Dire Straits Indeed

Who knew that 25 years after the fact, there is still a lot of mileage coming from the Dire Straits hit "Money For Nothing." Earlier this week the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that the song contained a derogatory word and should be removed from the airwaves. This after a complaint was received by a FM radio station in Newfoundland which objected to the word "faggot" being used three times in the song.

The song has had two different versions on the radio, one being the unabridged version that is found on the original studio album and then another one which is shorter and "cleaner", that is to say the f-word has been removed and replaced.

Knopfler has said little on the situation but Guy Fletcher said his piece on his own site yesterday which was less than kind of the ruling and those who made the ruling. Now two Canadian radio stations -- one in Halifax and another in Edmonton -- are going to protest by playing the song in its original version repeatedly for an hour on Friday evening.

Knopfler has occasionally replaced the word with "mama," "trucker" and "queenie" in concert, including the fabulous 1990 Knebworth concert (which I still have somewhere on cassette!). But for this song to NOW be a bone of contention seems to be rather strange.