
The copy we are selling is similar to the one pictured above.
Sonic Grade
Side One:
Side Two:
Vinyl Grade
Side One: Mint Minus Minus*
Side Two: Mint Minus Minus
- A vintage copy of the band's debut album with very good Hot Stamper grades from start to finish
- It's richer, fuller and with more presence than the average copy, and that's especially true for whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently being foisted on an unsuspecting record buying public
- This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies - they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
- Rhett Davies knocked this one out of the park - it's a Top 100 title, a member of the Tubey Magical Top Ten, and our favorite by the band for both sound and music
- If you made the mistake of buying the unbelievably bad sounding MoFi 45 RPM Half-Speed, this vintage UK pressing will be a revelation
- 4 1/2 stars: "Knopfler also shows an inclination toward Dylanesque imagery, which enhances the smoky, low-key atmosphere of the album... the album is remarkably accomplished for a debut, and Dire Straits had difficulty surpassing it throughout their career."
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*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 4 times at a moderate level at the start of track 1 on side 1, "Down to the Waterline." There is another mark that plays 9 times lightly at the start of track 2 on side 1, "Water of Love."
Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG.
Rhett Davies is one of our favorite recording engineers, the man behind Taking Tiger Mountain, 801 Live, and Avalon to name just a few of his most famous recordings, all favorites of ours of course.
The man may be famous for some fairly artificial sounding recordings -- Eno's, Roxy Music's and The Talking Heads' albums come to mind -- but it's obvious to us now, if it wasn't before, that those are entirely artistic choices, not engineering shortcomings.
Rhett Davies, by virtue of the existence of this album alone, has proven that he belongs in the company of the greatest engineers of all time, right up there with the likes of Bill Porter, Ken Scott, Stephen Barncard, Geoff Emerick, Glyn Johns and others we could mention.
What The Best Sides Of Dire Straits Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Vertigo Magic
This vintage stereo pressing has the kind of Midrange Magic that modern records can rarely reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it ain't coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage All Tube Analog recordings are known for -- this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What We're Listening For On Dire Straits
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Demo Disc Rock
What separates the better copies from the merely good ones? In a word, energy. The better copies make this band sound like they are on fire, ready to go head to head with the world, fiercely proud of the new sound they've created. The not-so-good copies make Dire Straits sound the way Dire Straits usually does -- laid back and well under control, perhaps even a bit bored with the whole affair. The better copies show you a band that wants to rock with the best of them, and can.
"Water of Love" and "Sultans of Swing" on a Hot Stamper copy have the kind of sound that will have your audiophile friends drooling and turning green with envy. We can't all afford $100,000 turntables, but when you have a record that sounds as good as our best pressings do, you don't need one! A great copy makes it sound like you have 100k in your rig, whether you do or not.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.
A Must Own Rock Record
We consider this album a Masterpiece. It's a recording that belongs in any serious rock music collection.
Others that belong in that category can be found here.
Side One
- Down to the Waterline
- Water of Love
- Setting Me Up
- Six Blade Knife
- Southbound Again
Side Two
- Sultans of Swing
- In the Gallery
- Wild West End
- Lions
AMG 4 1/2 Star Review
Dire Straits' minimalist interpretation of pub rock had already crystallized by the time they released their eponymous debut. Driven by Mark Knopfler's spare, tasteful guitar lines and his husky warbling, the album is a set of bluesy rockers.
And while the bar band mentality of pub-rock is at the core of Dire Straits -- even the group's breakthrough single, "Sultans of Swing," offered a lament for a neglected pub rock band -- their music is already beyond the simple boogies and shuffles of their forefathers, occasionally dipping into jazz and country.
Knopfler also shows an inclination toward Dylanesque imagery, which enhances the smoky, low-key atmosphere of the album. While a few of the songs fall flat, the album is remarkably accomplished for a debut, and Dire Straits had difficulty surpassing it throughout their career.