After 38 years on this planet, I can finally say with assurance that I will never, ever make a good Emerson Lake & Palmer fan. I’m just not cut out for it. This speaks more of my prejudices against uberserious concept albums, neo-classical influences on rock, and bad 70s fashion than it does anything about Keith, Greg, and Carl. But I also believe that, somewhere along the line, ELP has just gotta take some accountability, too. When you no longer have anything to say, please stop. Did ELP really think they stood a chance at hitting the charts after NIRVANA’s Nevermind? (more…)
You gotta realize: I’m a social worker by trade—on a fixed income—and I’m trying to get by in insanely expensive London. This isn’t exactly easy. Much as I might’ve wanted to, I just couldn’t plop down £350 for a Golden Ticket to see all 21 SPARKS gigs at the Carling Islington Academy. I had to choose, and very carefully.
Initially, I figured I’d go and see the very first record the Mael brothers ever recorded—under the moniker HALFNELSON—a really weird one, even by SPARKS standards. Then I started leaning toward Angst in My Pants: that was my newwavey entrance into the wild and woolly world of SPARKS as an 11 yr old in ’81. Eventually, I even considered Introducing Sparks, their most maligned and dismissed work; I am a contrary bastard by nature. But one godawful early morning a few months back, I reached for something to hold morning coffee and I found my hands wrapped tightly around my vintage SPARKS Big Beat mug. I’d made my decision.
Fill ‘Er Up
Yes, Big Beat from 1976—the first LP SPARKS made stateside after returning to L.A. from their years-long, chart-topping run in the UK. Recorded with an entirely new band, some of whom had been plucked from New York “new thing” bands like MILK & COOKIES and TUFF DARTS. A return to a simpler, harder-rockin’ sound. And a big letdown in the eyes of most SPARKS fans.
But to these ears, Big Beat always sounded like a big step forward: they were turning into a streamlined CHEAP TRICK that suited the second half of the seventies like a glove, while their lyrics remained as cynically absurd/biting as ever. So what if the arrangements and production felt a bit blunted in comparison to earlier LPs like Indiscreet? The Maels were in the process of reinventing themselves yet again, and that’s when SPARKS always felt most vibrant.
I struck up a conversation with a greyhaired, 40-something fella while in line. By day, he worked as a rubber scientist (!), but night he transformed into an unflagging SPARKS fanboy and lucky Golden Ticket holder. He gave me a rundown of the first five shows I’d missed and we chatted about things only meaningful within a tight SPARKS orbit: what Ron’s moustache looks like these days, how cryptic the lyrics to “Biology 2” were, and which song they might play for the encore this evening (I picked “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, while he chose correctly with “Tearing the Place Apart”). I appreciated the opportunity to vent my fandom to someone similarly awestruck.
Early on in the evening, Russell gave thanks to the far-from-capacity crowd of mostly middle-aged men for coming out for “one of the obscure albums.” He acknowledged that we all could have done the obvious and come out for Kimono My House—yawn—but we didn’t. We were there for Big Beat. We knew he knew why we were there.
No bare chests or high-waisted white jeans on display from Russell on this night. But that didn’t matter, because he was belting out these tuff tunes like Jacques Brel might’ve sang “Jacky” back in ’65, if that Frenchman had a deeper appreciation for Marshall stacks and three-chord guitar pop. In between songs, Russell put the songs into context: prefacing “Nothing to Do” with a story about how Johnny Ramone was always threatening to work up a cover of it with his RAMONES (it woulda sounded hot), and relating the story of writing “Confusion” for a Jacques Tati film that was left unfinished when the director died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism. Throughout the gig, Ron sat near-immutable behind his Roland keyboards—with logo altered to spell out Ronald—only slightly altering his stare sloth-like every few minutes to creep everyone out. The real show-stopper was “I Want to Be Like Everybody Else” which got all us gushing fans screaming along like it was a dumb football chant. “A warning,” Ron noted halfway through the set, “some of these lyrics are not meant to be taken literally.” Thank you, sir, for the clarification.
Weirder still was seeing gentlemen Ron and Russell propelled forward by such a young, motley group of backing musicians. On closer inspection, I realized I recognized a few: Steven McDonald of REDD KROSS on bass, Jim Wilson and Marcus Blake of MOTHER SUPERIOR on guitars. These longhairs played it perfectly—wild but rock solid—with that restrained precision that always marks all SPARKS in my mind. Eternal teen Steven M., in particular, looked to be having a grand ol’ time, grinning and bobbing as he thumped out basslines that may well have inspired a half dozen different REDD KROSS tunes.
And so when things finally rolled toward a close with “Tearing The Place Apart,” it didn’t matter that Russell flubbed the lines and had to start again from the beginning. “I’m getting rid of every memory/I don’t know where to start”—we knew the lyrics by heart, anyway.
From May 16 through June 11 of 2008, Sparks played all 20 of their albums in a row, one per night, at Carling Academy Islington in London. This astounding series of shows, from a band who’s been around for 37 years, was followed by the live premiere of their twenty-first studio release, Exotic Creatures of the Deep, on June 13 at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Fans from around the world submitted reviews for each night of the show to Popshifter, and we have published them in this issue.
Click on the album art to read reviews for each live performance.
And scroll down to read a review of the entire concert series.
Thanks to all the writers and photographers who contributed to this feature or graciously allowed us to use their words and photos: a-anne, Nick Barber, Mike Bennett @Hablo Ennui, Noisy Boy, Tim Collins, Daniel Gray @Dead By Sunrise, Alex Gabriel-Bayston, Alex J. Geairns @Cult TV, Timothy Hall, Here Kitty, Angie Holmes, Craig Irving, Janina, Louise Lee, Rachel Lipsitz @littlepants, Elizabeth McCarthy, Musicalsushi, DP Nixon @Playlouder, Michael Pearson, Albert Resonox, Michael Row, Miss Missy Tannenbaum, and Will Vigar
Popshifter would also like to thank the following for their help and support in producing this feature: Alex Robertson and everyone at the AllSparks.com forum, Ned Raggett and everyone at the Mael List, and Sue Harris at Republic Media
And extra special thanks go out to Ron and Russell Mael for continuing to inspire music fans everywhere.
Looking at the price information at the bottom of the live ad I see the option to buy a “Golden Ticket” that gets you into all 21 shows for £350.
“What kind of person buys that?” I think.
That person ends up being me. I don’t plan to see Sparks play all their albums in order. I just get caught up in the whole thing. It’s a bit like one of those nights when you go out for a quick pint and end up staying out until two, except that it happens over the course of a month.
I have tickets for the first few shows, including the albums from the band’s mid-seventies commercial peak, which sell out fast and are attended by celebrities such as TV host Jonathan Ross and Joe Elliot from Def Leppard (a man who seems to have puzzlingly good musical taste given his output).
I mean to return to normal life after 1979’s Giorgio Moroder collaboration No. 1 in Heaven, but I can’t stop. I’m hooked on the narrative of the Sparks discography as it moves through glam to disco, through eighties synthpop to nineties dance, to arrive at the band’s exquisite late period.
Plus, as I explore deeper into the Sparks back catalogue I begin to realize how good their quality control has been. Some of their eighties output is blighted by brash production, but the songs themselves have been consistently great—loaded with counter-intuitive ideas and sly double meanings.
I buy one ticket from a tout and one on the door before finally giving in, getting a Golden Ticket and accepting the Maels as part of my nightly routine.
Five nights a week I arrive at Islington Academy just before nine, buy a lager from the bar, and push my way to the front. Sparks then play that night’s album in full, followed by a rare track that may or may not be from the same era.
Later on, I get on the tube and listen to the album they’re doing next on my iPod.
It starts to feel more like one long show with 23-hour breaks between encores than a series of gigs. The atmosphere inside the shows is unusual, too. More like a fan convention than a typical gig, especially at the shows for the less well-known albums.
It can’t be easy to play a totally different set every night. I start to wonder why Sparks are putting themselves through this.
Partly, I think, they want to do something PR-worthy to draw attention to new album Exotic Creatures of the Deep. And that’s fair enough. The album completes a trilogy of lush orchestral pop that began with 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven and continued with 2006’s Hello Young Lovers. Although subject to a cult following and a critical reputation, especially here in the UK, these innovative works still got a little lost in the modern rock clutter. And if this London marathon helps to push the new one, then so much the better.
Or maybe this is just the Maels applying their studio work ethic to their live shows. The brothers are apparently driven to mammoth sessions while crafting their meticulous pop. So maybe playing every single one of their albums live is the only way they can make their rehearsal schedule as grueling as their studio routine. I wonder if they’re losing money on all of this. When I put this query to David, a Canadian fan who’s taken a month off work to come to the shows, he responds, “They’re not doing it for money. They’re doing it for art.”
So is that it? Are we all part of some conceptual piece here, a commentary on the nature of modern rock fandom, or an effort to destroy the tendency for nostalgia in modern music by taking it to its logical conclusion?
Possibly. But I think the real reason Sparks want to do this is the same reason they’ve done a lot of things throughout their career—because it shouldn’t work, but it does. Over the past four decades Sparks have been drawn to unusual creative choices through a mix of contrariness and inventiveness, and here they’re applying the same spirit to live performance.
And it’s this brilliantly perverse spirit we all have to thank as we file out of the final show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire after three hours and three encores and slowly admit to ourselves that this time the show really is over
There was once a band from Hawthorne, California called REDD KROSS. Ever hear of them?? They were this wildly fun & funny punk/pop/rock group who dug CHEAP TRICK a heck of a lot. And they liked to get dressed up. Oh man, did they ever. (more…)
