![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse10.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/paice.jpg)
Sweet child on the Telegraph Road
And we’ll leave you today with this little gem by Dutch artist Laszlo Buring. His specialty seems to be reimagining classic tracks in the “what-if” style of another band. Here is an example: a cover of Child in Time as if it was written by Dire Straits:
Thanks to Eric Alper for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The vocals aren’t really Knopfler – he is not that easy to emulate with his conversational style especially for a non-native speaker -, but this is instrumentally nicely done with a perhaps too busy bass drum for a DS treatment – and Paicey’s military style drum rolls don’t really work either.
Dire Straits’ fourth album Love Over Gold is actually my favorite one, Telegraph Road is an epic evoking all these cinematic pictures. Knopfler’s deadpan in Industrial Disease about “Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong!” is priceless and very Gillanesque:
https://youtu.be/nTb0RnJTsRQ
I’m sure IG and RG must have liked that song and listened to it a lot – any resemblance to Via Miami is of course purely coincidental!
There is an early Joe Jackson number that owes a bit to Child in Time too:
https://youtu.be/X7I3jAFyFS4
December 31st, 2025 at 01:16That was different.. but not annoyingly so as most of these types of things are. Besides Telegraph Road I also hear elements of Tunnel of Love.
December 31st, 2025 at 05:10No, thanks!
December 31st, 2025 at 08:46@ 3… I hear Tunnel of Love in all of Dires songs 🤔
December 31st, 2025 at 12:56I liked it a lot.
I appreciate the technical ability, the arrangement ability and the taste of this guy, who does honor to Dire Straits and DP at the same time.
#1 Uwe:
December 31st, 2025 at 13:21Knopfler had a lot of swing, with LittleIan they would have had fun!
@1- ah yes, Love Over Gold. If I had to pick an LP from DS, it’d be this one too, with Communique not too far behind. Always my go-to records by them.
@3- I’m hearing and picking up vibes of “Once Upon a Time in The West”.
December 31st, 2025 at 14:37An interesting take on CIT. The only reason I listened was because of the Dire Straits mention. Impossible to go past their two early albums. I owned the next two, some good songs still, but there was something special about that early original lineup. My Dutch lady friend went to an English pub and they were performing there, later 1970’s before they were ‘known’. Cheers
December 31st, 2025 at 20:54Pick Withers is a wonderful drummer, very much suited to the original Dire Straits music. Fla76 suggesting Ian Paice in that band? I think Ian would have eventually fallen asleep. Pick got out just in time. Cheers.
https://thedrumdoctor.net/pick-withers-a-road-well-travelled-a-drumdoctor-interview
December 31st, 2025 at 22:26Nice attempt, but too long for me. It’s not easy to cover a classic though, there’s no way to capture a live performance and not bring any new energy into it.
January 1st, 2026 at 00:58@4
I assume that comment was meant for me…
Well, they certainly all don’t sound like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6EeAZy91-s
Happy New Year Everyone!!! 🥳 🥳 🥳
January 1st, 2026 at 08:17To be honest, when I started listening to it, I thought more of Barret’s Pink Floyd than Dire Straits…
Happy New Year to You All 🍾
January 1st, 2026 at 10:23Thanks for the Pick Withers interview, Tassie Boy – Charlie Dore?! I guess there are worse positions for a drummer than to spend a full gig staring at her butt. 🤗 Lovely woman and great writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGKrgJZhpzk
Withers had/has real integrity. And without him, DS didn’t sound the same.
January 1st, 2026 at 17:29I miss an adequate bass line, this reminds me of “Once Upon A Time In The West “from the Alchemy live album.
If Mark was Blackmore Gillan (Coverdale) and Lord for Dire Straits, Illsley was their Ian Paice. He gave both rhythm and a subtle style for creating Dire Straits’ groove..I miss that his bass in Child in Time haha.
I read somewhere that Mark was a rock journalist before starting his musical career and that he wrote about a Deep Purple concert –
The similarity between Ritchie and Mark..and that Stratocaster sound I recognize the similarity with Mark in the solo in the song “Hold On” from Strobringer.album .a funky song that Ritchie despised and it was fantastic song … special.. by the change of lead vocals, especially David’s sexy shuffle groove and refined playing. And… Ritchie’s incredible solo in the song he despises, in my opinion one of the most subtle solos in his career.
Happy New Year !
January 1st, 2026 at 17:55Same thing here, I regard Blackmore’s solo in Hold On as one of his improvisational peaks: off the cuff, loose but tight, catchy and hugely tasteful plus elegantly surmounting several musical obstacles in its course where other guitarists would have conveniently stopped and returned to the song. The art of Ritchie Blackmore summed up.
Something like the Highway Star solo is of course breathtaking as a musical piece requiring great technique, but it it was worked out before, follows a strict structure and a lot of its “otherworldliness” in sound came from Ritchie’s weird harmonization which – in absence of a second guitarist – he could not replicate live, he was restricted to playing the first voice.
And the more brooding and elongated eastern scale solos in Stargazer and Gates of Babylon are naturally great as well, but they are by their very nature not really hummable and nowhere near as catchy as what happens in those quirky and inspired 50 seconds during Hold On.
January 2nd, 2026 at 17:15Nonsense and stupid trend.
January 2nd, 2026 at 19:32@ 12 – I didn’t realise who Charlie was by her name at all, as I read the interview and then left the site to link it to here. I do remember her now, the hit song Pilot of the Airwaves, after reading your link though and thanks for the reminder. A rather successful artist and songwriter too and including some acting. That movie The Ploughman’s Lunch she appeared in brings back a distant memory, after reading about it. Thanks again for another memory lane trip Uwe. Here is a recent five minute home video of Pick on the drums in is back yard, demonstrating the Sultans of Swing drumming. Even his little doggie is keen to get in on the act. Karin has some work to do with Anton. Cheers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QoSsEj81j0
January 2nd, 2026 at 21:22@3, Yeah, I’m with you. No, thanks!
January 3rd, 2026 at 12:05Sometimes, you just have admire the original statue but not the replica. For me, the original child in time is not for copying or play with, the original song is faultless.
January 3rd, 2026 at 22:23This song is just for fun and nothing serious about it.
Peace ✌️
I think the IGB cover of Child in Time which sounded like it was an outtake from Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was musically the worthiest cover – I especially liked how they were brave enough to skip the “Jon Lord borrows melodies from It’s A Beautiful Day” and the very much of its time “fast shuffle middle part on one note” which to me even had Stoner Rock (Blue Cheer or early Grand Funk Railroad anyone?) similarities (ok for 1970, but barely thereafter). Instead they went for that dreamy atmosphere and did that extremely well.
And IGB even topped themselves on the live versions where Colin Towns did that rain forest mood flute intro.
Of course, having the original singer of CIT on vocals helped. 😂
January 4th, 2026 at 17:38Agree with Uwe’s comment on CIT with the IGB. Ian sang it and wrote the lyrics, we presume. I don’t have a problem with an original artist doing a different version of one of their songs. Other artists, I don’t really get into covers at all, especially these days. Back in the day we have heard some really good covers of other artists songs. Is it because there was less of that around then? Today there are too many tribute bands, singing ‘talent’ celebrity tv shows and YouTubers etc. Too much like a ‘karaoke’ saturation thing going on. Each to their own. Cheers.
January 4th, 2026 at 22:34