Oh, good, a Dire Straits spin-off band

Here's some news to brighten the cold winter night, assuming your nights are easily brightened:

Dire Straits' Alan Clark and Chris White with five hand-picked, world class musicians - Terence Reis, Steve Ferrone from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Mickey Féat, Adam Phillips and Jamie Squire – are set to perform at venues in the United States starting in late February.

That's the keyboard player who joined after the Making Movies sessions, and the saxophonist who joined in 1985. So, yes, Dire Straits members unquestionably. But perhaps not the names you'd reach for first.

Obviously, they can't tour under the name Dire Straits, so they've dropped half the name.

They've gone with The Straits; that might not have been the half that's most honest to retain.

The headline on the PR blurb is kind of interesting, too:

DIRE STRAITS MEMBERS FORM 'THE STRAITS'
AND ANNOUNCE U.S. TOUR

The Straits played the Royal Albert Hall in 2011, so the "formation" not quite the breaking news the press release would suggest it is.

Dire Straits: Canada okay with faggots after all

If you were planning to move to Canada on the basis of the ban on Money For Nothing, bad news. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council have thought again, and will now allow Knopfler's tale of white-good-shifting to pump from the Canadian radio once again:

The new decision was based on what CBSC calls "considerable additional information" – such as learning that alternative versions of "Money For Nothing" have existed since 1985, proving "the band and the composer considered that there was a less offensive way of presenting the song to the public long ago" and the context in which the word is used demonstrates that "the composer's language appears not to have had an iota of malevolent or insulting intention."

Maybe I'm missing something, but if there's a version without faggot in, doesn't that sort-of suggest even Dire Straits feel uncomfortable with a song using the word, rather than making it alright?

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Queen-era lead by Queen

To mark the Diamond Jubilee or something, the Office For National Statistics has compiled a list of the best-selling singles and albums since 1956.

Yes, I know that this sounds more like the job of the BPI or the Official Charts Company, but the ONS have done it. And I know 1956 isn't 60 years ago, but... look, they've done it, alright? For whatever reason.

They put Queen's Greatest Hits at the top of the album list, and then it's the sort of things you'd expect: Abba, Oasis, Dire Straits.

Who can make sense of all this? Just as the ONS might be better off counting national statistics, you'd have thought Gennaro Castaldo would be too busy with jobsite to offer some guidance, but HMV's factopulator can't resist commenting on a survey:

Gennaro Castaldo, at HMV, the music shop, pointed out that Dire Straits's album in 1985 and Oasis's in 1996 book ended the glory years of the compact disc.

He said: "Dire Straits may not be fashionable now but they were huge. 1985 was the year of Live Aid and they were one of the stars of that event. And Brothers in Arms was the defining album of what was then an amazing, aspirational technology: compact disc."

You just know his gaze would have gone all far-away as he said that; remembering the days when there'd be a small queue at the HMV tills, people jostling to flick through the CD racks. A little sigh.

HMV used to be busy.

Back when Dire Straits were huge, and everyone wanted CDs.

Happy days.

Old faggot gets Dire Straits banned

The awkwardness of the word "faggot" turning up in Money For Nothing has taken a good quarter-century to bite Dire Straits on the buttocks. Canada has banished the song from the airwaves:

St. John’s OZ FM aired the song last year, sparking a complaint that has essentially resulted in a ban [from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council] on the word from radio airplay in any song – a victory, according to a major gay-rights group, against a slur often hurled by violent gay bashers.

What seems to have happened here is that the Straits have been used as a stalking horse to get "faggot" declared off-limits for all broadcasters, so presumably the complainants were aware the f-word was being dropped in character, but knew by kicking up this storm they could block much more unpleasant songs from appearing on the radio.

Mark Knopfler has spoken before about objections to word:

The lyrics portray the character who uses the epithets as ridiculous. But in a 1985 Rolling Stone interview, Mr. Knopfler said complaints made him wonder whether having the word spoken by a fictional character was too subtle for song. “It suggests that maybe you can't let it have so many meanings – you have to be direct,” he said.

When someone is worrying that a Dire Straits song might be "too subtle", you're in strange territory indeed.

Watching out for hatred is fair enough, but this judgement feels a bit out of line. Surely the context is important?

Band doesn't reunite shock

Amongst all the bands who - with varying degrees of welcome - reconstituted in the last few years, there are few hold-outs. Dire Straits is one. Mark Knopfler is saving us all, says bassist John Illsley:

"I think we've definitely got one more tour left in us, and probably another record too," Illsley said. "[But] he's [Knopfler] doing different kinds of music now.

"He's doing incredibly well as a solo artist, so hats off to him. He's having a perfectly good time doing what he's doing."

Or maybe - like the rest of us - Knopfler feels if he never has to hear Walk Of Life again, he might just die a happy man.

Mark Knopfler doesn't forget his brothers in arms

Not that Knopfler actually fought in the Falklands, mind, but he's about to re-release Brothers In Arms to raise funds for a charity which takes soldiers who fought in the Falklands back to the islands to try and help with the PTSD.

It's interesting that this is being announced on the same day as Asda drop the CD single - Brothers In Arms was usually considered the first proper single released on the format. This time, though, it's just going to be a download.