Led by singer, guitarist and songwriter Mark Knopfler, the British group Dire Straits lifted soft rock to the eighties. For a long time they were lord and master in this genre, which was believed to be dead in the 1970s. Their status was sealed in 1984 with Alchemy, a live double album, another seventies artifact. The concert registration, recorded in London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1983, is now
… available on two CDs supplemented with a DVD. Dire Straits has always guaranteed a sound that is taken care of down to the last detail and knows how to make this happen on stage, but there is definitely also a sweat. You soon take for granted Knopfler's terry cloth headband when you see and hear how much intention he puts into his unique and influential guitar playing. Nice to see how unpolished the group was in its early days in two, as an extra ' s added television recordings of their first hit Sultans Of Swing, among others. A BBC documentary from the early 1980s, in which Dire Straits, which was disbanded in 1995, comes across as a knowledgeable and sympathetic band, completes this package. (MR)more
