Well, with eight Knopfler discs and over 900 other ones, the odds of it happening were less than one in a hundred - until it happened. At that point, it became pretty much a certainty.
Disc 129 is...Get Lucky
Artist: Mark KnopflerYear of Release: 2009
What’s Up With The Cover?: A very strange angle shot of a marquee board in lights. As covers go, this one sucks, Mark. I actually prefer the guy in the short pants from "Ragpicker's Dream".
How I Came To Know It: A lot of this is going to sound repititious with my last review, but knowing Knopfler for a long time, this is just me dutifully buying his latest record. "Get Lucky" is his latest record, and I've had it less than a year.
How It Stacks Up: When I reviewed "Ragpicker's Dream" I assumed it was better than "Get Lucky" but really, "Get Lucky" has the edge - so it will supplant "Ragpicker's Dream for 5th of my 8 Knopfler records. A short-lived reign of mediocrity, indeed..
Rating: 3 stars.
Between "Ragpicker's Dream" in 2002 and "Get Lucky" in 2009, Knopfler released three records, to varying degrees of success. The one preceding this one is "Kill To Get Crimson" (2007) which I did not enjoy greatly. "Get Lucky" is not his greatest work, but it is a marked uptick, and gives me hope for whatever he decides to do next.
Anyway, seven years later (or a day - depending on how you're measuring time on A Creative Maelstrom), Knopfler is still doing his own damned thing, and singing pop/folk songs about increasingly obscure topics.
On "Get Lucky", these include the hard life of a British lorry driver in the 60s ("Border Reiver"), and a guy who makes guitars that Knopfler thinks are swell ("Monteleone").
For his part, Knopfler's guitar remains swell, now 30 years removed from the first Dire Straits album. Wow - time flies.
I like that this record also returns to some of the arrangements he used to good effect way back in 1996 for "Goldenheart", particularly the increased use of strings and french horns.
My favourite tracks on this album actually showed up rather late. While earlier tracks are pretty uneven, the last four are the best run on the record, and take what is really a 2 star album at this point, and elevate it to 3.
It gets started, with an honest and respectful track about comrades lost to war unsurprisingly called "Remembrance Day." The lyrics to "Remembrance Day" aren't the most amazing (e.g. "we will remember them"), but the tune conveys just the right combination of reverence and gravitas.
Next up, a song that I think is about an itinerant worker. Here, Knopfler has learned the lesson lost on "Ragpicker's Dream" and engages us with the specifics of the character:
"I'm better with my muscles
Than I am with my mouth
I'll work the fairgrounds in the summer
Or go pick fruit down south."
It is a nice sketch, and a reminder that not everyone finds an easy way in this life, but many of these same people work hard, honest days and years all the same.
"So Far From the Clyde" is the song about a boneyard, where ships are scuttled and dismantled. I've always been enamoured with the age of sail, and I found an myself actually feeling a little depressed at the description of the 'death' of these ships.
And the final song on the record (and my favourite) is "Piper To The End" which tells the story of a young man who falls in battle, alongside his bagpipes:
"This has been a day to die on
Now the day is almost done
Here the pipes will lay beside me
Silent with the battle drum
If friends in time be severed
Someday we will meet again
I'll return to leave you never
Be a piper to the end."
This song could just be a timeless homage to any Piper, so many of whom have marched bravely to battle over the centuries. If I had strictly enforced my Modernist tendencies, and just taken the song without context, it would remain just that - and still stand strong on its own. However, this time I feel compelled to share some liner notes from "Get Lucky" on the specific subject of this song. Take it away, Mark:
"Piper To The End is for my Uncle Freddie, Lance Corporal Frederick John Laidler, a piper of the 1st Battalion, Tyneside Scottish, the Black Watch, RHR, who carried his pipes into action and was killed with them at Ficheux, near Arras on the 20th May, 1940, aged 20."
RIP, Corporal Laidler.
Best tracks: Remembrance Day, Get Lucky, So Far From the Clyde, Piper To The End
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