My Top 1000 Songs #909: Wild West End

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Never been a huge Dire Straits fan (Mark Knopfler's Dylan-like growl a bit of a stumbling block), though I enjoy their records in small doses. I still remember the self-titled debut coming out in 1978, "Sultans of Swing" utterly inescapable on the radio. I biked over to the local public library and checked out the record--at 12, with no car or cash, I was still heavily in bike-to-the-library-to-check-out-records mode--and, like the single, found it ok but maybe not my speed. (It's grown on me over time, largely due to sonic fidelity and Knopfler's guitar virtuosity, though I still find the debut more like an unusually well-played pub rock album than a true classic.)

However, the one song that never left my imagination was the gentle ballad "Wild West End." Something about the melody of the chorus is just unforgettably evocative. (For some reason, I tend to link the song with Bruce Cockburn's musically comparable "Wondering Where The Lions Are," mining similar emotional territory for me.) Not the most riveting track in the world, just sort of amiably ambles along, but it's always stayed with me.

Live 1979:

Pretty cover version by Madeline Kelley: