Ron and Russell Mael take their bows after another great Sparks show

After my pretty obsessive coverage of their 21-night-stand in London covering their entire career I didn’t want to go too much into the run-up for Sparks’s Valentine’s Day show at UCLA, with full performances of two albums, but suffice to say I was pretty well excited. Having caught the band six times over the previous decade — living in LA has its advantages, as they’ve always played at least one hometown show if not more for each new album — I knew they still had it while even the sometimes choppy webcasts from the London indicated their new full rock band lineup was firing on all fours.

Still, this was definitely a cut above, and probably the most exciting LA show they’ve done since the first time I’d seen them in 1998 at the Key Club. The place was packed with plenty of familiar faces from the mael-list and more besides — Rob and Jean, who stayed with me over the weekend, were just two of the people who had flown in for the show specifically — and Royce Hall, which I hadn’t been in for almost two decades since I attended UCLA, made for a truly theatrical settting for this most theatrical of bands.

Thanks to a very lucky break courtesy of a mael-list member — thanks again, S! — I was able to watch the show from third row center; I’ve been up front for as many shows they’ve done as I can manage over the years so this got added to that happy total, and being able to take in what is essentially a wide-screen performance from that distance is almost overwhelming. But it also helps with the detail, such as seeing Ron’s quizzical looks as his clones surrounded him during “(She Got Me) Pregnant” or his looks of head-shaking ‘You fell for it!’ hilarity on the chorus of “I Can’t Believe You Fell For All the Crap In This Song,” two of the highlights from their run-through of the latest album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep.

The Maels’ dedication to focusing on the present has paid greater dividends over the years, I think — when you consider that they’re a couple of years away from four full decades of formally released work, it would be so easy and so simple to coast. Certainly part of the hook of the show was the full performance of Kimono My House and stellar it was, the band’s full-bodied slam-through of that hysterical-in-all-senses classic one of the best rock shows I’ve seen. But my friend ML noted after the show that much as he loved that, he loved the Exotic Creatures run-through even more, and I’d have to agree — like their past few albums, what sounds enjoyable and lovely in studio form takes on greater depths live, bringing out an indefinable something that goes beyond simply the ability to reproduce it live or their various films and projections and set-pieces. That they kept the concluding film from the London performance was only appropriate — as the rest of the band sang the wordless falsetto section the ends “Likeable,” Ron ‘set fire’ to each of the band’s past album covers, acknowledging them and then moving beyond them to get to the present. Whatever their next album is will set fire to Exotic Creatures in turn — and that’s as it should be.

The career-sampling encore was an equal treat — personally I was thrilled to finally hear a full version of “The Number One Song in Heaven” live, as well as a welcome return to “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?,” while “Dick Around”‘s majestic performance and the now-traditional show-closer of “Suburban Homeboy” also stand out — and it was the capper to a perfect evening. All that and the threatened rainstorm held off until today so we didn’t have to worry about traffic snarls — I call that a fine Valentine’s.

Just a quick note about Sparks playing in LA in February…

Tickets are now on sale for their now kinda traditional one-off (or near one-off) LA date for each new album, in this case for Exotic Creatures of the Deep. (And definitely use that link instead of going the straight Ticketmaster route, having just discovered — a little too late! — that will give you a better seat selection as well as avoiding service charges.) Having mainlined on the concert series they did back in May and June, as regular readers might be exhausted to remember, I admit to being happily thrilled to see them in the flesh again.

This’ll be the something like the seventh time I’ve seen them over the past decade — nowhere near the amount of times many fellow fans have (whenever I meet up with the LA contingent I hear tales about them seeing the Maels and company back in the 1970s and the like…mindboggling!) but even so, enough to know I’ll be getting one hell of a show. Kinda hoping they’ll be doing the full-on theatrical presentation they did with the live broadcast of Exotic from the concert series but we’ll see — they’re scheduled to do that plus a full runthrough of Kimono My House and assorted other favorites. Great times, can’t wait!

There are incipient plans for a meet-up and meal in the area before the show, so if anyone’s interested drop a line. Or join the mael-list, we’ll just be talking about it there anyway!

Sparks conclude with deep sea exploration!

And today, noon Pacific Time, as can be viewed here, Sparks will perform their newest album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep, in its entirety. I’ve still not heard it! I hope to pick up a copy this weekend, though.

I wish I had more to say in this post but it’s a very busy day — the last one of the academic year! — and there’s a lot of little things I need to do so I can enjoy the broadcast of the show on my lunch break. For now, though, I just wanted to say things to everyone who’s swung by to read the various drafts and brief show reviews — and to promise that this will be the last I’ll post on Sparks for a bit! Much as I love them there’s other music out there, of course!

But thanks are due to the band, their manager Sue Harris, CDPulse for hosting the majority of the broadcasts and all for pulling this whole thing off. It was a treat to be able to see all of this go down over the course of the last few weeks, and the timing was perfect given that next week I’m off on a two week vacation. Thanks to everyone again, looking forward to the LA show!

And an actual Sparks-related bonus — the cut sections from my Arthur discography

Yesterday’s Hello Young Lovers performance was great fun to see again — like Lil Beethoven, that tour’s presentation was released on DVD and is only two years old, so it was the most familiar one of the bunch to me, but still great to see again, and the band killed it.

It was also the concluding date at the Islington Academy — the final show, the live debut of Exotic Creatures of the Deep, will be broadcast tomorrow from Shepherd’s Bush — and the conclusion of the whole historical overview of the band’s work, in essence, so the cheers last night were loud, long and all very well deserved. I’ll have some further reflections on what ultimately has to have been one of the most uniquely interesting performance stints in pop music’s wayward career tomorrow, but I will always regret I wasn’t able to attend, but am profoundly thankful I was able to watch and listen from this distance. I love the Net, I really do.

So today is a day off, and that gives me a chance to post something I’ve been meaning to do for a bit, and this seems like an appropriate day to do so — the cut sections from my Arthur discography. The cutting was done without regrets for reasons for space, and as it stands some of it was incomplete anyway, with my review of their recent DVDs being more a collection of notes and thoughts which were never included in any formal draft of the piece to start with. I did, however, include an end section about three key compilations that Sparks had released over the years which were worthy of some attention (although as you’ll see one of them was listed more for completeness’s sake) and so here those drafts are, and with that I am now finished with my ‘director’s cut’ of the discography. I suspect regular readers of the blog might be happy for that! (And I’m looking forward to a little break myself!)

Before moving on to that I’d like to point out a handy resource that’s been assembled by Mytza on LiveJournal — a Sparks Spectacular overview, collecting links to various reviews and pieces on the shows from around the Web, as well as YouTube links where appropriate. Nearly all my pieces here are linked, which is quite flattering! Much thanks.

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The amount of compilations released over the band’s career has been extensive, ranging from repackagings of the first two albums as a full set to any number of ‘greatest hits’ sources on a variety of labels – the perhaps inevitable end result of the Maels’ label-hopping over the years. That said, three of them are worth considering in further detail.

PROFILE

Still the best place for any newcomer to get an overview of Sparks’s career – though now extremely outdated, given it was released in 1992 in the dry gulch between Interior Design and Gratuitous Sax – Profile, released by Rhino (a perfect label for the job, and more than making up for the fact that they were also the ones who released Interior Design) was at the time of release a godsend. It works still for a variety of reasons – though it could easily be expanded by at least another full CD (maybe even two) to cover any number of inspired but less familiar numbers from the albums, as a two-disc overview it cherry picks all the big singles and a slew of other tracks, at least one from each of the fifteen albums they had released at that point.

As a result, it conveniently takes the best tracks from less successful albums (such as “When I’m With You,” “Change” or “So Important”) while benefiting as well from Rhino’s usual high standards of remastering, at least in early nineties’ terms. There aren’t many rarities as such – a couple of Island-era B-sides like “Barbecutie” appear (amusingly enough, “Profile” is not one of them), though they had already been included on the CD reissues of the original albums, while the single edit of “Cool Places” and the first, 1982-era single version of “Modesty Plays” also take a bow. The one outright unreleased-until-then number is the original recording of “I Like Girls,” which first saw the light of day on The Big Beat but actually dated back to a session with the Mankey/Weinstein band during the making of Woofer – it’s a nice little curio, though frankly an inclusion of a track or two from the legendary pre-debut album demos would have been even more welcome.

Another reason to get Profile lies in Russell’s liner notes for every song, providing as close to a biography to their first two decades’ work in their own words as yet exists. Covering everything from Ron destroying a piano stool in front of a quietly bemused French TV audience to the joy of Mary Jo Kopechne’s photo being used in one of their videos, it’s an all-too-brief but still essential take on a body of work that even then was of a range that few other bands have ever approached. The best comment, regarding “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth”: “Ray Davies inaccurately accused the lyrics of relating to some sort of hippy, earth-child theme. Yeah, right, Ray. Stick to writing about transvestites.”

THE HELL COLLECTION

A year following Profile, a single disc collection called The Heaven Collection appeared in France, one of many singles/greatest hits collections that have appeared over the moons that can be safely ignored in favor of Profile. However, the other disc that was released as a counterpart to Heaven is another matter entirely. Still the only odds and sods album that Sparks have yet released, though like Profile it doesn’t go further than the end of the eighties, The Hell Collection isn’t a deathless release by any means – it mostly covers the eighties version of the group and unfortunately contains some of the least inspired moments of that era. Its high points, though, often times random as they are, make it worth investigating by the dedicated Sparks freak.

Subtitled “Obscurities, Oddities and Rarities,” Hell is organized in no particular way, but as with Profile it has often hilarious liner notes from Russell – in English, happily – explaining the provenance of each song. Some of the best choices aren’t songs at all, but commercials for concerts – one for a Belgian show and two for Los Angeles dates at the height of their early eighties fame, including one where Ron insists that he now owns the Magic Mountain amusement park. Songs from a few eighties movie soundtracks that never appeared on the full albums turn up, as do alternate versions and demos of other compositions – a French version of Interior Design’s “Madonna,” “Singing in the Shower,” which the band Les Rita Mitsuoko later covered, and two otherwise unreleased songs, “The Japanese Have Come (And They’ve Bought My Number One)” and the amusing “Je M’Appelle Russell.”

Scattered throughout are some live tracks – notably, the band have never released a concert album, so these are particular treats. Besides an a capella take on the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and a great 1985 version of “I Predict,” there’s an unexpected bonus in two 1975 performances of “Achoo” and “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us,” the latter featuring an otherwise unrecorded extra verse. Both are pretty murky though as Russell notes, “We sprayed down the tape with a little Lysol disinfectant and today it doesn’t sound half bad.”

THE 12” MIXES

First released in Europe in 1996, Oglio Records released a slightly longer version of this in America in 1999 as part of its late nineties reissue program of the albums running from Terminal Jive through Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat. The contents, as might be guessed, consist of exactly that, 12” extended dance remixes from the era as well as an apparently archival “Beat the Clock” mix and a new Plagiarism-era mix of “The Number One Song in Heaven.” Rather unfortunately, the liner notes are pretty well nonexistent, saying nothing about the original release information or who did the remixes. It leaves an unfortunate impression that this was a bit of a slapdash effort, slightly enhanced further by a bit on the sleeve admitting that some of the selections had to be taken from vinyl due to the unavailability of the master tapes.

If this was an absolutely essential collection, then there’d be even more reason to complain, but unfortunately most of the mixes on here are far too typically examples of their time – for the most part unimaginative or at their best merely functional extensions of the basic songs themselves rather than dramatic reinventions. [EDIT: in relistening to both this and The Hell Collection recently I also realized that some of the same mixes are on both -- not too surprising, really!] For all that Sparks showed a clear affinity for modern dance music off and on over the years, their remixers – or possibly even themselves, if they ever did such work – didn’t grasp the full potential available there. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best effort comes from the Moroder era itself, with Keith Forsey’s drum attack turned into a massive echoed rampage on “Beat the Clock.” One or two tracks otherwise, like the surprisingly enjoyable take on “Kiss Me Quick,” while this is handy enough for people who want to relive memories of New Wave dance clubs, otherwise The 12” Mixes pretty much has a limited appeal even to Sparks fans, who would otherwise own the perfectly fine originals.

Sparks say hi to the amourous

By all accounts the Lil’ Beethoven show went down a storm, with “Wunderbar” as the encore. Sounds about right!

So today is the final ‘old’ album for Sparks in the series, with Hello Young Lovers, their simply wonderful release from two years back, featured. Their LA show for this was the last time I’ve actually seen them and the image of Russell almost throwing himself frenetically around the stage sticks in the mind — he really isn’t aging, at least not overtly.

Not much more to say that I don’t say below in the draft — there’s also my All Music Guide review for reference — so go to town! Tomorrow though I will post up something from the article that didn’t make the final cut, my take on the three essential Sparks compilations out there. (There is no definitive compilation at all yet — there was, but again, that can wait until tomorrow.)

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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HELLO YOUNG LOVERS

Lil Beethoven’s statement of intent was probably never intended to signal a permanent musical shift on the part of the band, but without it Hello Young Lovers probably would never have been recorded. In between the albums, the band had not only recruited a new full-time guitarist – Dean Menta, from the Maels’ Plagiarism partners Faith No More – but had played the entirety of Kimono My House back to back with Lil Beethoven at a memorable date in London as part of a festival curated by glam-era Sparks freak Morrissey. It’d be easy enough to say that Hello Young Lovers is a combination of the two albums, but it would also be inaccurate – rather Hello Young Lovers weaves more rock instrumentation into still-predominant classical orchestrations, returns just a bit more to the world of dance music and ultimately creates not only one of Sparks’s best albums but their most truly wide-ranging, covering the entire scope of their career.

The opening track “Dick Around” would have been enough for almost any band’s career to be made – that Sparks would have the talent to carry it off isn’t surprising, but realizing that literally one of their best songs ever has been created nearly forty years after the tentative beginnings of the group is downright jaw-dropping. With a massed chorale vocal from multiple Russells singing “All I do now is dick around” as the introduction, the song moves from sweeping flourishes to loud-as-hell guitar/bass/drum rampages, Russell tackling everything from soft crooning to insanely quick and precise arpeggios matched by equally high-speed performing from Ron, all the while singing lines like “Through with you, through with you, through with you, through with you/Yes I think I got the point and bam there goes my motivation/What to do, what to do, what to do, what to do/All that I could think of is that I’m tendering my resignation.” By the time the whole thing is over it’s become perfectly clear that if Queen had ever swiped anything from Sparks – and they did – then not only had the Maels taken it back, they had completely upped the ante.

And that was just the start – while not a perfect song-for-song album, Hello Young Lovers comes so very close, touching on everything from more straight-up orchestral numbers (“Rock, Rock, Rock”) to sly, finger-snapping grooves (“Perfume,” the lead single and yet another example of the Maels’ knack for pop at its best and most immediate) to a multipart concluding epic, “When I Sit Down to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral,” at once a Parisian song of romance and a paranoid tale of work jitters. Highlights come fast and furious, but two of their most outrageous numbers ever will serve as examples – “Baby Baby (Can I Invade Your Country?),” which takes the words to the US national anthem and goes from there into uncharted but appropriately martial waters, is about the only post-9/11 song worth a damn, while “Waterproof,” like “Dick Around” a perfect fusion of classical strings and rock epic moves, details the story of a lover’s heart crushed by a heartless bastard – told from the point of view of the bastard, naturally.

Sparks take a classical turn

The Balls set was very good fun — and Tammy Glover’s sitting in on drums for a bit! — but looked at from a distance I can see a little more clearly now why many fans don’t rate this one as highly, even though I enjoyed it then and still do so now. But in respects I think it’s one of their least performance-oriented albums — instead there’s an emphasis on the music straight up, so more than a few times Russell was content to strike ravetastic poses (which he did very well, but this only emphasized the steady-as-she-goes work the band was doing). Having “Katherine Hepburn” as the encore was a fun touch, though!

Today we finally move into where Sparks have been for a while anyway, as some years back they toured Lil’ Beethoven in full — performing the album for the first half of their sets at the time, then using the second half to dig out older favorites. I caught that tour in LA and also have the Live in Stockholm DVD, and the fact that Dean Menta was playing guitar at that time as well means that I’m used to hearing some feedback with said songs. The reason this is all kinda convenient for me as a result is a simple one — I won’t be able to see the broadcast! A rescheduled doctor’s appointment today meant that I’m out at the time it’ll be happening, but personally I think I’m pretty lucky that the only show I’ve just not been able to see at all was one of the two albums I’ve actually already seen done in full.

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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LIL’ BEETHOVEN

Every new decade for Sparks seemed to bring a particular change or tone that they would follow for most of the rest of it, whether it was their warped take on rock and roll in the early seventies, their controlled New Wave incarnation in the eighties or the techno experimentation of the nineties. So whatever the next album after Balls would sound like would be anyone’s guess – at least, that is, until the band started making noises in p.r. and fanclub releases about how what was being worked on was like no other album released before…by anyone. A bold claim and not, in the end, totally true, but it made for a good talking point – one further extended by the announcement of the album title, Lil’ Beethoven.

Armed with a backstory about discovering long-lost classical music manuscripts in Europe, what Ron and Russell did, working once again with Tammy Glover on drums, was definitely unlike any album they had done before, though it was not without precedent. As far back as Indiscreet, “Under the Table With Her” showed what a combination of Russell’s vocals and Tony Visconti’s strings (and nothing else) would sound like, while Visconti’s orchestral contributions on Plagiarism expanded the idea further on a number of songs. Lil’ Beethoven itself, however, pushed the idea to the limit. Completely jettisoning their overt dancebeat approach (but not entirely leaving electronic loops or high-speed keyboard melodies behind – the tension being the dramatic melodies and a buried bass pulse on “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” is one of the album’s highlights), the Maels created a series of lushly orchestrated numbers that, in a way, finally brought out the musical theater/Gilbert and Sullivan aspect of their work completely to the fore.

All this would be conceit if the songs didn’t live up to the inspiration, but thankfully the band was on a total roll, with most of the songs rapidly adding themselves to Sparks’s considerable collection of classics. “The Rhythm Thief” became a statement of purpose for the whole thing (‘Say goodbye to the beat’), while the hilarious trashing of the nü-metal hangover with “What Are All These Bands So Angry About?” and the equally funny “I Married Myself” (‘I’m very happy together’) were high up there too. “My Baby’s Taking Me Home,” though lyrically one of the simplest songs the band had ever done – the words are the title, and one spoken word break from Russell aside, that’s about it – turned out to be an unexpected masterpiece, as close to a Steve Reich tribute as could be imagined in a pop format, topped off with some slamming drums from Glover. But it was the final two songs that were the best, with the closing “Suburban Homeboy,” a witty as hell rip on well-off gangsta wannabes sung like a Nelson Eddy/Jeannette McDonald highlight, turning out to be flawless. But even more important for the future was “Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls,” with massive guitar riffs suddenly exploding into the mix even as Russell pondered the mystery in the album title. For those waiting on the return of Sparks to a rock and roll lifestyle – at least musically speaking – the anticipation was about to end.

Sparks have a ball

So the Plagiarism set was a fun affair — the fact that they ended up doing three songs twice, just like on the original album and like there in two different styles, shows the level of keeping it all as accurate as they could. (Telling comment from Russell after the second “This Town” — ‘the country and western version will be up later!’) Some songs ended up sounding less striking when reworked for a live context — the version of “Angst In My Pants” came across a touch flat at points, then again I’m a huge fan of that song’s new take — but they did include both strings through most of the songs as well as some horns, to lovely effect.

Meantime, the question of what guests would or wouldn’t show wasn’t finally answered until the end. That Faith No More wouldn’t be able to show was a given — would have been fun if Mike Patton could have made it but hey — while Erasure was ruled out just because Vince Clarke’s been busy with the Yaz reunion. But when the penultimate song was started up — the striking reinterpretation of the first half of “The Number One Song In Heaven” — there was a cheer and lo and behold, Jimmy Somerville, all in white, coming out to trade verses with Russell and playfully kneel to the Master (aka Ron). As the original version wasn’t a duet, only featuring Somerville, this was something else again and the crowd ate it up. As did I!

As I mentioned yesterday, from here on in the Sparks shows start covering ‘my’ era, or at least the time when I first started seeing their shows regularly. Balls was the first album I saw them actively tour for as such and so for me the baseline Sparks live experience was the combination of Ron, Russell and Tammy Glover, who I hear will be back in her usual spot on drums either tonight or on Tuesday. Personally I thought they did more than fine with that, but I can see why longtime fans had missed the straight-up rock band lineups as well. The overall surprises after tonight will be less but assuming that the Mother Superior guys are still onboard and busting out the guitars it should lend a good kick to a number of the tracks.

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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BALLS

Balls was a long time coming, with Sparks, now appearing on a vaguely regular basis for a couple of shows here and there at a time in Southern California and then over in Europe, performing a song or two in their live sets but otherwise keeping mum about it. Said sets, however, did also serve to introduce an important new member of the band – drummer Tammy Glover, who had taken over the role of previous touring drummer Christine in time for shows around the release of Plagiarism. Fully listed as a bandmember in time for Balls’s release, she brought her own dramatic kick to the end results, though admittedly the album was in many ways a thematic sequel to Gratuitous Sax, the band’s last original album from six years previous.

The sense of it being a sequel lay less in the exact sound of the album than the influences that fed into it – in the same way that Gratuitous Sax (and the more electronic reworkings on Plagiarism) drew on fluid techno pulses, Balls took further ideas from harsher hip-hop and dance influences, especially as interpreted further in groups like the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, who like Russell in particular were freaks for Public Enemy and the Ultramagnetic MCs. The brawling, drum-heavy attack of the title track, which opened the album on a fierce note, was definitely more than a little touched by the Prodigy’s “Firestarter,” though Russell’s gleeful singing was hardly Keith Flint’s rasp – and a good thing too, since that idea is pretty hard to imagine – while the core melody remained a pleasant affair for all the air-raid siren noises included. “Aeroflot” and “It’s Educational” also ride the electroriffs hard, as close to a guitar version of the group at this point as they reached.

In retrospect Balls can readily be seen as the farewell to an era, with the Maels seeing out their dance-influenced nineties on their own terms rather than limply clinging out to an exhausted approach as Interior Design so unfortunately did. Like Gratuitous Sax, it’s not a complete classic, though it’s a stronger album than others in the band’s extensive history, with Russell’s voice still as supple as ever after three decades and memorable melodies abounding along with the usual dry wit – while the use of strings on many songs, while calling to mind Plagiarism, also strongly hints at where the band was about to go next. The Mael gift for inspired or cliché-reworking song titles is in full effect – samples include the horn/string-tinged and very Gratuitous-like “The Calm Before the Storm” and “More Than a Sex Machine” – while “How to Get Your Ass Kicked” is, naturally, one of the gentlest songs on the album. Meanwhile, the concluding “The Angels” makes for a sweet, lush end not merely to the album but to a lifecycle of the group – and not only that, it gets away with lines like “I saw the angels cry/They feel ashamed/Because you look so fucking good.”

Sparks and the art of unattributed citations

While more than a few people had problems with yesterday’s broadcast — I had a bit of choppiness near the start but it could have been worse — Sparks’s full album performance of Gratuitous Sax unsurprisingly went down a storm; even with the full rock band lineup on-stage it actually felt like the pop/rave spectacular it is, helped by a great light show that must have brought back more than a few early nineties flashbacks for folks. Ron’s explanation of the song “Tsui Hark” — and his none-more-deadpan standing-in for that director on the spoken-word parts of said piece — was unsurprisingly a highlight for the ages in terms of wonderful strangeness, while “The Ghost of Liberace” stood out yet more than ever as a secret masterpiece.

With Plagiarism‘s performance today, things get both potentially very unusual — will all the guests show up? will there be tons of string players? — and, for me, a little nostalgic for the first time. That may sound strange given the nature of the entire concert series, but as I might or might not have talked about here on the blog before, I’m actually a latecomer to heavy-duty Sparks knowledge and fandom, having inherited the mael-list shortly after its start in 1995 and only first seeing them at a concert in LA that was more or less the hometown release show for Plagiarism in 1998, a year after it came out in Europe. So from here on in are where my Sparks-in-concert memories start — I’ve now seen them something like six times, possibly seven, all in LA or its environs — and as a result the next few shows will be a feeling of the familiar mixed with the different, given the lineup changes over the last ten years, not to mention the current band setup for this series. I’ve seen most of Balls performed on stage in the past, while both Li’l Beethoven and Hello Young Lovers were given the full runthrough in the most recent tours, so this’ll all be a bit of comfort food in the run up to the live debut of Exotic Creatures of the Deep.

But Plagiarism will be one heck of a joker to play today. Can’t wait.

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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PLAGIARISM

With Gratuitous Sax demonstrating that the band had almost as many lives as a cat, it would have made perfect sense if Sparks decided to explore the sound a bit more on a follow-up. They did – a bit. Indeed, what turned out to be Sparks’s 17th release was on balance the most unusual of their career until then, partially because it wasn’t meant to be an album with them on it initially. Instead, the idea of them curating their own tribute album was proposed to them, which they agreed to do, if in someone desultory fashion. The stroke of inspiration lay in Ron and Russell deciding to go ahead and pay tribute to themselves instead – revisiting their now massive back catalog and rerecording the selections in new or different styles. In ways it was the antithesis of the already tired ‘unplugged’ approach that the likes of Eric Clapton had turned into sludge – rather than stripping the selections down, often Sparks aimed at something far grander.

The perfect extra ingredient for this turned out to be another factor from the past – Tony Visconti, who had done such a stunning job with his production on Indiscreet. With Visconti handling full orchestral arrangements throughout the album, plus an eight-person choir to boot, the brothers themselves touched on everything from their new techno-influenced style to using the Visconti efforts and nothing more – something that was a pointer towards where they’d yet be going in the near future, as the dramatic opening take on “Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat” showed. A further example of Plagiarism’s inspiration lies in its choice of songs – relative obscurities like “Big Brass Ring,” from the misbegotten Interior Design, and In Outer Space’s “Popularity” received wonderful makeovers, the latter turned into a lovely high-speed gallop, while recent hit “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?” became a choir and string-driven epic, toning down but not removing the strong beat of the original. Hearing Russell still able to sing numbers like “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” with all the falsetto glory of the original, meanwhile, was a treat enough on its own.

The original plan of a tribute album wasn’t forgotten, however, and a variety of tracks also appeared that turned out to be full-on collaborations, including an absolutely mindblowing dance/rock take on “Angst In My Pants” by Eskimos and Egypt, though only Russell sings on it. Faith No More, whose fractured, spazzed-out metal is clearly in retrospect derived from Sparks’s own maniacal exercises in the early seventies – and whose guitarist, Dean Menta, would later join the band full-time in the following decade – proved to be perfect partners on “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” and “Something For the Girl With Everything.” Mike Patton’s yelping bark is a perfect contrast to Russell’s sweetness in particular. Erasure takes a bow on “Amateur Hour” (though arguably Vince Clarke’s former bandmate in Depeche Mode Martin Gore would have been a better choice), while one of the few singers to sound even more angelic than Russell, Jimmy Somerville, knocks the ball out of the park with his stately take on “The No. 1 Song in Heaven.” The end result is near unique – a ‘tribute’ album that’s actually worth listening to more than once.

Sparks, sex and violence — well, sorta

And after a rather tumultuous week on the technical front for Sparks fans everything’s a little more settled now, with both the mael-list working again and, more importantly, the cdpulse stream of the show now up and running properly as well. That meant being able to see the Interior Design show properly, and while it didn’t hit the mark as well as the Introducing run-through did, it was a step up from Terminal Jive, the songs’ smoother overall feeling turning out to benefit from the live performance more than I’d have guessed, though there’s an unavoidably clunky sound to some of the samples from the time that were used. Still, a fine turn, and as that’ll be the last of the ‘lesser’ albums (at least to my ears), it was a nice way to bow out of the eighties phase of the group.

Before talking a bit about the next album from today’s show, here’s a couple of links — Plan B, who I write for on a low-key basis, has Sparks featured as the cover story of their latest issue. It’s a very good piece, bringing out the pessimism and melancholy that has always lurked among the playfulness in the band’s work from the start. Both Ron and Russell haven’t ever entirely hidden this — Chris Ziegler’s great interview for Arthur contains some similar sentiments — but this piece brings it out fully thanks in part to the perspective given to their work by the interviewer, Joseph Stannard (hope I’ve remembered that right!). The piece is not online but the issue is worth seeking out — and as you can see, excellent cover (as is the rest of the photography with the article):

Meantime, over on another site I need to get into doing more with, The Quietus, last week Simon Price published his own well chosen guide to Sparks highlights, so give it a read:

http://www.thequietus.com/2008/05/the-strange-and-wonderful-world-of-the-sparks/

This all said — Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins! Yes, a groanworthy pun, but the nowhere-near-as-worthy Talking Heads had already done something similar so blame them first. This is easily one of my favorite albums by them, but it doesn’t totally hold up as one — which may sound strange, but I think it’s a good capturing of them being reenergized rather than necessarily a full-on standout. As such it’s very necessary, and if not as monumental as No 1 in Heaven is as important for showing how the Maels continued to be aware of their time and react as they chose to it. I’ve seen them perform a number of songs from it live (including “The Ghost of Liberace,” which I’ve underrated for some time) and I’ll be interested to see if they give it a more rock-band approach or if they’ll do as they did for No 1 and have Steven Listor concentrate on holding down the beat while everyone else sings.

Going to be a heck of a weekend — the show I think everyone is wondering about the most, Plagiarism, is tomorrow, and exactly what guests will or won’t show, if any, is going to be the thing! Can’t know until then!

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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GRATUITOUS SAX AND SENSELESS VIOLINS

After Interior Design Sparks seemed to hibernate for six years, and in the pre-commercial Internet days information was few and far between, with the occasional compilation and one-off single being the band’s only sign of life, though in fact the group was trying to get a movie musical adaptation of Mai the Psychic Girl off the ground. When that finally died and the Maels focused their attention back on a straight-up album, presumably they hoped at the least just to reestablish themselves a bit in a musical environment that had radically changed in their absence. But Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins did more than just that, kicking off their third great period of extended commercial success, this time around initially based in Germany. Far from being out of it, Sparks ended up back in the thick of things seemingly without effort.

The key to success here lay in Ron and Russell keeping their ears open to what was going on around them a lot more readily than in the late eighties – in the same way that hearing “I Feel Love” led them to work with Moroder, they realized that European electronic pop in the nineties in particular was entering a classic phase as the techno revolution took hold throughout the continent, resulting in (to paraphrase a Russell comment in a mid-nineties interview) musical approaches that hadn’t yet become clichés. They took to it like ducks to water – it didn’t hurt at all, certainly, that the fast pace perfectly suited Ron and Russell’s abilities with hyperspeed melodies. Another clear role model was the splashy, theatrical disco that the Pet Shop Boys cooked up for Very (the songtitles in particular had that air – samples include “I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car” and “Now That I Own the BBC”). It was a knowing, in fact barbed, homage, given the PSB’s clear borrowing of a fair amount of Sparks’s overall approach in the Moroder years, not least in Chris Lowe’s near-perfect impersonation of Ron’s unemotional appearances at the keyboards.

The result wasn’t quite a classic along the lines of No. 1 in Heaven, admittedly, though there’s plenty of enjoyable numbers throughout, not to mention a surging conclusion in “Let’s Go Surfing.” One of their oddest numbers yet, “Tsui Hark,” featured the legendary Hong Kong director, a longtime favorite of the brothers, talking briefly about his body of work, and that’s about it. But the highlights were absolutely addictive techno-influenced classics, most notably “When I Kiss You (I Hear Charlie Parker Playing),” which featured Russell doing his best version of rapping – not too surprising given his own abilities with rapid-fire tongue-twisting lyrics – and the gorgeous “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?”, the tale of someone waiting for his chance, whatever it might be, which ended up referencing both Sinatra and Sid Vicious. Sleek and winning, it was just the recharge that Sparks needed – and it wouldn’t be the last.

Sparks slip on the design front

It’s been a week of strange technical screwups — on the one hand the cdpulse feed was still down yesterday, resulting in another fairly choppy broadcast on justin.tv; on the other hand, the mael-list went down because of a power outage here at UCI (and is still not quite back). That would do it.

What could be seen of yesterday’s performance was pretty good, though the creaks evident in Music That You Could Dance To were all the more plain. Still, it was nice seeing a performance on the ‘lost’ track from the album “Armies,” which was replaced on the CD version of the disc in 1990 by “Change,” which was the encore this time around.

Anyway, the cdpulse site is back up, but perversely enough it is just in time for the run-through of a Sparks nadir. Interior Design‘s problems I discuss in the draft below, but suffice to say that I’m wondering what they’ll be able to do to conjure up the magic out of this one — still, I’ve heard a reasonable argument that it’s meant to be Sparks at their most lushly romantic, though honestly the technology and approach they were working with at the time undercut that potential impact, or so I thought. You’ll have to decide!

But so things aren’t completely negative here, Steven Listor’s blog update on the shows contains this fascinating nugget:

[Russell]‘s been singing spot on every night. I’ve taken for granted the fact that Russell not only sings all of these song in their original keys and with the same energy he has 20 years ago, but that we’ve been rehearsing every day since January 1 and he hasn’t blown his voice out. Amazing!

The man just has it.

As before, the final version of the piece below is in the second part of this Arthur issue, while tonight’s show will be accessible here:

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INTERIOR DESIGN

If Music That You Can Dance To was the decline, Interior Design was the fall, equaling Introducing Sparks as a well-meaning but ultimately troubled low point for the Maels. In retrospect, it’s clear that this is an album that’s not important for what it is rather than what it represented – namely, the first effort fully created by Ron and Russell in the comfort of their newly completed studio, nicknamed the Pentagon and built in the Hollywood Hills mansion that their wayward success over the years had allowed them to purchase, and where nearly all their subsequent albums have been recorded.

The fact that this is the most notable thing about Interior Design, though, tends to indicate the quality of the album as a whole. No longer working with their eighties backing band of Bob Haag, Leslie Bohem and David Kendrick, the Maels had a few flashes of their trademark wit and melodic gift at play, but nowhere near their previous heights. “So Important,” the leadoff track, is the most notable number, and even that is pretty subpar, while “Madonna” is a sly enough tribute to an artist who, frankly, was completely cleaning Sparks’s clock at that point. Beyond that and some surprisingly confessional lyrics from a band not really known for them, there’s not much else, and the whole thing is practically a stereotype of what is sneeringly dismissed as ‘eighties music,’ with rote rhythms and fairly dull melodies that – crucially for a group so often perfect at it – aren’t catchy in the slightest. At best Interior Design should be seen as a home demo record that didn’t deserve the release – it’s there, but it’s not needed.