Mark Knopfler At Verizon Center



No pics allowed in Verizon Center for this show.

With the Wizards off to a worst-in-franchise-history 0-9 start and moving towards cementing irrelevancy for the 2012-2013 season in only the first month of action, there hasn't been a whole lot about the trip to Verizon Center to get excited about lately. But Tuesday night the building took up the hardwood and made way for a Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan show. For me, this was a can't miss show. Even though I regularly miss Bob Dylan shows in the area, I couldn't even consider passing this one up. I was jealous last year when they toured Europe together; now I don't have to be jealous any more.

In my pantheon of music gods, Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan occupy special places. Dylan, without doubt, is absolutely the greatest ever. There has been so much good music produced by Bob over the last half century and his music satisfies on so many levels. Every year I sit down and make a list of the 50 albums I would keep if I could only have 50 albums for the rest of my life (thank God this doesn't actually happen) and I always have a difficult time deciding which Dylan albums to put on that list. Realistically, I couldn't bear to be without Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Nashville Skyline (no, that's not a mistake), Blood On The Tracks (if only just for Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts), Desire, Time Out Of Mind and some of the Bootleg Series Albums (the live versions of the Desire songs on the Rolling Thunder Revue album blow away the studio versions). When Dylan hangs it up or dies, I'll mourn that loss, even as I am comforted by everything he has given us. All those albums don't make the list of 50, by the way. There's just too much good music to spend six or more spots on Dylan.

But despite my feelings about Dylan being the greatest ever, Mark Knopfler is my favorite. I'd have Dylan opening for Knopfler but I guess most people wouldn't see it that way and they probably wouldn't sell as many tickets. I first got into Mark Knopfler's music through Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms album when I was in high school and gradually accumulated all their music while I was in college. When Knopfler put the band on hold in the late '80s and started working on side projects, I bought those albums too. But the side stuff with the Notting Hillbillies and Chet Atkins and the movie soundtracks were just not as good as Dire Straits so I was glad to see him re-form the band for 1991's On Every Street album and I finally got to see them in concert at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse.

But after that On Every Street album, Knopfler called it quits for the band and when he released his first solo album in 1996, I didn't even give it a chance, thinking it would be about the same as his side projects between Dire Straits albums. He continued to release solo albums and I continued to ignore them until June of 2006 when he played Constitution Hall in Washington with Emmylou Harris in support of their album All The Roadrunning. My friend Rachel had an extra ticket because her brother decided not to go to the show so I filled in. It was awesome. Mark Knopfler was every bit as good as he was with Dire Straits.

I always thought Knopfler was a great guitar player and an incredible songwriter, but there's a depth in his solo stuff that I don't get out of his Dire Straits songs. He writes songs about subjects that other people I listen to just don't write about whether it be the migration of working class jobs in England to Germany in the early 1980s or Charles Mason and Jeramiah Dixon laying out the northern boundary of Maryland or the decommissioning of a tanker ship built in Newcastle and torn apart in a country far away. There are a lot of English subjects, especially focused on the north part of the country, which I guess I understand from my family's history. My great grandfather worked in the coal mines for 50 years so Mark's song 5:15 a.m., which is about the effect video gambling machines are having on the population in former north England coal mining towns, resonates on a special level for me. It makes me want to reconnect with my family's history.

I have now bought every one of Mark's solo albums and I've seen every show he's played in the Washington DC area since that 2006 show with Emmylou Harris. Tuesday's Knopfler show was just as good as the rest, even though watching a show from floor seats at Verizon Center pretty much sucks. I managed to get an aisle seat with pretty much a clear view of the stage and I was close enough to see his guitar playing. The show was definitely too short. I would have taken another hour or so of Knopfler songs over Bob Dylan bludgeoning the melody out of some classic songs with his current voice; Ballad Of A Thin Man was the only Dylan song that I thought worked.

Mark opened with What It Is, which is actually my favorite song of his, before hitting four songs from his new double album Privateering. One of my favorite things about live music is hearing songs I love in a new light. His live version of Kingdom Of Gold included a guitar solo at the end which improved the song immeasurably and while Corned Beef City sounded substantially similar to the album version, the three guitars playing at once was amazing to hear live.

The middle portion of the show featured a three piece combo version of Song For Sonny Liston which was pretty powerful and Hill Farmer's Blues which is always more sinister and aggressive live than on the album version. The narrator sounds way more desperate in the live version of that songs and Knopfler's guitar playing is angrier. I love the five song extra CD included with the Privateering deluxe edition because it includes a version of this song much closer to the live version than the rendition on The Ragpicker's Dream album.

He closed with a marathon version of Marbletown, which I just wish he'd stop playing live, and Dire Straits' So Far Away which I love live because the delivery of the chorus is so much different. He also managed to slip in a great version of Done With Bonaparte which included about every instrument his diverse band could play, including accordian ("That's my fault. I love 'em" according to Mark) and uilleann pipes.

The full set list was: What It Is; Corned Beef City; Privateering; Kingdom Of Gold; I Used To Could; Song For Sonny Liston; Done With Bonaparte; Hill Farmer's Blues; Haul Away; Marbletown; So Far Away.