Dire Straits - Alchemy - Dire Straits Live album flac

Alchemy: Dire Straits Live is a double album and the first live album by the British rock band Dire Straits, released on 16 March 1984 by Vertigo Records internationally, and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. Recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 22–23 July 1983, the album features well-known songs from the band's first four albums, the ExtendedancEPlay EP and Knopfler's Local Hero soundtrack. Many of the songs have reworked arrangements and extended improvisational segments

Alchemy Dire Straits Live Album – contains the band’s best known and favourite fans songs from their first four albums, the ExtendedancEPlay and the Local Hero – soundtrack by Mark Knopfler. The album cover artwork was adapted from a section of a painting by – Brett Whiteley titled Alchemy 1974. Alchemy is a hypothetical process once believed to turn ordinary elements into gold. The image of a guitar with lips held by a hand was added for the album design. The original painting, done between 1972 and 1973, was composed of many different elements on 18 wood panels.

There is an interesting contrast on this 94-minute double-disc live album (recorded at London's Hammersmith Odeon in July 1983) between the music, much of which is slow and moody, with Mark Knopfler's muttered vocals and large helpings of his fingerpicking on what sounds like an amplified Spanish guitar, and the audience response.

Mark Knopfler stands out on guitar and vocals. If you are new to them, start with their first album, Dire Straits, or Making Movies, and move on to this. You will enjoy their rock-pop-blues sound. Dire Straits' fifth album entitled Alchemy : Dire Straits Live was released in February of 1984 on Vertigo/Phonogram in Europe and on Warner Bros here in the United States. By the time Dire Straits recorded their first (and still their best) live album, Dire Straits (spearheaded by lead singer/lead Mark Knopfler plus bass player John Illsley, guitarist Hal Lindes and keyboard player Alan Clark (who would stay with the band until their unexpected 1995 retirement) had found a new drummer Terry Williams (who was in Rockpile with Nick Lowe.

Dire Straits' 1985 album BROTHERS IN ARMS turned the band into a commercial supernova, thanks in large part to a more streamlined approach to songwriting. It’s difficult to imagine leader Mark Knopfler coming up with platinum pop songs like Walk of Life or So Far Away, or a simple hard rock cut like Money for Nothing for 1979’s COMMUNIQUE or 1980’s MAKING MOVIES, records with Dylanesque lyrical aspirations and Springsteenian sonics. With this in mind, there might be no better single document of Dire Straits’ early sound than the 1984 live album ALCHEMY. Recorded over two nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, ALCHEMY finds the band running through a smart set of early gems, stretching out and hitting the mark, in front of an audience of appreciative fans, who cheer and sing along throughout. Not surprisingly, the best songs on the album are the longest.

Alchemy: Dire Straits Live is a double album and the first live album by the British rock band Dire Straits, released on 16 March 1984 by Vertigo Records internationally, and by Warner Bros.