Albums That Should Exist: Dire Straits - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Arena, Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 12-21-1979

Friday, February 7, 2025

Dire Straits - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Arena, Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 12-21-1979

Back in 2022, I posted an album of the band Dire Straits performing for the BBC. At the time, I thought the only BBC performances they did was what I gathered onto that album from various sessions dating from 1978 to 1992, plus a 1978 concert. I decided not to post the concert because it's very widely available as the official album "Live at the BBC." But I recently found two more BBC concerts, so I'm going to post them. Here's the first one, a full concert from 1979 with Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy as a special guest on the last four songs.

This concert also has been officially released, in 2023 as part of the box set "Live 1978-1992" and also a stand-alone release at the same time. So I wasn't going to post this either. But then I listened to the album, and realized the lead vocals were low in the mix. I brought them up thanks to the UVR5 audio editing program, and I think the whole thing sounds better now. So I decided to post it, since this is different.

This concert took place about six months after the release of the band's second album, "Communique," but still almost a year before the release of their next album, "Making Movies." Still, some songs for the next album had already been written, and the band played two of them, "Les Boys" and "Solid Rock." They also played "Twisting by the Pool," which wouldn't be released until it came out on an E.P. in 1983. But what really makes this concert special is the encore, where Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy joined the band on stage and did most of the singing through cover versions of four rock and roll classics from the 1950s or earlier. Dire Straits almost never did that kind of thing.

By the way, now that I have more than one album of BBC material for this band, I renamed the earlier album "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." If you want the updated version with changed cover art and such, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/12/dire-straits-bbc-sessions-1978-1992.html

This album is an hour and 39 minutes long.

01 talk (Dire Straits)
02 Down to the Waterline (Dire Straits)
03 Six Blade Knife (Dire Straits)
04 Once Upon a Time in the West (Dire Straits)
05 Lady Writer (Dire Straits)
06 Lions (Dire Straits)
07 Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits)
08 talk (Dire Straits)
09 Les Boys (Dire Straits)
10 Portobello Belle (Dire Straits)
11 News (Dire Straits)
12 What’s the Matter Baby (Dire Straits)
13 talk (Dire Straits)
14 Setting Me Up (Dire Straits)
15 In the Gallery (Dire Straits)
16 Solid Rock (Dire Straits)
17 Southbound Again (Dire Straits)
18 Where Do You Think You’re Going (Dire Straits)
19 Wild West End (Dire Straits)
20 Twisting by the Pool (Dire Straits)
21 talk (Dire Straits)
22 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Dire Straits with Phil Lynott)
23 That’s Alright Mama (Dire Straits with Phil Lynott)
24 Nadine [Is It You] (Dire Straits with Phil Lynott)
25 Keep A-Knockin' (Dire Straits with Phil Lynott)