Sparks Spectacular: 21 Miracles of the Modern Age

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.

By Tim Collins

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