The Album - Reviews and Reports

Review of the album by Eleanor Levy.

Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms (Vertigo VERH 25) WEST COAST guitars reeking of mega bucks and sell out stadium concerts throughout the globe. Laid back melodies. Dire Straits - summed up. Album opens with "So Far Away" - single. Goes on with "Money For Nothing" - Dire Straits reveal that rumours of life within the superstar body have been grossly exaggerated. Ends on "Brothers In Arms" slow 'atmospheric', title track - yawn. This is like any other Dire Straits album ever quarried out of the tottering edifice of MOR rock. Mark Knopfler sings with a peg on his nose. I HATE this stuff.

Album review by Tom Hibbert	The full page advert for the Album
Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms (Vertigo) More spangling guitars, wistful flutings and bittersweet diatribes against MTV (don't bite the hand that feeds you?) and other Modern Horrors from ver Straits, the group that proved conclusively, all those years ago, that punk never ever happened. If you lurve Dire Sraits, you'll adore this. (If not, it's all a bit useless). (10 out of 0)

Live aid report

18:00: At Wembley, Dire Straits come out waving and are immediately joined by . . . sting! Yes he's back again, singing "I want my MTV". Was he invited one wonders? Evidently so, because he's soon "boogieing down" in no uncertain fashion with Straits' guitarist Mark Knopfler (Who is sporting the days very first headband). Despite Sting's distracting presence, ver Straits "deliver" their usual " tight set" and prompt fresh outbreaks of inter-audience frugging.

18:25: In JFK Stadium, it should be Tears For Fears. But they've pulled out for some reason or other. . . . .

Report of Brothers in Arms by Alan Jones.

Dire Straits: The recent release of it's title track as a single has arrested the slide of Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" album. Moving up to number six, it has been a top 10 ever-present since debuting at number one 25 weeks ago, and is one of four of the group's albums on this week's chart. Dire Straits' total of 136 weeks on the chart this year includes contributions from "Alchemy" (45 weeks) , "Love Over Gold" (31), "making Movies" (25) and "Dire Straits" (10), as well as "Brothers In Arms". It's the second year in a row Dire Straits have topped 100 weeks on the chart; last year their total was 113 weeks. "Making Movies" has become one of the top 12 albums of all-time, based on chart longetivity, and is currently on it's 206th chart week, compared to 135 for "Love Over Gold", 106 for "Dire Straits", 85 for "Alchemy", 25 for "Brothers In Arms" and 18 for "Communique". In all, Dire Straits have spent 576 weeks - over 10 years - in the album chart since their 1978 debut. That's more than U2 (356 weeks since their 1981 debut) or Springsteen (293 weeks since 1975) and one of the 15 top scores of all-time.

Dire Straits, only featured twice in the poll, Best LP for Brothers In Arms (see below) and Best Video for Money For Nothing (see the Money For Nothing - Reports and Reviews)
The results of The 6th Annual Smash Hits Readers Poll was published.
Best LP
Position	Video	Artist
1.	Like A Virgin	Madonna
2.	Songs From The Big Chair	Tears For Fears
3.	Arena	Duran Duran
4.	The Power Station	The Power Station
5.	The Secret Of Association	Paul Young
6.	Make It Big	Wham!
7.	Now That's What I Call Music 5	Various
8.	Cupid & Psyche '85	Scritti Politti
9.	Hounds Of Love	Kate Bush
10.	Go West	Go West
11.	Brothers In Arms	Dire Straits
12.	Vital Idol	Billy Idol

Review of the Video by Tom Hibbert

Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms - The Video Singles (Polygram, £9.95) Before 1985, Dire Straits records sold by the million (mainly to "oldsters"), but then they "embraced" the "video generation" - and now they sell by the billion (to younger folk too.) Which is all rather ironic when you consider the "vid" that got them this whole new market - "Money For Nothing" - was actually a scoff at the "video generation". This, of course, is the one with the highly impressive computer-generated figurines and the cartoony "narrator" who turns on his telly and watches a very duff-looking video by someone else (The Ian Stanley Band, whoever they might be). Which is doubly ironic because it is "Money For Nothing" which opens this singles compilation - and once that's finished you get three pretty duff-looking videos from Dire Straits themselves: "So Far Away" (rather snoozesome performance footage), "Walk Of Life" (lots of baseball players falling over) and "Brothers In Arms" (flickery black and white cartoon stuff à la A-ha featuring Mark Knopfler and his horrific headband). Come back The Ian Stanley Band (whoever they might be), all is forgiven. . .