More early Dire Straits pictures: unknown 1978 gig

The late 70ies were long before the invention of the digital camera. There would be so many more pictures of all kind of events if everyone could take pictures as easily as today. As this was not the case, the majority of all pictures of rock bands from that time were taken by professional photographers who sold them to magazines or newspapers, making their pictures public this way. For this […]

New picture of the Sultans Strat before being refinished to red

Today I found a picture showing Dire Straits live in 1977, before they recorded their first album. At this time the famous red ‘Sultans’ Strat was not refinished to red yet but still had the bare wood finish in which Mark got it (probably earlier that year). There are a few pictures around that show the guitar with this finish but all of these are of rather poor quality (and […]

Albert Lee – a recent live version of Setting me up

I think I wrote a blog post about Albert Lee’s cover of Setting me up from the first Dire Straits album before (see here). Today I surfed into this video clip on youtube which I really like a lot. It is a bit on the slow side, much slower than e.g. Albert’s live version that was featured on Eric Clapton’s Just one Night live album. It seems the older you […]

Dire Straits at the Hope & Anchor pub 1977 – new picture

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, […]

Mark Knopfler – Portobelle Belle – the only existing live video (Belfast 1996)

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, […]

Dire Straits – Portobello Belle – The Point, Dublin, 1991

Again I found something nice on youtube I personally have never heard before: Portobello Belle from the On Every Street tour in 1991, performed at The Point in Dublin.. I have had one “official” bootleg (= silver pressed CD) called Strait to the Point from a Dublin gig of that tour (August 26 – they played there for 5 nights from August 23 – 27) but the one I have […]

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 […]

Video snippet of Dire Straits – In the Gallery – Pinkpop Festival 1979

I was surprised to find this video today which starts with an excerpt of Dire Straits –  In the Gallery – live from the Pinkpop festival, Gelen/Holland, June 4, 1979. The whole gig was broadcasted on TV in 1979 but it seems those video tapes then disappeared – at least I don’t know of any rebroadcasts, and thus of no video clips anywhere, except some parts of Lady Writer in […]