Video Clip of Dire Straits – Lady Writer – Pinkpop Festival 1979

That’s the nice thing about internet: I just released the other blog post about a little snippet of In the Gallery which I found on Youtube the other day where I stated that no other video clips (except of a snippet of Lady Writer in bad quality) exist from the Pinkpop Festival in 1979, when a reader of this blog – Brunno Nunes – added a comment with a link to this video: Lady Writer, the complete song,  in great quality. I really have never seen this one before, so I thought it might be worth another blog post.

It also includes a few backstage scenes from before the gig, and from the end of the set. Also, due to the various camera positions, you get a glance of the backstage line, and even on the floor where Mark’s effects were place, normally well hidden behind those monitor speakers (e.g. at 0:49 or 4:49). We can see the Morley vloule pedal and, left from it, the MXR analog delay. There seems to be a third little box about a feet left from the MXR. Of course the picture quality is not good enough to see any details, but nevertheless. I oberserved something similar in the Rockpalast videos, see this blog post.

Mark added a second Music Man amp (HD -130 212) just a few weeks ago (I guess about March ’79). One month later (July ’79) this second amp got speakers with an aluminium dust cap, but here it seems to be the “normal” paper ones (whhich definitely makes a change of tone). David played his Peavey Deuce amp with an Ampeg speaker cabinet, like he did that whole year. There are a lot of other amps on stage, a little bit behind the Straits’ amps which should have nothing to do with them, remember this was a festival with many bands.

5 thoughts on “Video Clip of Dire Straits – Lady Writer – Pinkpop Festival 1979

  1. Ingo, I am interested in the high quality video/audio live footage shown on the Arena documentary. Do you know if the whole concert was filmed? Is it available?
    Best regards, always appreciate the info in your blog,

    Dave Fletcher

  2. I think only the songs shown in the Arena docu have survived. I am sure the whole concert was filmed (does not make sense to me to put a lot of cameras there and only to film certain songs) but they never appeared anywhere.

    That late ’79 era was interesting. If you want a whole concert from that time I recommend the (audio) recording from November 9, Cologne (Germany), normally available at the places where fans exchange live recordings. The sound is nice for an audio recording, the guitar sound is even great, and many songs have a nice vibe.

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