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Comment by mtts | Hacker News Reader

Guy I know owned (owns) a music store. In the late 90s, he thought he knew were things were going. He started saving up for his pension, thinking that by 2015 or so no one would be buying cds anymore.

Now, he says, his music store is doing better than ever. He was correct in that no one buys cds anymore, but vinyl is selling like crazy. The store, which has always been popular ever since the 1980s, is making crazy amounts of money and his pension is becoming very comfortable.

Only thing he can’t come to terms with, however, is that his younger patrons for some reason insist on buying Dire Straits records. He can’t for the life of him figure out how something that used to be a signifier of having absolutely no taste in music has become so popular with music connoisseurs.

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Your bar is way too high if Dire Straits is the bar for poor taste. Even for the 90's.

Mark Knopfler's americana-spirit might be a bit much for some people, but ALL those guys are A-class musicians and they've never done a bad song.

Twisting by the Pool? :-) I don't dislike any others. I think this poor taste thing seems to occur if something becomes too popular, it becomes poor taste in the eyes of many people, even if that thing is actually good. I'm not convinced anyone can seriously listen to Telegraph Road and say that doesn't have artistic merit. Similarly there is Phil Collins that has a huge background in prog rock and is a top class musician, that is now maligned by many people because he wrote some highly catchy and accessible pop songs.

Dire Straits is better if you forget that they made anything past Brothers in Arms, just like U2 probably should have stopped somewhere around Rattle and Hum.

The problem with Dire Straits is not that they are bad players but they are just so unbearably SMUG about their technical chops.

Sounds like an attitude which would be popular with youth.

> figure out how something that used to be a signifier of having absolutely no taste in music has become so popular with music connoisseurs.

A) They make good music.

B) They are ignorant of the popular opinion about bands who haven't been relevant in at least 20 years.

Like with Nickelback: it's popular to hate them so everyone hates them. In another 10-15 years, young people who never learned that they were supposed to hate Nickelback will judge them on their merits alone, and maybe they will see a brief surge in popularity.

Also, I think most of the hate in music industry is manufactured anyway. Popular bands earn too much sway with audiences and start dictating terms to record labels, so the execs put together an anti-marketing campaign to knock them down a few pegs.

Well, it was only a "signifier of having absolutely no taste in music has become so popular with music connoisseurs" only to snobs.

Similar to how disco and electronic music was supposed to be for people with no taste, and then all those e.g. post-punk groups admitted 15 and 20 years later to liking it all along...

Brothers in Arms was the poster child for an album that was recorded/mastered for CD. Slightly too long to fit on a C-90, way to clean and antiseptic for vinyl, came out right as CD players went from the first experimental 14-bit and $1k+ to production 16bit and affordability.

Many many cd players were sold on the basis of that album.

Edison did come up with a number of things that were intended to stand the test of time.

I can imagine guitar connoisseurs find out about Dire Straits after seeing Knopfler on YouTube.

He's old enough to be a grandpa now but that's not your grandpa's MTV.

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