Taking Sides: "Money For Nothing" vs. battle renactments

there is a genuine reason for this question, which I will explain later

oh, it's the song by Dire Straits obv

the former is the lesser. never done the latter.

Sultans of Swing or bust.

would the battle re-enactment be one of those stiff, serious affairs, where you have to get dressed up properly and adhere to the facts of history, OR would it be all like, sofa cushions and bruised knees and with pots and pans for helmets?

Will you be on the winning or losing side of this reenactment?

the song is shorter than any historical battle, surely?

Aerial dogfight re-enactments! "Oh shit, the little faggot's got his own jet airplane, we're fucked!"

It's 7:51, so you could be wrong Mark.

The song, maybe.

Battle Re-enacters are fantastic people. People who are willing to enter into choreographed mass psychosis for a day or so, its a great idea. I just wish people whould get together and re-enact more than just battles. How about Cruxifiction re-nacters, Pink Floyd's Berlin concert re-enacters, the Matthews Final re-renacters, Sufferage re- enacters.

It just seems a bit boring and silly just doing war. Okay, how about doing something really fun like re-enacting the Last Days of Rome (I think I do that already), Tim Leary's house circa 1972, Mr. C from the Shamen's first E re-enacters.

It's all war, war, war with us monkeys isn't it?

They both strike me as fairly inoffensive.

This is probably one of the best questions ever, it has a certain panache.

Battle renactments seem a bit silly, but "Money for Nothing" is absolutely and completely coal-black evil.

"Money for Nothing" is only two tracks after "So Far Away", whilst nothing good has even been near the Sealed Knot. MFN win.

Rainy, I'm afraid it would be the stiff, serious sort of re-enactment.

Do you want to know the reason why I make this connection?

I know I'd be interested in finding out.

oh I choose the re-enactment anyway, no matter what sort it is. A boy tried to seduce me while Dire Straits was playing and I threw up in the bathroom sink.

OK - in a 1985 BBC documentary called "Distracted Tymes", about a battle re-enactment at Lincoln Castle, the opening seconds of "Money For Nothing" play over a scene change before the riff comes on the radio in what looks like a blacksmith's forge.

I find this amusing and significant because the clash of "I want my MTV" with this ostentatious and deliberate attempt to create a mythical, innoculated past exemplifies the divide between the idea of Britain that these events encapsulate, and the way Britain was actually going: the very heart of 1985.

Also helps that it was in Lincolnshire, always the repository of High Tory cranks. Colonel Sibthorp, a 19th Century ultra-reactionary (hated railways, the Industrial Revolution, everything) was the Lincoln MP once, and in our own time the county has been represented by Sir Richard Body (first elected in 1955, supporter of Robert Henderson, wrote a book called "England For The English", thought the CIA funded the yes vote in the 1975 EU referendum, "flapping of white coats" etc etc). Current Lincolnshire MPs still include Sir Peter Tapsell (who has likened the supposed German desire to dominate the EU to Nazism), the only remaining Tory MP from the Macmillan landslide of 1959, and the last 1950s survivor in the Commons, and Douglas Hogg (might also be a Sir), the son of the late Lord Hailsham (a man accurately summed up when he died as someone "instinctively suspicious of change in all things"). When I stayed near Grantham two years ago, my hosts were Hague supporters and Telegraph readers (and, wonderfully, the first thing I heard on the radio when I arrived was "The Real Slim Shady").

Body, Tapsell, Hogg and their ilk believed passionately in the Tories' ability to protect and conserve; the mid-80s heritage boom convinced them that the Thatcher govt was doing so: the phrase "I want my MTV" entering into its heart showed that its free market values were doing nothing of the sort.

In fact, I think of that use of "Money For Nothing" at Lincoln Castle as something of a flashpoint for everything that happened in Britain in the 1980s (broadly: those elected on the promise to conserve and restore the old order opening the floodgates for radical and unprecended change, because in the context of High Tory values even Dire Straits are Eminem). Marcello Carlin already knows this.

As part of the Texas 102 regiment Id say listening to "Money For Nothing" was worse. I guess I was technically on loan from another regiment (we were "recon" (ie we were filming th reneactment)) but I got to storm a town (re museum) and stay they;re for two days befoer the Texans got beaten out by the a unit/regiment from the army of the Potimac.