Sparks Spectacular: Interior Design (1988)

By Miss Missy Tannenbaum

Hey, this was fun! Interior Design is the Sparks album that many fans—often in sheer annoyance—have called “Inferior Design,” but it worked great on stage. The sound was crisp; the performance showed a great enthusiasm for digging this album out of the shame pit, and that was done without trying to update the eighties arrangement that has condemned the album as being dated.

As always, there were speculations among fans about how the album would sound live in 2008, and there were certain expectations that there would be changes made to achieve a more layered sound. There were no changes and thankfully so: firstly, because it showed how brave Sparks are to perform a type of musical arrangement that’s not considered to have stood the test of time. It was also a reminder of how many different types of musical styles Sparks have embraced and appreciated, an attitude that has kept them versatile as artists for years.

By the time from the first Halfnelson gig to this album (number fifteen in the line of shows) it seemed to be settled that Sparks would play the albums as faithfully as possible to the studio recordings. When the evening’s first song “So Important” started the show, it felt amazingly close to the original album sound. Jim Wilson got his moment with a short but delightful guitar solo.

“I Just Got Back From Heaven,” the album’s weakest song, benefited from the boosted bass sound that’s typical for a live setting. The studio recording of some of the songs sounded flat, but in a live context they became more vivid. In “A Lot Of Reasons” for instance, Wilson got his chance again to put the guitar in good use, giving the song an extra punch.

Interior Design‘s ballads “You Got A Hold Of My Heart,” “Toughest Girl In Town,” and “Let’s Make Love” were absolutely gorgeous. The highlight of this gig was “A Walk Down Memory Lane,” a song which let Russell make beautiful use of his falsetto voice. On “Madonna,” Russell sang a verse in French which made the audience cheer with enthusiasm.

Tonight’s big surprise was that the band decided to play two obscure songs instead of one as they’d usually been doing. The choice of the encores was splendid; first, the mighty “Big Brass Ring,” which was unexpected since the forthcoming concert of Plagiarism has a version of that melody. The other great surprise was “It’s Kind Of Like The Movies” from the Bad Manners soundtrack, a song so obscure that Russell believed no one had heard of it. Again, Wilson kicked in with a smooth guitar solo to end the evening’s last tune.