Who is Chris White?
The Dire Straits Experience claim that he is an “original
Dire Straits member”. However, a little research shows that he toured with them, but is only credited as an additional musician on one album (On Every Street) so couldn’t really be termed a “band member” to my mind. He plays
saxophone and flute…and we all remember those long sax solos in the middle of
Dire Straits songs, don’t we? Thought not.
So, former backing band of Dire Straits member Chris White
has assembled a band to cover Dire Straits songs and tour with said musicians.
They started their New Zealand leg of the tour at the Michael Fowler Centre,
Wellington, and we went along to see them.
The show was due to start at 8:00pm, so we trotted along to
Capitol, one of our fave weekend lunchtime haunts, to try their dinner menu. I’ve
been there for dinner before, but Nicola hasn’t. I had the first asparagus of
the season followed by beef fillet, and Nicola had the bruschetta and malfalde
pasta with veal. I say “followed”, but due to a mix-up in the kitchen there was
quite a wait for the main courses, so we were a bit rushed and didn’t have time
to try any puddings, but headed straight down the road to make it with minutes
to spare.
On came the band, and they launched straight into Telegraph
Road, complete with sax part. They then ran through a pretty thorough sampling
of the repertoire, with the emphasis on the later albums. Mysteriously, they
avoided Twisting By The Pool, and one of my favourite tracks from Making
Movies, Skateaway, also failed to make the cut. They played out the set with
Sultans Of Swing in a full 10-minute version.
But wait…they hadn’t played Money For Nothing yet, had they?
Indeed not, and after the obligatory stamping and cheering they came back on to
play it, and a final instrumental (featuring saxophone) for their encore. My
thoughts on what constitutes a proper encore can be found here.
That was that, so we headed out, and headed home. Not the
best concert I’ve been to this year, but it was pretty good.
Saw them last night in Krefeld (Germany) and I thought they were most excellent. Individually the musicians were really good, and together, esp the singer were a good, tight combo.
ReplyDeleteI listen to the Alchemy album a fair bit so I'll take a little exception to you mentioning the non-famous Straits sax solos. True in their studio albums, but not of their live performances which often featured lengthly sax parts - indeed whenever I saw them they added a lot of noodly sax/guitar parts that I didn't always appreciate.
I don't listen to On Every Street at all (is there anything after that?) because we saw them on that tour and the only thing I have to say about that is that we renamed them Dire and I didn't listen to any of their music for yonks.
Starting with Telegraph Road was a bold move - and I liked the ending, because you know that's what they're going to end with. I didn't expect the penultimate song to be Brothers In Arms though, which was really well done and especially poignant because we saw them the day after the 100th anniversary of armistice day.
I, too, had hoped for Skateway but Expresso Love was a nice surprise for me. My favourite Straits song has always been Tunnel of Love, and the Chef's is Once Upon A Time In The West so we both left happy. Other little bonus was that their final encore song was an instrumental, Local Hero.
Pity about Twisting By The Pool, though, and they could also have played Badges, Posters, Stickers & T-Shirts which I love.
I'll definitely see them again if they're in the area.