Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia
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Free Music Notes for Sailing to Philadelphia
Free Music Review: Mark Knopfler is Great..!!
Hit: 5 Stars
There may be guitar players around who are technically better than Mark Knopfler, but I doubt there's a more tasteful guitar player on the planet. Sailing To Philadelphia is a great solo effort from the man who gave us Dire Straits in the mid eighties.
Admittedly, it is difficult to distinguish between a Dire Straits CD and a Mark Knopfler CD. After all, MK was the songwriter, singer and primary force behind Dire Straits.
The opening number "What It Is" is so reminiscent of the great Dire Straits sound that produced Sultans of Swing. Mark, as usual, relys on incredible guitar riffs and a beautiful tone to create an amazing backdrop. However, lyrically, this song is just so catchy and so infectious. I can't count the number of highway miles I've put behind me with the song "What It Is" booming out of the speakers.
The cover song "Sailing To Philadelphia" is a beautiful collaberation between MK and James Taylor and tells the story of Mason and Dixon,the Brits who travelled to America to survey and draw the Mason-Dixon line. The song was inspired by Thomas Pynchon's book (an incredibly difficult read.!!) which Mark was reading while flying into Philadelphia and thinking how 250 years later, individuals continue to travel into this hub city to get somewhere else.
Mark's voice - deep and calming - has never sounded better and when he sings "Hold your head up Mason - see America lies there..of Delaware", the listener is suddenly transported back in time and it's as if you're suddenly standing on the bow of an old schooner approaching a new country - America - off in the distance.
As a huge Formula 1 fan, Speedway at Nazereth is a personal favorite. Aside from the obvious references to Champ car auto racing and tracks throughout North Amercica, MK embarks on an incredibly blistering guitar solo for the latter half of the song that will shut up anybody who says that MK is boring and too laid back. I defy anyone to listen to the exquisite notes MK finds at 5:45 of the song and not be moved by it. Incredible guitar lines - amazing drumming and a driving bass line combine to produce a scorching instrumental close.
Silvertown Blues is another great number that is vocally assisted by former Squeeze members Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford. Just listen to some of the melodic bluesy riffs produced by MK.
MK clearly has a love affair with America, it's culture and it's music. This album, as well as his other solo effort- Golden Heart - and his Dire Straits work displays his blues/country roots.
This album won't be for everybody, particularily today where rap/boy bands rule the airwaves.
This album only delivers great songs written by a master songwriter with exquisite instrumental lines by one of the premier guitars on the planet.
If you're just into style, this CD won't have any appeal for you.
However, if you enjoy listening to an artist that has produced some of the best music around for over a quarter of a century now, you might want to give this CD a listen.
You won't regret it.
Free Music Review: Like A Lighthouse In A Storm..A Welcome Return For Me
Hit: 5 Stars
Mark Knopfler is an enigima.This CD could quite possibly become one of my all time favourites,Why?It has none of the baggage and trademarks of Dire Straits,and then again you feel that it is a natural progression from those times.It is a collection of stripped bare classics encorporating some folky country laced riffs and beats played in that Knopfler trade mark guitar,bluesyand laid back. This collection entices you in,much like J.J.Cale,and once you surrender to the understated and layered texture of the songs you just cant stop listening to them.*Silvertown*,is the next stop on the line down from * Telegraph Road*,and just a little across the town from the Notting Hillbillies,*Going Your Own Sweet Way* and totally and absolutely listenable. Many of the current crop of songwriters and guitar players could learn that less can be more,and that Knopfler can easily slip back into the adult music mainstream with a confidence and assuredness that defies the fact that he hasnt been around,in a serious sense,since the boringly dreadful *On Every Street*,with the exception of sporadic appearences of brilliance and the promising *Golden Heart* released in 1994. What isnt there to like on this CD?He keeps great company,with James Taylor,Glenn Tilbrook,Chris Difford and Van Morrison,who complement him beautifully,and for Van,I can almost forgive him for the dreadful collaboration with Linda Lewis. The highlight is always the Knopfler guitar,understated yet always relevant.The title track is a masterful example of story telling and makes you want to have another 5 minutes more.I personally appreciated *Silvertown Blues*,*Baloney Again*,a sensitive and poignant snipett of inhumanity,skillfully highlighted without overstatement,*The Last Laugh*and the quirky *Who's Your baby Now*.This is adult music and not one bad song appears.If this is the forrunner of things to come,my appetite has been wetted. I can relax to this and yet can find so many pleasing connections to so many musical forms that your mind wanders in many directions.I would agree with a previous reviewer that aroound the next bend is a movie scene waiting to be overlaid onto this soundtrack. A throughly enjoyable experience,money well spent and carrying a rating of 4.5 to 5 stars.A must for every record collection,to be placed between*Blood On The Tracks* and *Any way The Wind Blows - The Anthology*..and revered just as much.Free Music Review: polished, thought-out song-stories
Hit: 5 Stars
I've come to the conclusion that the reviewers who pick at Mark Knopfler's songs don't take the time to investigate why he wrote them to begin with. "Do America" is not my favourite song, but on reading his basis for its conception, I had a greater respect for it. (No help here folks - do your own homework.) I gave the album 5 stars out of respect for an artist who puts his all into his work and fiddles with everything until he gets it exactly the way he wants. That said,some of my favourite music of all time is on "Sailing to Philadelphia". I have played the title track to death - my opinion, Mark Knopfler's most beautiful composition to date, and it made me go out and find Pynchon's book on Mason and Dixon which inspired the song. The cadences and lyricism of the piece are unsurpassed in anything he's done before or since. I am continually charmed by his decisions to include other artists, also - and he is always spot-on with the performers he gets to help him. I was so pleased to get not one, but three of my favourite legends on one disc. Van Morrison was a nice surprise. My ultimate favourites, besides the one already mentioned, also stand up with everything else he's ever done - "Silvertown Blues" - a song I have a feeling holds a very personal place with him - speaks to everyone who has ever lived in a once-thriving, now-struggling-to-survive industrial jungle. I understood it - and empathized with it - completely. The first track, "What It Is", always makes me want to march somewhere - I try to play it in the car on my way to work to get me in the mood. "Speedway At Nazareth" - a close tie for absolute favourite - is rockin on the disc and completely mezmerizing in concert (if you're lucky enough to witness it). Another good cut, "El Macho" , is a wry slam on pretty boys and the television culture, although I haven't really determined to myself if it's about Jerry Seinfeld or somebody else. It sure feels like a tune written maybe after a long exhausting day on the road and a couple of scotches. Overall, where "Golden Heart" skipped all over the map in style and genre, this album feels more like a cohesive whole, very stylish and clean. I find I listen more to this disc at work than any of the other Knopfler solos.
Free Music Review: ROCK STAR WANTS TO BE LIKE US
Hit: 5 Stars
The failure of the American dream, Hollywood, tele-evangelism and other ironies make the land of the free a rich source of lyrical pathos. Mark Knopfler's latest is another album riding these tainted amber waves. While he was leading Dire Straits, Mark had written with a caustic pen, painting a sardonic vision of America as a scarred battlefield sold to fallen ideals and twisted romance.Sailing to Philadelphia is a far more forgiving album, full of grace, and not as muddled as most of his contemporaries. With the low casual rumble of his gravelly voice, he sings stories of modest individuals with great dreams, and great individuals with modest dreams -- some are even musicians, but they are mostly people who don't make the headlines; you get the sense that he longs to be one of these forgotten folks. In losing his stream-of-consciousness voice, his language also becomes more prosaic and poignant.
"What It Is" is the first song. Describing the people in drinking dens, the soldiers sleeping in the fortress and the piper standing alone, Mark recalls our constant search for something else. He even includes himself vaguely in this dream of subdued hubris: "There's a lantern in the tower, Wee Willie Winkie with a candlestick, Still writing songs in the wee wee hours." These virgil scribblings result in some excellently crafted songs, telling about a travelling gospel band, a macho rock star by himself in a bar, a drug-addict's lover, and the regrets of a racecar driver speeding through Arizona, Gasoline Alley and finally finding his 'something else' (redemption?) in Nazareth.
Even though the album is guitar driven, Mark's guitar solos are never showy, and you can still toast bread on his restrained licks. Like a minstrel, Mark relied on the folk genre to recount the realism of the plains. In two songs he hinted at country music, but as usual he expands on the form until the songs acquire the texture of a well-used oak door.
Free Music Review: The Album of the year. It's solid music.
Hit: 5 Stars
When Mark Knopfler shows up whith new material, then it's very good, like always. Me and other fans of dire straits, and MK's other career, must wait a long time on new releases. But it's worth waiting. MK is a very good person, he show himself on the right ways, and is also laid back and a little bit mystic, and that is only good. He's a great musician, he does always do smart and realistic storytelling lyrics, and of cause he plays the guitar perfect. It's solid music, rockblues, whith some folk-influences, on english and scottish ways. He sounds a little bit american, and thats cool. Sailing to Philadelphia have all this. It's very outstanding, because this new great album, is a strong outsider in these days, because mostly of the music in these days are typicall pop, and discopartymusic, thats boring and annoying, and sometimes good. But this music is more shown on TV, like MTV, and VH1 (good Channel.), these music can i notice more often. I don't think Sailing to Philadelphia is gonna be a bestseller like brothers in arms, but it's gonna sale a lot, like it should be. He's first Solo-album whith many other good musicians on, Golden heart, was a great sucess, and fantastic album, and the new on is fantastic on similar ways. Good lyrics, and great music, the sound on this record is totally wonderful. A album whith great storys about life, and places and a lot's of more. I have listen to the singles of the new song What it is very much, a terrific song. I can play it over and over again. Other terrific songs like silvertown blues, and baloney again, is brilliant. And the others is terrific to. MK is gonna play in Sweden a little in the future, and thats unusual and good. The frontpicture is very good and illustrates the album very good. So everybody who likes Dire Straits, And MK's other career, should by this new album, or else it's a big mistake. Thanks.