Dire Straits – Think Bensonium

Day 364: Telegraph Road, Dire Straits

Roderick Benson — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:37 +0000

Countdown to the year anniversary of Covid Island Discs T -3

This is probably one of Dire Straits longest songs running for over 15 minutes. This song opened their Love over Gold album and it certainly is a fantastic and interesting song. Interestingly enough, there is a Telegraph Road in the North Shore of Sydney so whenever I drove past that road in Pymble, it always brought this classic Dire Straits song to mind. Some how I don’t think the Pymble Telegraph road would have been the road that Mark Knopfler had in mind when he penned this classic.

Day 195: Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits

Roderick Benson — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

“and Harry doesn’t mind, if he doesn’t make the scene. He’s got a day time job he’s doing alright.”

Day 86: Twisting by the pool, Dire Straits

Roderick Benson — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 18:48:42 +0000

Time for some more Dire Straits I feel. Something to make you all feel jolly.

Day 16: Money for Nothing by Dire Straits (and Sting)

Rbenson — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 21:59:42 +0000

OK I will admit this wasn’t going to be my original entry but then Anthony Holmes reminded me of this album in one of his posts. It makes sense to post it today because it also fits with my rock collaboration theme where Sting does the “I want my MTV”.

However, another reason for posting is because I have quite a funny back story to this song. In 1985, the year after I had left school this album was released. That year my school friend Mark Short, who was doing journalism at the time, rang me to ask if I knew anything about an unfolding story of the 1985 Higher School Certificate papers being stolen. I was nonplussed that he should think I would know anything about such seedy goings on.

Yet of course Mark was one step ahead of the game as it turned out that the whole unsavoury affair was centred around our local high school (Balgowlah Boys High School, oh yeah mate that the sort of names we give our suburbs in Aus) where some characters in that school managed to get hold of the national test papers before they were sat by the general public. How do I know this? Well my dear late friend Jonathan Higgs, who was one of the top students in the school, was approached by one of the boys, who had the 2 unit HSC mathematics paper, and asked if he could solve a particular problem from it. Of course Jon did not know it was his year’s HSC and given he was a 4 unit maths student, he never sat the 2 unit paper anyway. Looking back so many years later, it still makes me laugh.

So why is this story connected with this song you ask? Well after the fiasco blew over, some cheeky group released a cover song of Money for Nothing which was all about the stolen 1985 HSC papers. I don’t remember any of the lyrics except for the iconic Sting line: “I want my MTV” which they of course changed to “I want my HSC”.

Day 3: Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits

Rbenson — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 20:36:22 +0000

OK so yesterday I tried to demonstrate that my musical tastes have just about made it into the 21st century. Alas now I have done that I shall return to the 80s. In year 11 we were asked to write about two songs we liked in an English lesson. The first song I chose was Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits, the second one you shall find out tomorrow. The two songs I chose were based on clever lyrics. This song has the line “and all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme” which I think was a pretty neat line. Enjoy!