Sparks Appreciation & Album by Album thread

I enjoyed them...

 

Oh, if you expected some sort of interview, then sorry for misleading. The whole idea of Steve Jones' talk show is not to make it an interview. I think the Maels had a great time there because of silliness and fun of the whole thing. Compare it with standard cue-card driven promotional "interviews" on the late night shows. That's how I see it.

 

Well they put the whole thing out as a B-side in 2006, so I don't think they were too uncomfortable...

Edit: not this one, but another one:

Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) interview with Ron and Russell Mael

 

fair enough.
him seeing all the bulletholes in bosnia as a curio, mistaking it for slovenia and then to top it by saying all these eastern countries are the same really put me off though. not my idea of being funny.

 

Jones needs to act his age. If I were a Briton I would be cringing even more than I am.

 

A Check Out Time 11AM
B Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)

 

I really wish they'd put You Earned The Right To Be A Dick on the B-side!

 

I've got a copy of it, and it's a pretty good song that would've fit right in on the Hippopotamus album. I just wish the single came with a download!

 

Rough Trade wanted £9.99 for the 7”. Sorry fellas, but even I draw the line somewhere.

Agreed, it really needed to have ‘…Dick’ as the B-side.

 

That's relatively cheap for RSD stuff, unfortunately

 

Hear it here...

 

Yeah, You've Earned the Right to be a Dick should've been the B-side. It's a better song than Check Out Time 11AM, TBH (although COT11AM is pretty good.)

YETRTBAD is better then some of the stuff that made Hippopotamus, IMHO. Certainly better than Bummer or Giddy Giddy (although those songs are OK.)

 

Slightly unrelated but ...



At the time my mate Achim and I (both of us avid Sparks fans) were absolutely certain this was a new Sparks song. (40-odd years later I can still hear why!)

 

Going to see them at Bergenfest tonight, along with Nick Cave, The Districts and Tom Russell. After having seen them in Oslo in August, I am a bit apprehensive, though. Russell seemed to have some trouble with his vocals, which is understandable, all things considered. Anybody have any info on how he has sounded at more recent shows? No matter what, Sparks is one of my favourite bands, so I'm bound to have a good time. Just hope they've mixed up their setlist some since last I saw them.

 

He sounded great last October in San Francisco.

 

He sounded great in Utrecht this weekend. And that setlist included some great songs which were absent last year!

 

Was perfectly fine in Barcelona last week.

 

?????

Cringing about what?
Unnecessary sledging as usual from an Aussie. If you don't like Jones go listen to Jason Donovan instead. That's your contribution to culture.

 

Ughhh, someone has a superiority complex...

 

Cringing about Steve Jones. In the company of intelligent people.
Not his nationality!
Apologies for the unintended slur...

 

Great show yesterday. Russell's vocals were far stronger than when they played Oslo last August. The festival crowd seemed to be rather bewildered, which was funny.

 

I don't want to divert the thread, but Steve Jones' show is pretty good. He has a lot of great guests and he really comes across as quite humble.
His guitar playing is legend - he blew many cobwebs away in the 70s. He's authentic working class and can't hide it. He's not a fake.

Dr John Cooper Clarke (talking to Steve about an early Pistols gig):
"I read how you couldn't play...when you were on...it was like: where are the other nine guitar players?...This is how modest Steve Jones is - he's always blaming someone else for his guitar playing...Chris Spedding usually...nah - I'm not having that."
He's not arty, and he may not be on the intellectual level of the Mael bros, but he gets some good genuine interviews out of his guests, and personally I'm proud that Steve Jones is English.

 

I know this an album appreciation thread, but there's space I think for a few missing tunes and one unreleased Sparks soundtrack. During the "Whomp" through to "Music" US themed LPs, the Maels were very keen on working with Hollywood. That resulted in a few non-album songs that appeared on soundtracks, such as the excellent "Get Crazy" from the 1983 film of the same name, "Breaking Out Of Prison" (less good, with a crappy synth drum, from "Heavenly Bodies", and the entire (unreleased) soundtrack to the film "Bad Manners" (1984) which also contains some decent songs, not least the title track. You can hear these here: here: Breaking Out Of Prison - Sparks and the entire Bad Manners (originally titled "Growing Pains") film here: Bad Manners (1984 movie, aka Growing Pains) . On the latter, some of the tracks are full blooded Sparks, others by the Gleaming Spires, who were basically the Sparks band at the time.

 

I can also point you towards collaborations with several other bands and singers. Noel has been mentioned, however Sparks also wrote and played several songs on the Belgian singer Lio's "Suite Sixteen" pop LP in 1982. A taster is here: . They also wrote the entire 1981 Telex LP "Birds & Bees" here: Telex - 03 - 1981 - Sex [full album] and in 1988 recorded with the Japanese group Salon Music, on whose 1988 "O Boy" LP Sparks recorded a cover of "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" here: Salon Music/Say Hello, Wave Goodbye(Soft Cell's Cover) . They also recorded with another Japanese group, Pizzicato 5 on their 2001 LP the song "Kimono" which does indeed reference Sparks own 1974 LP KMH, here: Pizzicato Five featuring Sparks - Kimono

 

Finally, the entire soundtrack to "Mai The Psychic Girl", on which the brothers worked on for some 5-6 years as a projected musical has never been released, and neither has the film. But snippets of the music crop up on YouTube. They also point the way to a more orchestral sound that the brothers were better able to capture on subsequent releases. Some of those songs can be accessed here: Sparks mai the psychic girl - YouTube