Some may be too young to remember it, but on October 9, 1992, on a rainy night and a packed Romareda, the Dire Straits said goodbye to the stage after 15 years of rock and roll and more than 200 concerts behind them. The Glasgow band chose Zaragoza to say goodbye in a concert in which Óscar Rosende was barely eleven years old. He did not know it yet, but a few years later he would perform on stage “Romeo and Juliet”, “So far away”, “Sultans of Swing” and other songs from the soundtrack (and the band) of his life. Much less did the musician then imagine that he would end up being considered the “Galician Mark Knopfler” and that he would fill the Mozart hall of the Zaragoza Auditorium this Friday with their Glasgow tribute band and in the Olympia Theater in Huesca on Saturday.
Great Straits is the band led by Oscar Rosende who, along with a cast of nine musicians, review the musical trajectory of the Glasgow band. And they are so similar that even Guy Fletcher himself (Dire Straits keyboardist) once heard them play “Why Aye Man” and thought it was a recording of his own. “My passion for the group goes back a long way, at home we always listened to the band. My dream was to learn to play the songs of my favorite band and my favorite singer. and while I listened to the songs I tried to learn how to play the guitar by myself. You have to keep in mind that I grew up in those days when there was no YouTube or tutorials,” says Rosende.
Great Straits was born as the biggest tribute production to the band in Europe and has toured the national and international geography exciting the nostalgic with a careful staging and musical quality that has earned them success in each of their shows. After Zaragoza and Huesca, the band will continue to Oviedo, Logroño, Almería, Ourense and Tarragona, among other cities. On June 21 in A Coruña they will do something that “not even Dire Straits did” and that is to interpret some of the classics of the band with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia.
However, landing in Zaragoza and Huesca always has something special “nostalgic” about it. “It makes us very excited because it was here when Dire Straits said goodbye to the stage and we think it will be very exciting when we ask at the concert who was here so many years ago in La Romareda and some hands go up. It will be, saving the distances because we are not Dire Straits and I am not Mark Knopfler, but it will be like reliving those sensations and emotions of seeing them play live.“, he says.
As for what the group does, its leader is clear: “There is no one right now playing Dire Straits with the same musical lineup that we have, We are very self-demanding with everything, with the issue that I have to deal with, for example, the guitars. We carry about 13-14 guitars per concert exactly the same, of the same brand and quality, and even some made by the same American luthier who made them for Mark Knopfler”.
Despite his passion for the Glasgow band, Oscar Rosende never saw Dire Straits live. “For me it’s like taking a little thorn out of my side because I’m just another spectator at our concerts. We don’t even realize that we’re playing a lot of times and what people always say to us is that they can see we’re having a great time and therefore they’re having a great time too. There are always those nerves of not knowing how the audience is going to receive it but Dire Straits is the soundtrack of a whole generation. Maybe those who come to see it know one or two songs but they are not as sick as I am of the band (laughs). What we want is for people to enjoy themselves because we do the concert for them,” he concludes.