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Lyr Req: Money for Nothing (Dire Straits/Knopfler)

01 May 02 - 04:32 PM (#702340)
Subject: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Mrrzy

I know I know this song, but it's not coming up for me. I searched the DT and the Internet and didn't find it... something something microwave oven, something something color tv? Then I kind of segue into They dress like housewives, or in a shirt and a tie (which is Talking Heads, I know the song I want isn't by them but apparently my hindbrain thinks the tunes are similar.)... HELP! I've got that one line running through my brain since Timothy decided to cook a piece of pizza for 23 hours instead of 23 minutes and practically burned the house down. Certainly soldered a blackened pizza slice to the bottom of the microwave...


01 May 02 - 04:41 PM (#702348)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Joe Offer

Well, it's a Dire Straits recording - I remember that much. Thanks to Lyrics World (click) that was enough.
The song is Money For Nothing (click), and I imagine it was written by Mark Knopfler.
Another Dire Straits favorite of mine is "Industrial Disease," but I couldn't find those lyrics right away.
-Joe Offer-


01 May 02 - 04:43 PM (#702349)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Joe Offer

Ah, here's Industrial Disease.
-Joe Offer, Mark Knopfler fan-


02 May 02 - 12:52 AM (#702594)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: rangeroger

I saw an interview with Mark Knopfler where he told the story behind the lyrics to Money For Nothing.

He was in a Sears store in New York and wandered into the Appliance department. He overheard a salesman and one of the appliance installers talking while looking at a huge bank of TV sets all tuned to MTV.

rr


02 May 02 - 08:19 AM (#702788)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Grab

Gawd's sake, who doesn't know "Money for Nothing"?!?! One of the classic recognisable guitar riffs of all time, right up there with "Smoke on the Water" and "Stairway to Heaven". Jointly written by Mark Knopfler and Sting (Sting sings the high backing vocals). I believe MK came up with the main theme of the song, and Sting filled in some of the lines MK couldn't get sorted.

Do yourself a favour though, listen to the full album version instead of the radio edit with the shortened intro. The shortened intro just doesn't give that initial riff the same impact. Still, Dire Straits suffered from the start on radio edits - the daft bugger who decided that the final solo in "Sultans of Swing" should be cut just as MK breaks loose with those final arpeggios should be hung up by his bollocks until he's bloody well sorry! ;-)

Graham.


02 May 02 - 01:46 PM (#703002)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: C-flat

Grab, you're dead right about the annoying habit radio stations have of fading what for me is the best bit of Sultans of Swing! When that single was released every guitar players ears pricked up at that fantastic solo.


02 May 02 - 03:09 PM (#703081)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Joe Offer

One of my favorite albums is Missing...and Presumed Having a Good Time, by Knopfler's Notting Hillbillies. Really fun arrangements of old-timey and traditional songs.
-Joe Offer-


02 May 02 - 03:26 PM (#703093)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: lamarca

Another Knopfler fan here - I broke my rule about not buying CDs of items I own in LP to get all the Dire Straits remasters, so I could play them on my computer at work. My favorite Dire Straits album is Making Movies - Tunnel of Love and Romeo and Juliet still grab something inside me and twist it.

Knopfler's album with the late Chet Atkins, "Neck and Neck", is great fun - the two of them sound like they had a great time making it. And Knopfler's newest solo, "Sailing to Philadelphia" is worth the purchase for the title song alone, a duet with James Taylor (I know, Spaw, you consider him terminally bland, but I STILL like him 30 years after my teenage crush on him) that is the story of Mason and Dixon's famous survey.


02 May 02 - 03:35 PM (#703104)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Mrrzy

If it makes you feel any better, it was one of the songs we danced to at our wedding! SORRY I don't know the words or the band or... my...


02 May 02 - 03:58 PM (#703133)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Joe Offer

Which song did you dance to, Mrr, "Industrial Disease"?
I couldn't help myself....

Now, if you're going to talk about the "Neck and Neck" album, then maybe I could go on a tangent and put in a plug for the album Chet Atkins did with Suzy Bogguss. Great stuff.
And I shouldn't pick on Mrr, who is a truly good person, usually.
-Joe-


02 May 02 - 04:46 PM (#703156)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: gnu

Gosh, I didn't know we could talk about MK and DS in this forum ! Simply fantastic stuff. lamarca : "... layin everybody low, with the love song that he made..." I can sing that whole album and hear every note of that sweeeeeet guitar in my mind.


03 May 02 - 08:57 AM (#703555)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Mrrzy

Yeah right Joe - usually! And we danced to the microwave oven song, at the time it made sense... although now with hindsight the other might have been a better choice, ha ha!


03 May 02 - 08:59 AM (#703560)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Grab

Thread drift I'm afraid. Lamarca, I was honestly less impressed by Sailing to Philadelphia - there were a couple of songs just dying for a final guitar solo, in particular that motorcyling one (Speedway at Nazareth? can't remember the name offhand) is crying out for it. But I love Silvertown Blues and Prairie Wedding off that album - I've worked out a single guitar arrangement of Prairie Wedding for playing myself.

One of these days I've got to learn Romeo and Juliet properly, not just faking it like I do now. Hearing that song is precisely why I bought my resonator guitar. :-)

Graham.


03 May 02 - 06:52 PM (#703939)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Hrothgar

"Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a microwave oven" just doesn't scan, does it?


30 Nov 10 - 07:31 AM (#3043464)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: mandotim

The stuff he did with Emmylou Harris on 'All the Roadrunning' is just sublime. Another album where you can really hear how much fun they had making it.


30 Nov 10 - 07:41 AM (#3043468)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Backwoodsman

Mandotim, I'm with you on that one - fantastic musicianship, brilliant writing, and a superlative blend of voices that shouldn't work together but do. They are just.....mind-blowing!

If I never heard another album, I'd die happy having heard 'All the Roadrunning'.


30 Nov 10 - 10:34 AM (#3043563)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Microwave oven? Color Teeeveeeee?
From: Rev. Dan

Also check out 'Better Than This' by Hadacol (title track of an early-2000s CD) - it's a plea for accepting the white-trash life. Great mandolin on the track too.

lyr sample:

Microwave oven, VCR and a color TV
Remote control baby tell me what else do you need?
Satellite dish on your double wide
And two cats in the yard
....

chorus: Look around you / It don't get better than this...

Dan