I recently got an old Dutch magazine called JOEPIE from February 1979 with a two-page story about Dire Straits. It features two pictures that show the band on stage at the Hope & Anchor pub. Dire Straits played there several times in late 1977: on September 10 (in the evening after  they played the Clapham Common gig in the afternoon of that same day), on November 4, 11, and 18, and on December 9 (when Eastbound Train was recorded, released as a b-side of the Sultans of Swing single).

It is not possible to tell from which of these gigs the pictures are but I am almost sure that it is not from the one in September (David’s hair is shorter than on the pictures we have from the Clapham Common gig earlier on the same day).

The first picture can also be found in the Dire Straits book by Michael Oldfield (which also features some more pictures of the same gig). It shows Mark with his 1961 Stratocaster, before the guitar was refinished to red. The guitar had a natural wood finish (possibly sealed with clear laquer). By the way, I know that this is the 1961 Strat because of a typical mark in the pickguard at the upper end of the middle pickup. The body does not have a strong attractive grain, like ash bodies normally have. It looks very much like alder which was the standard body wood at that time. Note that David’s guitar also had a natural finish, I strongly assume that both Strats were  refinished one year later, about summer 1978, Mark’s to red, David’s to black.

Here is the second picture that shows almost the whole guitar at higher resolution:

 

Of the few pictures that show the guitar in the original condition  this is possibly the best we have. Unfortunately the quality is rather poor so we cannot see too many details of the guitar.In the lower right corner of the picture we probably see a part of an amp. I assume that this is David’s amp, the knobs look like Fender or Music Man. With the help of some imagination we might see a part of Mark’s Vibrolux amp between Mark and David, there might be the plug of the guitar cable and a few knobs (the Vibrolux has dark brown knobs without a silver center plate), but this might be illusion as well (any other amp than the Vibrolux would be real surprise at this period).

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Although Portobelle Belle from Dire Straits’ second album Communiqué was played on so many tours,  it seemed that there are no live videos of this song at all. It was played e.g. on each gig of the Love over Gold tour in 1982/3 which ended in the Alchemy live video concert but just this song was not included on the Alchemy video, neither on the original vinyl album or CD, nor on the VHS tape or on the recently reissued DVD/blueray version (an incomplete audio version was included on the greatest hits compilation CD Money for Nothing).

It was just a few weeks ago that I found the following video on youtube which in fact seems to be the only video of this song. It is from the Golden Heart tour, Mark’s first tour as a solo artist after the Dire Straits era. The song “about a long gone Irish girl” was played mainly on the Irish gigs of this tour and Mark was joined by some Irish folk musicians on stage.

From a guitar player’s point of view it is interesting to watch this video because I was never sure whether Mark played the song with his right hand in a fixed position (playing with thumb and two fingers and the right hand resting on the other two fingers) or with his hand swinging freely like he normally does when playing rhythm. Unfortunately the quality of the video is not too good but as it looks Mark used a mish-mash approach of the two styles, playing mainly with thumb and two fingers but moving the whole hand at least on the upbeat strokes.

It is also intersting that this song was played in different keys over the years. Originally in C major it was shifted to D on the On Location tour in 1980/1 (played on different guitars like on a Rickenbacker, see this blog post),  then down to Bb on the Lover over Gold tour, and back to C on the On Every Street tour in 1991/2 (compare this video) or here in 1996.

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• Dire Straits – Portobello Belle – The Point, Dublin, 1991
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The loaded Strat pickguards in the vintage Schecter style have been available in brass and white aluminium for a while now, but from now on they are also available in black aluminium. You can chose between two versions: with the VFS-1 or the F500T-style pickups. As both are tapped pickups (two different sounds for each pickup), you will get 26 different pickup combinations and thus 26 different sounds.

The black ones are otherwise identical to the white version and have the same burnt-in enamel coating , the same high-quality toggle switches, the same extended-life quality potis, and of course the same sound. You can choose between three different metal knobs: chrome, gold, or black. The price is the same as for the white ones.

More info and more pictures in the mk-guitar.com online shop:
with Schecter-style pickups
with VFS-1 pickups

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• The VFS-1 – New pick-up for our Schecter-style pickguards
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According to Guy Fletcher, the songs on which Mark plays the Tone King Imperial are:

True love will never fade
Shangri la
Prairie wedding
Dark is the night/Donegan’s Gone
Postcards from Paraguay
Let It All Go

I guess this is meant to be true rather for the latest tours than for the studio albums (click here to find out what gear was used on them), and it matches what I described in this blog post:
Which songs of the Get Lucky tour are played with the Tone King Imperial? And what was the amp setting?

However, we can add the songs Prairie Wedding and Let it all go (which was only rarely played live, I think only on some of the small promo tours) to our previous list.

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• Dire Straits 1979 concert photos from Liverpool and Birmingham by Alan Perry
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