...

Knopfler is absolutely channelling early Springsteen on that song, and for most of the album too!

I say channelling because I don't think he wants to BE the English Bruce. I think he's not directly copying, he's just intentionally bending Bruce's way. But here's a song that, in the Bruce 1973-1980 tradition, talks about ordinary life in the crappy industrial suburbia of north Jersey, I mean, northern English coal towns or whatever you want to invoke with it. And why not put a little clean tinkly piano behind the loud parts like Bruce's David Sancious would do? And tell Pick Withers, who has a trademark light touch, to slam that snare really hard like Max Weinstein would do.

11-15-2006, 09:27 AM	#15
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Yknow because you put all the Telegraph Road stuff into your sig and title, I hadda go back and listen to it. Now I tell you I have treasured this record for two decades, but only this morning did I put it on and realize... Knopfler is absolutely channelling early Springsteen on that song, and for most of the album too! I say channelling because I don't think he wants to BE the English Bruce. I think he's not directly copying, he's just intentionally bending Bruce's way. But here's a song that, in the Bruce 1973-1980 tradition, talks about ordinary life in the crappy industrial suburbia of north Jersey, I mean, northern English coal towns or whatever you want to invoke with it. And why not put a little clean tinkly piano behind the loud parts like Bruce's David Sancious would do? And tell Pick Withers, who has a trademark light touch, to slam that snare really hard like Max Weinstein would do.