Dire Straits: Prog-Related? YES.

Another step
Love Over Gold - for some reason, if I listen closely, I'm hearing Steely Dan here, but without Fagen's sardonic lyricism ...
Could be prog ?

debrewguy wrote: O.K., how about we take this one step at a time and see what we can agree on. First song - Industrial Disease. Can we agree that it is not prog ?

Classic!!!

debrewguy wrote: O.K., how about we take this one step at a time and see what we can agree on. First song - Industrial Disease. Can we agree that it is not prog ?

At its heart, it's a rock song, but I think it's stylised and mixed up enough to fall within the broad remit of 'prog' (at its broadest). In particular, the transition from the cheese-riff-organ to a sort of pseudo-classical grandiose-sounding bit at the end, and the restrained, minimalist guitar thing (loathe to mention it, because Ivan is quite probably going call it 'just performance of an instrument' or some such, which it isn't) going on is certainly not really what you'd call standard rock'n'roll. Admittedly, if you remove those two elements (one pretty small in the context of the whole song, one fairly significant, though I admit guitar innovations are in the context of rock, not just 'prog' rock), it's down to, I guess, essentially, having a decent rhythm section, rather than an intent to expand rock ideas with it (admittedly, I'm lousy at remembering exactly what's happened in more normal rhythm sections, so I come out with general impressions of those rather than clear ideas most of time).

In short, there are small progressive leanings on it, but it's nonetheless not exactly a prog rock song according to any sort of strict or stringent sense of the term. Art rock, yes. Prog rock, probably not, unless you want to use a particularly broad definition... to be fair, the range of 'prog rock' on this site is so large that I think a broad definition could probably be considered appropriate. Prog-related, I'd say 'just about'.

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Additionally, for the record, I think one not-quite-prog song, or even an undeniably non-prog one, oddly enough, wouldn't/doesn't prevent an album being considered 'fully prog'... just take More Fool Me from Selling England or the two parts of Pigs On The Wing from Animals (usually gets called Pink Floyd at their proggiest, I don't agree with that view... at least, but my point is that an album can be considered 'fully' prog, even when it includes obviously non-progressive tracks). Heck, Foxtrot has Horizons on it, but it's still a (possibly even the) definitive symphonic album.

Just in case this argument is going thataway.
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Edit: I think the problem with calling things 'prog' or not is partly that the genre has a very flexible definition, most of which isn't set in stone... I tried in the above post to include my own interpretation, as well as how I believe I'd interpret it if I was specifically working under a stricter or looser definition.


Edited by TGM: Orb - May 11 2009 at 21:12

Well, that was enough fiocus on Dire Straits for me, honestly I don't believe it's worth, but, I won't decide.

I move we close this thread 

I think this discussion needs to be tossed into the Dire Straits ;-)

kenethlevine wrote: I move we close this thread

Slartibartfast wrote: Yes, prog related?

I'd vote no myself. 

StyLaZyn wrote: I would say this is essentially a dead horse topic. I'm listening to DS now. I find it extremely difficult to call this band Prog related. They are a blues band. I would think Mark Knoppler would amazed if someone considered his music Prog.

How many times will people get this wrong? Prog related does NOT = Prog.

With that being said, I do not lobby for either side here. I think Rob has made some extremely excellent points, and while I am not as adamant in supporting DS for prog related, this has been a very worthy discussion about DS and about site policy.

Personally, I'm completely indifferent. I do not support their inclusion, but if they were added I frankly have better things to care about.

TGM: Orb wrote: StyLaZyn wrote: kenethlevine wrote: I move we close this thread  Yes. Closing threads never solves anything. It just stops things being discussed. Now, in a discussion-based forum, that wouldn't seem to me to be the idea? Additionally, it seems a bit bizarre to stop it mid-idea... when at last, I think, we're moving onto some sort of dialogue rather than just opposed rants. Tony R wrote: So the positives are starting to doubt their memories now? That's not 100% accurate... I listened to something again a few times more, taking into account as far as possible the genre definitions, took in some perfectly intelligent posts from other readers and applied them to those listens and felt that maybe something was not as clear-cut as I'd previously believed. I still think It Never Rains and Industrial Disease could well both fall into the remit of prog, but, I have to admit, not as firmly so as the other three songs on the album, which neither DB (well, he's mentioned that he sees a couple of things on LOG itself) or myself have got round to talking about yet.

The first thing I did when I read this thread was play Love Over Gold, followed by Alchemy. I'd already been been listening to the debut album regularly as I had acquired a SHM-CD version. Of course I didn't need to rely on memory or gut feeling as I had already played Love Over Gold and Brothers In Arms at least 3  times each this year.