Sparks in Belgium - Friends Old and New

 

                                  

       In mid-2109, Belgium was very much in the minds of excited Sparks’ fans, because the filming of the movie musical, Annette, with which Ron and Russell make their screenwriting debut, was taking place there. Although details of the actual filming were hush-hush, the Sparks official website teased us with pictures of Ron and/or Russell posing with images of icons of Belgian culture: Jacques Brel, and, of course, Hergé’s comic-book hero Tintin. One of the latter photos shows Ron against a mural depicting a scene from one of the Tintin albums, apparently ‘joining’ the passengers alighting from a train, another shows both Ron and Russell looking somewhat apprehensive in the midst of a jungle scene, with Tintin, Captain Haddock and  Milou (or Snowy) the dog in the background. Clearly, they enjoyed a visit to the Musée Hergé.  And, presumably, there was also some Belgian chocolate consumed in private.

However, Sparks do have considerable previous history with Belgium. They have performed, recorded, and worked with other bands there. As far back as 22 October 1972, Sparks were due to support Slade in a gig at the recently opened Vorst Nationaal, a large multi-purpose arena near Brussels, famed for its circular interior. For some unknown reason, however, although the band came to London, they did not make it to Belgium and were replaced on the show by Fumble.

So, when was the first visit?

On 6 October 1974, Sparks did a promotional appearance on the Belgian TV show TV Follies performing ‘Thanks but no thanks’ and ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’ from the new album Propaganda (released 1974) and ‘Amateur Hour’ (from Kimono My House). Russell, in a very 1970s outfit of white wide-shouldered and loose- belted jacket and white flares with a black spotted scarf knotted around his neck and white shoes, marches energetically on the spot on a small playing area against the word ‘Follies’ spelt out in flashing lights.  The British band members, Dinky Diamond on drums, Ian Hampton on bass and Trevor White on guitar echo the black and white theme, as does Ron’s now characteristic white shirt and sober tie. Ron’s hair has undergone a transformation since the long curls of earlier years, and is now short and slicked back, as it was in the famous Top Of The Pops performance in May 1974. The video on YouTube of the Follies appearance includes a nice close-up of Ron’s hands as he plays, an aspect that filmed live concerts rarely offer us. He also demonstrates his acute awareness of the camera, and exploits it with a series of comic expressions, some scowling, some seductive, some glancing in mock disapproval at his cavorting brother.  He has since claimed that he learned early on how to upstage the rest of the band with minimum effort! It is true to this day that, despite remaining seated for the most part, behind his customized ‘Ronald’ keyboard, he manages to be a focal point on stage.

Two months later (15 December), Sparks’ tour to promote the Propaganda album landed at the Vorst Nationaal in Brussels. The set list included 6 songs from Propaganda (‘B.C.’, ‘Reinforcements’, ‘Something for the Girl with Everything’, ‘Bon Voyage’, ‘Achoo’, and ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’) as well as several from Kimono My House, which Belgium had not seen performed live, including, with nice irony given the date, ‘Thank God It’s Not Christmas’. Videos of this tour show that the stage outfits for the band were the same, or similar, to those worn on the Follies show.

Less than a year later, Sparks were back in Belgium for a gig on 12 October 1975 at the Cirque Royal in Brussels, a venue established in 1878 and now specialising in live music events. The set lists seemed to have varied a little on this tour, but if this gig was like that in Paris on the previous day, it would have contained a mixture of songs from the recently released Indiscreet album, including ‘Hospitality On Parade’, ‘Happy Hunting Ground’, ‘Get In The Swing’, and ‘Without Using Hands’, and the perennial crowd pleasers ‘This Town’ and ‘Amateur Hour’. The performance of ‘Without Using Hands’ had closed with an intriguing stage effect whereby a spotlight focussed on Ron’s hands as Russell whispered the last line in darkness, an effect which perhaps can be seen to foreshadow the later Two Hands One Mouth concept. As elsewhere on this tour, Russell’s almost cheeky schoolboy look of red braces over a short-sleeved white shirt and short tie contrasted nicely with his flowing curls.

              The early 1980s saw two Sparks’ concerts in Belgium. There were to be six gigs, but four of these were cancelled due to poor ticket sales.   Of the two concerts that did take place, the first, on 20 November 1981 at the Salle Gérard Champs, in Verviers, a municipality of Liège, saw Ron and Russell accompanied by their American band, made up of members of the former group Bates Motel and employed for the 1980 European tour: Bob Haag (guitar), Leslie Bohem (bass), David Kendrick (drums) and Jim Goodwin (keyboards). These four later went on to form the band Gleaming Spires. The new band’s self-presentation was more sophisticated on this tour: Russell was elegant in a sparkly gold suit, bow tie and wing collar, with a fashionable new mullet-style haircut, while the other band members wore red. Ron, of course, was in a formal white shirt and tie, and gives an hilarious performance of disapproving glances at his brother, shaking his head and turning away when he approaches. A set list for this concert, and for the next day’s gig in the Vorst Nationaal in Brussels is not available, but from other concerts in the same tour in Paris (13 November) and Munich (6 December), we can deduce that it consisted of songs from Whomp That Sucker (1981), including ‘Wacky Women’, ‘Tips for Teens’ and ‘Funny Face’. Even at this latter concert, the venue was not full: Russell allegedly pretended to scan the horizon for fans. It would seem that these events were not well promoted.  

A cool place to record

During the 1980s, Ron and Russell were to spend a great deal of time in Belgium. Their album, Sparks in Outer Space (1983) was recorded at the Belgian avant-garde techno band Telex’s studio, Synsound, and was the first to be self-produced. Ron and Russell had been friends with Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers of Telex since 1979 and they have spoken of their appreciation of the luxury of having plenty of studio time, instead of being limited to a time slot allocated by a recording company. The same musicians who had played on Whomp That Sucker and Angst In My Pants (1982) appear on this album (Bob Haag, Leslie Bohem, Jim Goodwin, and David Kendrick).  There were also two duets featuring Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos which were not recorded in Belgium: ‘Cool Places’ and ‘Lucky Me, Lucky You’, the former of which was a rare big hit for Sparks in the US.  The inner sleeve of Sparks in Outer Space shows Ron and Russell standing in front of the towering Atomium in Brussels, built for the World Expo in 1958 as a symbol of the faith in science. This extraordinary iconic structure of rods and spheres represents a huge magnified iron crystal, inside which visitors can walk and dine. Sparks were to work at the Synsound studio again in 1985-86 on the high energy album Music That You Can Dance To (‘dance music for people who don’t like dancing’ (1986)). As before, playing with Sparks are Haag, Bohem, and Kendrick, with the addition of John Thomas (keyboards) and Robert Mache (guitar on ‘Fingertips’). This was in fact to be the last time that this line-up worked together.

Crazy interviews and upstaging interviewers

The 1980s also produced some very entertaining interviews with Sparks for Belgian television. Fans will be delighted by two interviews, available on YouTube, that took place in 1981 to promote Whomp That Sucker.  The first, from March, appeared on a RTBF programme called Génération 80.  Russell, his hair in the then fashionable mullet style, is sitting on a low bench beside the interviewer Fabienne Vandermeersche, while Ron, still sporting his Chaplinesque moustache, is sitting on the floor behind them, only his head, shoulders and arms visible.  Russell quickly takes control of the interview, speaking in fluent French of their work with Telex, for whose ‘vachement superbe’ (bloody good) album Sex, Ron and Russell wrote the lyrics (see later) and of their liking for ‘waterzooi’ (a Belgian stew).  Ron’s contribution to the interview is restricted to shrugs and puzzled expressions.  When Fabienne announces a competition for which the prizes are ten Sparks albums, Russell opines that this is ‘un peu trop, je pense’ (‘a bit over the top, I think’). He also demonstrates Sparks’ early propensity for teasing or wrongfooting their interviewers by flinging his arm around her shoulders, keeping her in a loose stranglehold, and even presumes to correct her French, pedantically illustrating the ‘correct’ way to pronounce ‘musicale’.  It is axiomatic when interviewing Sparks that you never know what to expect, except the unexpected!

A week later, they appeared on a Follies Special in 1981 which, according to the credits, also featured The Cure, Spandau Ballet and Dave Edmunds and the Stray Cats. The interview showcases their work with clips of videos of six songs, including the song that was a smash hit in France, ‘When I’m With You’ (in the video of which Ron acts as a ventriloquist), and ‘Tips for Teens’ and ‘Funny Face’ from Whomp That Sucker. Russell is wearing a black and red jacket and red shirt and Ron, more flamboyant for once and not a little eccentric, sports a black and white leopard print jacket, a black beret and shades. The interviewer, rock critic Gilles Verlant, has got into the swing by sporting a Ron-style moustache and the interview begins with a surprise: for once, we hear Ron speaking in French! He states that he likes Sparks because their music is ‘incroyable’ but has a question: ‘Etes-vous vraiment des frères?’ (‘Are you really brothers?’), he asks, as though he were the interviewer. (This, apparently, is a common question they encounter in interviews.)  Russell goes on to discuss in  lively French the ups and downs of their career, particularly the difficulties and disappointments of the early days. After a while, Ron feigns boredom, checks his watch, and, at one point, pretends to give his brother a haircut while Russell chats on undaunted and seemingly oblivious, his feet up on the table. He speaks of their work with Telex and the English version of the album by the Belgian pop icon, Lio (Suite Sixtine (1983)). These two early collaborations testify to the Maels’ energy and desire to engage in other musical projects beyond Sparks, and the opportunities that the Belgian music scene offered them. This whole interview, in fact, is a splendid example of the style, humour and dedication to their work that we have always associated with them.

More evidence of their offbeat and sporting attitude to interviews appears in one from 1985 with Ray Cokes for the Belgian show Rockbox. It opens with Ray sitting on a train and grumbling to himself about a recent encounter with Sparks, only to be joined by the brothers who, in turn, are grumbling about the weather and the disorganization they have encountered. Russell, in a pale blue jacket and yellow sweater, his hair now quite short, tells Ray that his interview ‘sucked’ and Ray abuses them in turn by demanding to know what Sparks have done in the past five years. When Russell replies that little countries like Belgium probably ‘don’t get much about what’s going on’, Cokes proceeds to challenge them about their lack of knowledge of Belgian pop groups.  Ron mentions Jacques Brel, who, Cokes retorts, is actually dead, so ‘he does less than Sparks’. Currently, it emerges, they are in Belgium working on a new album and to promote the single ‘Change’, written while Ron and Russell were working with Dan Lacksman, which was released as a one-off single in the UK in June 1985 on London Records, with an acoustic version of ‘This Town’ on the B side.  Described by Easlea in his book Talent is an Asset. The Story of Sparks (p. 196) as ‘a biography in song’ and a ‘watershed in their career’, both acknowledging what had gone before and pointing towards a new musical direction, this song is allegedly one of Russell’s favourites. In this interview, Ron proceeds with quite aggressive questioning about Cokes’ ‘failure’ to show their new video. Although the anger is fake, an angry Ron is nonetheless quite scary! They must have had fun with this one!

New friends: Telex

The relationship with the members of Telex clearly indicates that collaborations do work. The lyrics on Telex’s album Sex ((1982), prudishly renamed Birds and Bees for the UK release) are unmistakably the work of Sparks. Titles like ‘Brainwash’, ‘Exercise Is Good For You’ and ‘Sigmund Freud’s Birthday’ would not be out of place on any Sparks’ album. The gentle ‘Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?’ was released as a single in the UK, together with a rather spooky video involving jellyfish, bees and other pale larvae -like creatures.  In the liner notes to the 1993 re-release in the ‘Belgium….One Point’ series (a jokey reference to the Eurovision Song Contest),  Telex write that they have been the biggest Sparks’ fans since 1974 and claim the Number One Song In Heaven album as an influence on their own work. Because Sparks returned to make two albums of their own (Sparks in Outer Space (1983) and Music That You Can Dance To (1986) at Telex’s studio, they have earned, it seems, the unofficial award for ‘the American act staying for the longest time in Belgium.’ (An accolade earned once more in 2019.)  In November 2013, Ron and Russell took part in a televised Homage à Marc Moulin in Flagey, Brussels. Marc, who died in 2008, was a close friend, Russell explains in French, and was the first person to interview them in Belgium. They had corresponded frequently, Marc visited them in L.A. and sent them copies of Telex’s CDs.  Ron had contributed brief inter-song comments to Marc’s album Top Secret (2002), which was engineered by Russell and in 2009, Sparks had dedicated The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, their superb pop opera, to the late Marc.   At the Tribute, Ron reads, in English, a letter from Marc about his latest disc, containing the advice not to listen while driving ‘in case you fall asleep’. Then, Ron offers the heartfelt realisation that since 1979, his best friend was a Belgian, ‘That’s weird’, he adds, clearly very moved.  A tribute indeed. Ron and Russell then perform the gorgeous ‘Tell Me It’s A Dream’ from Telex’s album Wonderful World (1984) and ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us’.

 A long gap…

              Although the 1980s were rich in Sparks’ activities, those of the 1990s passed the country by, and their next live performance was not until 19 October 2012, for the extensive Two Hands One Mouth tour. The gig took place in an impressive hall with a gilded roof at the historic arts centre Vooruit Balzaal in Ghent. As elsewhere, Ron and Russell dazzled with their virtuoso performance of a wide range of songs from their back catalogue in this new stripped back format, which showcased with stunning clarity the music and Russell’s voice without the distractions of guitars, drums and computer-generated sound. Highlights were the versions of ‘Suburban Homeboy’ the selection of pieces from The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman and the specially composed ‘Two Hands, One Mouth’, with its typically Sparks-like innuendo (‘That’s all I need to satisfy you’). Particularly memorable from these shows, apart from Russell’s plus-four style pants and striped socks, was the Overture, a medley of hooks from Sparks’ songs, played by Ron alone at the piano before Russell came bounding on stage. The ‘sequel’, Revenge of Two Hands One Mouth did not stop over in Belgium.

FFS collaboration

Sparks’ surprise collaboration with the members of Franz Ferdinand (Alex Kapranos, Nick McCarthy, Bob Hardy and Paul Thomson) in the super-group FFS, produced a superb album and an extensive and hugely successful tour.  Their concert at the Ancienne Belgique on 24 June 2015 consisted of three of Franz Ferdinand’s songs (‘Do You Want To’, ‘Michael’, ‘Take Me Out’) and three Sparks’ hits (‘When Do I Get To Sing My Way’, Number One Song In Heaven’, ‘This Town..’) and a large number of songs from the FFS album, concluding, hilariously, with ‘Piss Off’.  The combined energy of Russell and Alex was widely praised, and the enthusiastic rendition of ‘Collaborations Don’t Work’, involving all the band members was greeted warmly everywhere. FFS returned in late summer (21 August) to perform at the Pukkelpop2015 festival in Hasselt.

Arrival of the Hippo

The years 2017 and 2018, the Hippopotamus era, were marked by two gigs in Belgium, in Brussels on 16 September 2017, shortly after the release of the album, and in Antwerp on 7 June 2018. In an Instagram photo to announce their arrival in Brussels in 2017, Russell is seen posing in front of a poster depicting the Atomium, echoing the photo accompanying the Sparks in Outer Space album of some thirty-six years earlier. The Brussels gig took place in the Ancienne Belgique, an important entertainment venue in the centre of Brussels that hosts international concerts, specializing in contemporary music, and boasting three stages.  A photo posted by Sparks after the gig shows to good effect the rectangular hall with striking red-pillared balcony and a packed crowd amongst which is hoisted a huge banner proclaiming ‘Ron, Russell, Thanks for Your Genius. Belgium Loves You’.  Ron and Russell were once again accompanied by a band, this time a talented combination of Evan Weiss and Taylor Locke on guitar, Zach Dawes on bass, Tyler Parkford on additional keyboards and Sparks’ stalwart Steve Nistor on drums. Zach and Tyler are both from Los Angeles based band Mini Mansions, and Tyler also provided the support act in the shape of his suave alter ago Mr Goodnite.  This line-up proved to be a splendid asset for both their tight and energetic engagement with the musical complexities of the new songs and their enthusiastic rendition of Sparks’ classics.  The band’s outfits were colour coordinated, with stripes as the motif, a choice that surely created rocketing sales of striped tops as fans eagerly embraced the look! The band members wore blue and white sweaters, while Ron wore a spectacular black and white striped jacket and tie with wide-legged dark trousers, and Russell a slightly curious but striking combination of a striped sweater, cut-off trousers and formal brogues with red laces and no socks.  As elsewhere, the set list featured favourites from earlier albums as well as new songs from Hippopotamus. There was a rousing start to the show with ‘What The Hell Is It This Time’ that got the audience bouncing up and down, before the familiar combination of ‘Propaganda’ and ‘At Home, At Work, At Play’. This momentum contrasted with Russell’s moving rendition of the sweet and melancholy ‘Probably Nothing’, followed by the delights of ‘The Missionary Position’, the humour of ‘Hippopotamus’, the steady rhythm of ‘Scandinavian Design’, the glorious ‘I Wish You Were Fun’, which created a loud chorus of ‘lalalalala’ from the delighted audience, imitating Russell’s waving finger, and the melancholy yearning lament of ‘Edith Piaf Said It Better’.  The audience clapped along responsively and cheered throughout, especially when Ron got up to do his now famous ‘dance’ to ‘Number One Song In Heaven’, first removing and carefully folding his jacket.

The gig in Antwerp the following year took place at the Arenbergschouwburg theatre. This time, Ron and Russell were accompanied by a different line-up of Evan Weiss, Alex Casnoff, Patrick Kelly, Eli Pearl and Steve Nistor. The colour theme for this tour was pink, with the band in pink denim jackets and Ron with a pink tie (that got thrown into the audience before his customary dance). A collective cheer of approval greeted Russell’s elegant military style pink jacket. Added to the set list on this tour were ‘Unaware’ and, to the surprise of the audience, a verse of Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ as lead in to their own ‘When Do I Get To Sing My Way’. As the previous year, Belgian fans clearly showed their love of Sparks: another huge banner can be seen with the words ‘Merci! Sparks Forever’ emblazoned on it.

Stepping into the movies

And so to 2019, and the filming of Annette, the movie musical performed entirely in song in the style of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, on which Ron and Russell have been working for some time. The music had allegedly been intended originally for a Sparks’ album, until, having met the famous French director Leos Carax at the Cannes Film Festival, they sent the music to him and he wanted to make it into a movie. It stars Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver with Simon Helberg.  The fact that Marion Cotillard won an Oscar in 2007 for her superb portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose is a nice coincidence. Leos Carax, for whom this is his first English language film, is an avowed Sparks’ fan and his surreal Holy Motors featured a song by Sparks (‘How Are You Getting Home?’).  He also participated on the Hippopotamus album in ‘When You’re a French Director’ and actually took to the stage with Sparks in Paris to reprise his role. The Executive Music Producer is Marius de Vries, whose previous work includes the box-office hots La La Land, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Moulin Rouge.  Filming for Annette began in Belgium in August and took place in several cities: Liège, Brussels, Bruges, La Louvière and Ghent, before moving on to Germany (Münster, Cologne and Bonn), and Los Angeles for the final shoots. Some Belgian Sparks’ fans were fortunate enough to obtain parts as extras in the film, which is highly appropriate since Sparks have had a very loyal following there over the years.  The story line involves a stand-up comedian married to a world-famous opera singer who dies tragically, leaving him with a young daughter who turns out to have unusual supernatural powers (a cousin of Mai, the Psychic Girl, perhaps?). As we now know,  Annette was chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival in July 2021.  The first song from the film to be released, ‘May We Start?’, featuring the stars, Carax, and Sparks themselves is an intriguing Brechtian-style address to the audience, alluding to the preparations for the show that they are about to witness if they ‘sit down and shut up’, has now become the dynamic opener to their live shows.  

Summer of Sparks

Despite the delay in plans caused by the pandemic of 2020-2021, including the postponement of the European tour for the new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (released May, 2020), with the release of Annette and the upcoming documentary, The Sparks Brothers, by Edgar Wright, which has already received ecstatic reviews at its screening in film festivals and is due in cinemas shortly, 2021 is going to be a huge year for Sparks. In fact, in this ‘summer of Sparks’, it is a great time to be a Sparks’ fan!  Amongst the dates for the tour, rescheduled for 2022, Sparks will be back at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels on 22 April. All the treats that we have been given by Sparks should ensure that they have an even bigger audience of fans old and new to welcome them back to Belgium.

Back on the road

Sparks decided to go ahead with the tours of the US and Europe in April/May 2022.  This was obviously a brave decision and a source of anxiety for many, as the Covid 19 pandemic was far from over in Europe. The issue of the safety and well-being of the band and the audience was foregrounded, with a plea from Sparks HQ on the official website for the wearing of masks and repeated in venue information and announcements before each show.  Some concert pictures showed a sea of masks in the audience, but at some venues, the response was, frankly, disappointing to say the least. 

On 22 April 2022, Sparks were again at the Ancienne Belgique, in Brussels along with a partly new band line-up: Evan Weiss and Eli Pearl (guitar), Max Whipple (bass), Steve Nistor (drums) and Tyler Parkford (additional keyboards). While the band wore dark outfits, Russell stood out in bright , yellow trousers and, occasionally, matching waistcoat over a dark top, prompting remarks that he had borrowed a ‘high-vis’ suit. Ron wore dark wide-legged trousers with a stylish long jacket and a dark polo neck top. No ties to throw into the audience this time, but Eli’s beret caught the eye of many fans.  The lengthy set list included two songs from Annette (‘So May We Start’ and ‘We Love Each Other So Much’) and three from A Steady Drip, Drip,Drip: : Stravinsky’s Only Hit’,  ‘Lawnmower’, and, as a final song, the anthemic ‘All That’.  The latter, like ‘May We Start’, has now become an iconic part of a Sparks’ show, and forms a very emotional closure, with the auditorium spangled with phone lights as fans sway to the music.  Introducing it, Russell said that, although it was not written with this in mind, it had become evident on this tour that the song exemplified the bond between them and their fans. He sang the chorus once with only the audience’s clapping as accompaniment before the band joined in again. Also in the set list were songs from various earlier albums, with some welcome surprises like ‘Tips For Teens’, ‘Get in the Swing’, ‘Under the Table With Her’ and ‘The shopping Mall of Love’.  There are always many endearing moments in a Sparks’ performance, and amongst them on this tour were Russell sitting on a stool, Sinatra-style, for ‘Rhythm Thief’ and ‘I Married Myself’. During the latter, he produced a hand mirror and said ‘Hi Baby. How you doin’?’ and sang the rest of the song gazing lovingly at his reflection.  Ron’s dance is always a showstopper, with its slowly built anticipation as he carefully removes and folds his jacket, but his monologue in ‘The Shopping Mall of Love’ also caught the imagination of fans this time. His facial expressions, and the repeated dead-pan ‘Yeah’, accompanied by a small fist pump were a great hit as the number of social media shares showed.  As on other occasions in Belgium, a banner was unfurled at the end, proclaiming: ‘Sparks is a chef-d’oeuvre. Merci les frères’, while Russell’s closing speech spoke of their current work on a new album and another movie musical.  After the grimness of the previous couple of years, it was clearly exhilerating and emotional to be seeing Sparks in concert again.

Instant Latte

Making up for lost time, Sparks were on the road again in 2023 on a tour that culminated in the ‘dream come true’ performances at the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.  Promoting the new critically acclaimed album, The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (released on 26 May 2023 and the first on Island Records since 1976), the tour featured 18 dates in Europe, including a highly praised appearance at Glastonbury, and arrived at the Cirque Royal in Brussels on 20 June. In this stunning red and gold circular auditorium, which had previously hosted Sparks in 1975, the audience was seated, as was the case in many venues this time, but this did not detract from the rapturous reception the band received. They entered, appropriately, to the twinkling notes of ‘Take Me For A Ride’, and the set list consisted of songs from 14 albums, including several songs from the new album: ‘The Girl is Crying In Her Latte’, Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’, ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way’, ‘We Go Dancing’ ‘Escalator’ (which replaced ‘Veronica Lake’) and a short version of ‘Gee That Was Fun’. The audience was surprised and delighted by the unusual choices, some of which, like ‘Beaver O’Lindy’ and ‘Bon Voyage’ and ‘Music That You Can Dance To’, have rarely featured in concerts. The introduction of ‘’When Do I Get To Sing My Way’ was a special shout-out to Dan Lacksman, in whose Brussels studio the song was first recorded.  The band line-up was substantially the same as in 2022, though without extra keyboards. The combination of Evan Weiss and Eli Pearl on guitars, Max Whipple on bass and Steven Nistor on drums produced a fantastically exciting sound that has been widely praised by reviewers and fans alike. The energy was palpable and the tightness and precision faultless. The buzzing techno background of some of the songs from the new album translated well to the band format and, if anything, some fans felt that the songs were even more striking in live performance. The band also seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely!  Eli won a lot of fans (and hearts) with his dance moves, especially during ‘Music That You Can Dance To’.

The outfits of the band, who remained on a slightly raised platform at the back of the stage, were dark and casual. Ron surprised in a pair of wide grey jogger-type trousers with a light stripe down the sides, paired with a white shirt under a dark jacket, and a tie. Once again, the most colour on stage was Russell’s striking two-tone red and black jacket worn with dark trousers and shirt. His shoes, which aways attract a lot of fan attention, were also red while Ron‘s were white and black. Russell’s energy throughout was astonishing, his leaps, twirls and skipping covering the whole width of the stage.  At one moment, however, he tripped at the front of the stage and nearly fell forwards, saved (depending on which version you read) by his own efforts or the outstretched arms of fans in the front row! The lighting for the shows was sophisticated and stunning, featuring a background grid of rectangles filled with lights which constantly changed to form different patterns, spelling Sparks during ‘So May We Start’ and ‘Beaver O’Lindy’ letter by letter, as Russell spelled it out. The arrangement was particularly effective during ‘Escalator’ as horizontal rows of lights ran up and down behind the band, as were the spotlights, including the highly dramatic blue spotlight on Ron at his keyboard in ‘Number One Song in Heaven.

A special mention must be made of the support act, Mr B, the Gentleman Rhymer, who has opened for Sparks in the past. He told us that he felt that he shared a sensibility with ‘the chaps’, in that they were all extroverts on stage and introverts off stage, and paid a surprise homage to that affinity by opening with his version of ‘Here Comes Bob’, and, after a couple of his own witty and catchy pieces, performing a medley of Sparks songs in his own inimitable style. An EP of this is now available to download, which is certainly a little bit like fun.

The dates for the 2025 tour, celebrating Mad, the appropriately named album for the current state of the world, are to include a return to the Cirque Royal. As Sparks’ triumphant success continues to ride high, it is sure to be sensational.

Penny Brown, March 2025

The many amazing faces of propaganda

 

 To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the appearance of Sparks’ album Propaganda (November 1974)

***The many amazing faces of propaganda!***

 

We tend to think of propaganda in a political or military context, and often negatively, as information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a point of view and persuade people. But the more general dictionary definition: the spreading or promoting of ideas, (dis)information or rumour to indoctrinate, influence or mislead, or to support a particular cause, allows for much wider interpretation. The title of this essay is itself an example of propaganda in the sense of promotion, publicity, advertising or hype, something we see every day in the press, on television and on social media, notably in the posts of ‘influencers’.

 Propaganda (1974) is one of Sparks’ albums on which there is also a song of the same title. This might suggest that is it an important theme. We are well aware of Ron Mael’s genius in exploring different nuances of language, often with layers of meaning or a metaphorical level. So, do all the songs on this album reflect different aspects of ‘propaganda’?

The first and third songs on the album sets the scene with military images to reflect the idea of the battle between the sexes, a theme running throughout this album. As in many Sparks’ songs about relationships, women are cast in the dominant role and seen as an enemy, or at least the opposition.  

The brief acapella ‘Propaganda’, the introductory tract sung at a manic pace, employs the extended metaphor of a military context merging with the theme of sexuality and seduction. In her address, ‘hello soldier boy’, the girl would seem to be inviting other suitors to ‘come on over’ but the narrator, claiming ‘you are right to fight her propaganda’, insists that he does not need ‘more/competition for/her affection’, and issues the opposing command to presumably a possible rival to ‘fight on/fight on/over there’.  There is a theory that this song alludes to Tokyo Rose, the generic name given by Allied troops during the Second World War to a group of English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast propaganda to demoralise and destabilise the soldiers, the name later becoming synonymous with sexualised and manipulative evil.  More likely, in my view, is an allusion to the more contemporary Vietnam war and Hanoi Hannah (Trinh Thi Ngo) who broadcast anti-US propaganda on Radio Hanoi. Addressing ‘G.I. Joe’, she goaded the listeners by telling them that U.S. soldiers were poorly informed and confused about why they are there and what was going on. The last such broadcast was in 1973 when U.S. troops were withdrawing.

The third song, ‘Reinforcements’, echoes the military link with its extended range of metaphors for either a fraught situation between lovers or another unsuccessful attempt at seduction. Like the soldiers in Hanoi Hannah’s broadcasts, the singer seems to be in a state of complete confusion (‘You won’t tell me why the shrubbery moves’ is also a neat reference to  Macbeth), his relationship is a constant battle for which he is unprepared and inadequate (‘I could use a strong rear guard’) and the girl outwits him at every stage: ‘My camouflage/ Well, it didn’t work on you… in fact most /Things they tell recruits never seem to do’. The song is so full of sexual double entendre that we might wonder whether it is in fact a joke about songs that do exploit such military imagery. The narrator is yet another in a long line of typical Sparks’ suffering males or nervous adolescents who are out of their depth in the romance stakes. Russell’s deliberately rather shaky intonation ‘reinforces’ this idea (sorry).

The song that is linked on the album and in performance with ‘Propaganda’, ‘At Home, at Work, at Play’, also sung at an urgent pace, picks up this idea of seduction as laying siege to the object of lust. The singer is offering information (from his own experience?) on how to cope with a relationship with this busy and popular woman.  Like the speaker in ‘Propaganda’, he does not want competition,’ I ain’t a glutton for a lot of sweaty company’’. He is also speaking from a position of subordination: at home, at work and at play, he is doing all the work as butler, maid and caddy to win her approval and favour. This song can perhaps seem a shade sinister, implying the need for calculation, tactics, and manoeuvres to reach the desired goal.

The first single from the album, ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’, depicts an equally age-old battle, that between mankind and Nature. The latter is often depicted   romantically as beautiful, kind and gentle but this is deceptive. The listener is urged not to be ‘tempted by her favours’, because she cannot be trusted, even when on her ‘best behaviour’. Far from being a plea for the care of the environment, as sometimes thought, this song is a warning of the power of nature and her indifference to the plans and welfare of human beings. As natives of earthquake-threatened Los Angeles, Ron and Russell are well aware of the potential for Nature to unleash a sudden destructive side. Although couched in terms of a human relationship, the lines ‘I’ll admit I was unfaithful/ But from now I’ll be more faithful’, urge that humans, ultimately powerless in the contest, must stay alert and wary, and not be seduced by the propaganda vision of a harmonious and benign Nature.

If we look at the wider meaning of propaganda as the use of words to persuade or manipulate, then we can see how the theme appears elsewhere on the album in respect of daily life. For example, in ‘Thanks But No Thanks’, we see the child’s viewpoint about his parents’ orders, coming from ‘high above him’, warning of the dangers in the world about him.  The lines, ‘My parents say the world is cruel/I think that they prefer it cruel’, is deeply thought-provoking but actually reflects the child’s perspective. He resents their warnings as just a means to control and limit him, privileging his own naïve viewpoint (‘I know that you’re all ok’), despite painting a picture of being besieged by offers of sweets and rides from dubious individuals who materialise at the end of the school day.

The fearful speaker in ‘Don’t Leave Me Alone With Her’ is also guilty of a sort of propaganda, deliberately casting aspersions on a woman, name-calling to present a dangerous and unsavoury image to others and evoking a bizarre range of horrors (‘Hitler in high heels’, ‘De Sade who makes good tea’) obviously designed to influence opinion.  The lines ‘If you go, who’ll say no to her?’  suggest that his panic is because he fears succumbing to seduction himself. Is the woman concerned perhaps already his partner? If so, his attitude is reminiscent of that of the speaker in ‘Thank God it’s Not Christmas’, who dreads spending time alone at home.

Another anxious protagonist appears in ‘Something For The Girl With Everything’, fearing that if his girlfriend is allowed to speak out, her knowledge of his past may be used in spreading propaganda that might damage or destroy his reputation (‘She knew way back when you weren’t yourself’.) He goes to increasingly extreme lengths to ensure her mouth remains firmly shut so that ‘You can breathe another day/ Secure in knowing she won’t break you (yet)’.  Again, language itself can cause harm and is in this case is a constant and unpredictable enemy.

‘Who Don’t Like Kids’ can be seen as propaganda to present an enhanced image of  the speaker’s self with the idea that children are proof of a man’s virility and assure his ‘survival’: they are ‘living proof that I’m really sound/ They’ll ensure I’m always around’. The assertiveness of the title, with its uncertain or sarcastic undertones, indicates that the singer seeks to impose this as a ‘truth’ on the listener, perhaps to convince himself too of the value of his domestic lifestyle. Similarly, in ‘BC’, the speaker Aaron laments the breakup of the stability of his little family, indulging in painting a propagandist (and evidently untrue) picture of their previous domestic bliss (wedding, honeymoon, little house) to persuade his wife and child to return. Moreover, the words ‘rumours spread like tumours, too too fast and too too true’, would seem to allude to the undisclosed cause of the breakup, suggesting that he sees himself as a victim of malicious propaganda of some sort.

We might even include ‘Achoo’, another tale of a faithless female, in which a sneeze is seen humorously as a devastating kind of wordless propaganda that is capable of infecting everyone: ‘Achoo, one breath the deed has been done’ and ‘You can’t ignore that sort of air’. In a witty response to the idea of propaganda as verbal persuasion, no words are needed to create this kind of harmful result.

And so to ‘Bon voyage’.  The back story to this scenario from the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark is that God punished all living creatures for the corruption and depravity on Earth by sending a great flood to destroy everything, saving only the righteous and obedient Noah and his family and a selection of pairs of animals and birds. There are many versions of a great flood story about judgement and salvation in other religions and myths, the aim being to warn and persuade/threaten humanity to be obedient and change their ways. In other words, a key theme in religious propaganda. In the song, the animals left behind in the loading of the Ark see themselves, however, as victims of ‘the randomest sampling’, in an unfair situation of ‘safety for the few’, which is ‘all governed by the laws of chance’, and ponder how they might sneak aboard undetected. The insincere generosity of their repeated ‘bon voyage’ to their ‘lucky friends and foes’, suggests a reluctant acceptance masking a deeply felt reaction against such propaganda.

              Although we obviously can not pretend to know what Ron had in mind, it seems to me that throughout this album, the aims and dangers of propaganda are explored on many different levels, blended with humour in typical Sparks’ fashion. Ron claimed in 1974 that the album art, which depicts Ron and Russell in various precarious positions, was just intended to be eye-catching, not reflecting the lyrics. However, the images do humorously reflect the themes of unseen danger and sinister goings on that emerge on the album as well as acting as ‘propaganda’ (in the sense of dynamic publicity) for this follow up to Kimono My House.  

              Thank you for reading this and, as always, I would welcome any comments and suggestions.

 

 

Is Dancing Dangerous? Some musings on two songs by Sparks

 

Is Dancing Dangerous?

Some musings on two songs by Sparks: ‘Dancing is Dangerous (1979) and ‘We Go Dancing’ (2023)

It is well known that when Sparks’ desire to find a new framework for their unique songwriting and singing skills led them to work with Georgio Moroder, they were criticised in some reviews for ‘going disco’. They saw it differently though.  Russell has explained that they were actually more interested in exploring the potential of electronic music as a vehicle for their own songs rather than writing disco music as such: We didn’t think of it as dance music but just placing what we do over a sound with electronic backing’. (Classic Pop magazine interview, 2021)  Ron explained their approach in a similar way: ‘We were in that area and outside of it at the same time – the lyrics and Russell’s singing kept it separate from the wider world of disco’ (cited in Daryl Easlea, Talent is an Asset. The Story of Sparks, p.158).  The Number One Song in Heaven album (1979) is, of course, now regarded as ‘a hugely influential album for people who knew the future when they saw it’.  While it clearly draws on the musical energy and themes (sex, materialism, hedonism) of the disco culture, it also, in typical Sparks fashion, subjects it to a wry, even subversive perspective. The title song, for example, shows how even a hit ‘written by the mightiest hand’ can be debased into the backing for a T.V. advertisement, and famously takes a swipe at the lack of depth in the lyrics of typical disco music: ‘Lyrically weak, but the music’s the thing’.  This dual approach is even more apparent in their parallel project, the album written and produced for the singer Noël, Is There More Than Life To Dancing (1979).

 The first song on this album is ‘Dancing is Dangerous’.  Listening to this again recently and noticing the insistent repetition of the refrain ‘dancing, dancing’, I kept thinking about ‘We Go Dancing’, a song from The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (2023), and here’s why.

The Noël song has been described as straightforward electronic music, but the witty lyrics suggest a different story.  The title itself questions the nature of the dance craze, and the song portrays from a personal perspective an insidious trance-like effect, associated with darkness (‘We’ll never see daylight again’), gradually induced by the throbbing rhythms of the music.  The singer tells of losing the sense of place and identity (‘First step you forget where you are/ Next step you forget who you are’). This process is seductive, all-consuming and everlasting: ‘Dancing is dangerous. Gently embraces us/Then won’t let go till the end of our days’.  It is also impossible to free oneself from its clutches (‘I’ve tried but I can’t break away’), The analogy with drug addiction is unmistakeable. The dancers in the dance hall, the singer and, potentially, the listener are all implicated in this danger by the use of ‘I’, ‘We’ and ‘You’.  The singer senses that there might be another life out there, but ‘try leaving, you won’t get away’/As we dance, dance, dance to the music’. Such a giving over of the individual self to the collective experience of the dance craze might be seen as a transcendent and euphoric experience, but also potentially painful and destructive. Ultimately the loss of inhibitions does not seem joyous or life-enhancing here. The album’s title song, which asks the question, ‘Is There More To Life Than Dancing’, reiterates this critical view of the dance craze, as the singer confesses, ‘But could it be that I’ve overdone it / I’ve danced my mind away’. Despite warning doubts from her subconscious, she is unable to do more than ‘dance till it fades away’. That this album appeared not long before the fall from popularity of the disco craze shows how, once more, Sparks were ahead of the game.

              Flash forward 44 years, and we find in ‘We Go Dancing’, we find dancing as a metaphor for the marching of crowds in patriotic displays in North Korea (made explicit at the end of the song), and more broadly, a satirical portrayal of how music might be used to control and coerce a whole population. In this unusually overtly political song, narrated by a seemingly willing participant, Kim Jong-Un is depicted as a D.J. using ‘dance’ as a means of brainwashing and coercing the people (‘he rocks our world’). Here, the insistent repetition of ‘dancing, dancing’ reaches truly sinister heights, as the crowds, like automata, must conform to the command-like repetition of ‘dance, dance’, even if they get injured in the process. In this culture, discipline is elevated to a moral and social imperative, producing a different kind of uniformity and self-abandonment to that suggested in Noël’s song. But is it that different?  Arguably, the dress codes of clubland are as much a uniform in a certain way, and the surrender of individuality to the choices of the DJ is inherent in both cases. Here, however, the (decadent) Western influence of YouTube is rejected in favour of a narrow and strictly prescribed choice of ‘music’ and movement (‘We don’t have a lot of moves, but our one move is tight’ ) which is seen as their strength: ‘No-one has the discipline, the choreography’. Deviation is outlawed, and, as in ‘Dancing is Dangerous’, there is no way out.

              In both songs, then, dancing is associated with a degree of pain (the discordant effect of the music in ‘We Go Dancing’ is manifestly not music that you can dance to), control and the loss of self, intensified, in 2023, to the control of the psyche of a whole nation. In both cases, the narrator has a lingering awareness of what is happening to them but is still in thrall to the imperative to keep dancing.  I find both songs unsettling in ways that are both very different yet compellingly similar. That’s the wonder of Sparks.

Penny Brown

April 2024

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The story of Sparks and 'Modesty Plays/Blaise'.

  

The story of Sparks and ‘Modesty Plays/Blaise’

 

When I first hear Sparks’ song ‘Modesty Plays’ on 1986’s album Music That You Can Dance To, I was puzzled.  I had heard of Modesty Blaise, the strip comic secret agent and righter of wrongs, and it seemed to me that that was what Russell was singing. But the title is different. So, what is the story behind this song?

The background. In 1981, Sparks were approached by producer and screenwriter Larry Wilson (screenwriter for Beetlejuice (1988) and The Addams Family (1991) and, later, for the proposed Mai the Psychic Girl project) to record a theme tune for an ABC Network television pilot based on the comic strip Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell. This strip first appeared in the London Evening Standard in May 1963, and ran until July 2002. It was syndicated worldwide and was published in the Los Angeles Times from 1976-80. There were also reprints of the comic book published in the US, novels and short stories based on the character and a film in 1966 starring Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde with a theme tune by Johnny Dankworth, so it is very likely that the Maels would already be aware of it.  The T.V. pilot starred Ann Turkel as Modesty and Lewis Van Bergen as her loyal sidekick Willie Garvin, and the setting was transposed from London to Los Angeles. 

So, what happened to the Sparks theme tune?  I’ll let Russell pick up the story: ‘The song got the thumbs-up from the multitude of execs that need to weigh in and sign off on any Hollywood project…. Next came the period that everyone working in Hollywood hopes to avoid, but unfortunately seldom do: development hell.’  In his introduction to the Titan Books edition of Modesty Blaise. Cry Wolf (2006), Russell tells how the show was announced in trade magazines as an impending smash hit: ‘We believed what we read – silly us. And we read, and we read, and we waited, and we waited’.  In the meantime, the song had been distributed to ‘friends, loved ones and record companies’ and was in demand as a new Sparks’ single. ‘Shortly thereafter, we heard from someone upstairs at Paramount TV that empowered female characters were passé as far as Hollywood was concerned and that the project was going to be shelved.’  It is not unreasonable to suspect that his version of events here has been somewhat coloured by Sparks’ later unhappy experience with Mai the Psychic Girl, which also failed to get off the ground for a variety of reasons. Beneath the self-deprecating humour can be sensed a lingering helpless frustration and a degree of bitterness at the obstacles to creativity that beset a project in the world of film.  In any case, the ABC series was indeed cancelled after the pilot.

What to do?  Russell explains: ‘Afraid of raising any legal issues over the copyrighted name ‘Modesty Blaise’, and not wanting to disappoint the record companies who had already heard the song, we concluded that the refrain I sang over and over throughout the song was really saying ‘Modesty Plays’, and that no, Your Honour, I absolutely was not singing ‘Modesty Blaise’.  So, to this day, we have a song called ‘Modesty Plays’, and any similarity to any female comic-book heroines, living or dead, is strictly coincidental’.

              Modesty and the song.  In the stories, Modesty is of uncertain Eastern European origin and her back story is that of a child escapee from a displaced persons camp, who, after much solitary wandering and hardship, eventually runs a highly successful international criminal organization called ‘The Network’.  Now a wealthy young woman, she is living in a London penthouse until tempted out of retirement by a government minister to combat crime and serve the cause of good.  Unlike Mai the Psychic Girl, she does not have supernatural powers but, drawing on her previous experience, is extraordinarily resourceful in her quests to locate and vanquish villains, and tough and fearless in unarmed physical combat. She is also an elegant beauty (as most fictional women in a positive powerful role were at that time required to be), who is not above using her physical attributes to bedazzle and confuse an enemy. Indeed, parts of the comic strip involving nudity were censored in the US editions.

This duality of femininity and power is highlighted in Sparks’ song, in which their Modesty is portrayed as sophisticated and wealthy, with expensive tastes. She is no idle socialite however, despite the title ‘Modesty Plays’: ‘she may like caviar and cocktails/She may like symphonies and sun/But underneath the gown and high heels/She’s like a fully loaded gun’.  This captures nicely the impression made on other characters in the first Modesty Blaise novel; that she is as though coiled ready for action beneath an enigmatic serenity and femininity.  As with some other Sparks’ female characters, appearances are deceptive, and she is dangerous to know: ‘She may not look like Genghis Khan/ And she may talk about her manicure/But she can sure get things done’.   Her methods are all the more successful for being unexpected: ‘She may seem cultured and demure/But there’s another side, be careful/She’ll hit you like a 2 by 4’.   A picture is painted of a world bereft of heroes, which is ‘running out of time’ in the battle against crime (no change there).  Just as Mai the Psychic Girl has a mission to save the world, so Modesty is the hero we need: ‘as long as Modesty is on our side/Good will surely prevail’. The pace and energy of the music also reflects the high-powered action in the comic strips.

It is tempting to look for traces of Modesty in other Sparks’ songs: in ‘The Toughest Girl in Town’ (1988 Interior Design), perhaps, who also is said to have been ‘used and abused’ in the past. Despite the experience with this pilot, Sparks went on in the following years to invest a great deal of time and energy working on a proposed musical movie about another empowered female character, the Japanese manga heroine, Mai the Psychic Girl, in the effort to bring this to fruition, only to be disappointed once again.  But that is another story.  (See ‘What Was That? Four of Sparks’ songs for Mai the Psychic Girl’ on sparkstalkbypenny.blogspot.com).

So, there you have it: the single was released in France as ‘Modesty Plays’ in late 1982/early 1983, at the request of a French company, Underdog, and in Germany by Metronome.  It was then rerecorded for the album Music That You Can Dance To (1986), described in the Sparks Sound newsletter v.12:n.1 as ‘a reworking of a song that had been released in French speaking  territories and restaurants a couple of years ago’. And Russell sings…well, what he sings.  What do you hear?

 

 

  

When Sparks Met the Bard: Sparks and Shakespeare

 

When Sparks met the Bard - Sparks and Shakespeare

What a spectacular collaboration this would have been!

In the final heart-rending scene of Annette, Henry’s words in the song ‘Sympathy for the Abyss’ (‘imagination’s strong/ But reason’s song is faint and shrill’) echo concisely the sentiment of Othello’s lament in the last scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy, thus aligning him with the jealous wife-murderer whose guilt destroys him. So…. can Henry McHenry be seen as an Othello for our times?

Sparks have previously directly referenced Shakespeare and his plays in a handful of songs.  In ’Let’s Go Surfing’ (from Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins, 1994), Shakespeare is namechecked directly, but the reference seems to be pejorative. In this fantasy of freedom from the dismal surroundings of a room ‘only Dickens could love’ in a cold, wet ‘land-locked town’, the narrator longs to go surfing in the sun. This may have been inspired by Ron and Russell’s time living in London in the 1970s, while surfing suggests freedom, hope and dreams (‘far from everything, far from misanthropes’). The dream of walking on white sand includes an encounter with ‘people called Kelley and Joe’, who are referred to as ‘too Shakespearian, too Wagnerian’ too impossible’, and ‘who have nothing in common with anyone we know’. Is the inference that they are too high brow, on a different cultural, intellectual level to the narrator’s acquaintances, and thus a comment on European social and intellectual snobbery?   But wait: since these passing characters are encountered on the sand, are they perhaps stereotyped Hollywood folk, perceived as over-dramatic and flamboyant?   Or are they the miserable and pessimistic misanthropes? Certainly, they are opposed to the carefree joy of catching the perfect wave in an ideal world where ‘somewhere there are dreams, somewhere there is hope’.

              Of course, Sparks had also already referenced a specific Shakespeare play: in ‘Here in Heaven’ from the 1974 Kimono My House album, an unnamed young man bemoans that he kept his side of a suicide pact, while his love, Juliet, didn’t. Although life in heaven is pleasant, the young man dwells on the question of whether Juliet thinks of him and in what way: ‘Do I qualify as dear departed, or am I that sucker in the sky?’ He suspects a cynical manipulation on her part: ‘Now I know why you let me the lead’. As in a number of Sparks’ songs, the woman is seen as unpredictable and unfathomable, and possibly unkind and controlling. (She probably didn’t turn up at the Equator either.) Or, did she just have second thoughts as he plunged into the sea, a ‘fall guy’ in more ways than one? He concedes that he had belated second thoughts too, and now, in heaven, it is hell for him knowing that her health ‘will keep her out of here for many, many years’. Shakespeare’s version of the lovers’ deaths in Romeo and Juliet (in which Juliet’s faked death is tragically misunderstood by Romeo and the faithful lovers are united in death) becomes here a sad and cynical tale of soured romance, self-interest and betrayal.

Another of Shakespeare’s tragedies had featured even more overtly in a song (‘Othello’) written for Christi Haydon in 1992, but not released until 2019, in the extras section of the new edition of Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins. It originally featured on a demo tape for an E.P., which didn’t see the light of day. This song has a completely different perspective from ‘Here in Heaven’. The singer is an uncomprehending Desdemona, who wonders what is wrong with her soldier husband – why is Othello ‘cold, dark, and strange tonight’? Is it the wine, the heat? Or something Iago said? It captures the perplexity of Desdemona, unaware that she is to become the victim of Othello’s murderous sexual jealousy and Iago’s cunning, although she suspects his involvement. To Othello’s accusation of adultery,’ she responds: ‘I say you’re mad’. She too yearns for a place far away where dreams can come true and jealousy doesn’t exist. This moving song, with its close references to Shakespeare’s play, is unusual in the Sparks’ catalogue as it specifically features a female narrator.  Uneasy relationships are frequent in Sparks’ songs, but seldom are they  seen from an overtly female perspective.

‘Life with the Macbeths’ from Hippopotamus (2017), in which Sparks create a brilliant analogy between Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy and a contemporary television soap opera, is perhaps the closest one could get to a kind of collaboration!  I would like to think that the idea for this song was prompted by the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, celebrated in the media worldwide. An audience’s delight in bloodshed, toxic relationships, deadly ambition and evil appears to be universal: the more horrific the plot, the more the ratings soar. That high culture and low culture may have the same ingredients is a provocative comment on human nature, and on culture itself (although, Shakespeare, arguably, has a better script!). In this T.V. show, even the actors are not impressed, (they ‘roll their eyes’), but it is a huge success, so why should they care. Here, the capricious and controlling woman is taken to the extreme, as the ‘lady’ urges on her husband to ‘depths unseen’.  In a kind of promotional trailer (‘same station, same time, new feuds’) we are promised cliff-hangers, but only one series, suggesting that nobody is left standing at the end. As in Shakespeare’s time, the critics are said to be split in their reactions (‘some not that into murder’). But is there actually some ‘deeper meaning’ beneath the gore?  Perhaps it is that the evil wife ‘prods her husband /and then regrets what’s coming’. The soaring soprano voice of Rebecca Sjowall complements Russell’s voice exquisitely, the beauty of the sound contrasting with the commercialised horror of the narrative. In a way, the unexpected operatic element bridges the gap between the two cultural levels, while drawing attention to it. With his background in popular theatre, Shakespeare would no doubt have thoroughly approved of this song! We should not forget, also, that one of the intruders in the pool in the title song, ‘Hippopotamus’, is none other than the Roman general, Titus Andronicus, Shakespearian tragic hero and, according to Sparks an excellent swimmer, wearing a snorkel!

And so to Annette (2021).  Comparison of many aspects with Othello is tempting, even if this was not necessarily a deliberate aim on Sparks’ part. Not unlike Othello, Henry McHenry is a hot-tempered jealous husband, whose uncontrolled emotion leads to murder. Henry and Anne’s intense relationship, like that of Othello and Desdemona, is unusual: they seem, even to themselves, a mismatched couple (’we’re scoffing at logic’). Just as Othello is a successful and admired soldier, Henry is famous, at first, as a comedian, and both are easily a prey to self-doubt on an emotional level. Henry’s jealousy of Anne is, however, more complex, notably a strong professional jealousy, as befits the modern age, and he has (allegedly) a past history of violence against women.  Like Othello, though, Henry abandons coherent language and reason as jealousy and rage consume him and lead to chaos, murder and guilt. His audience turns against his increasingly bizarre and offensive stage act. Anne, loved and admired by her public, also can not understand what troubles her husband, and ultimately becomes a victim of his toxic male self-obsession and jealous rage. She, however, is very different from Desdemona, and her death during the storm does not end her role in the plot, as she vows revenge through the voice of her daughter baby Annette.  (Interestingly, Shakespeare’s play also features a storm at sea scene, although his Desdemona survives.) Both play and movie also feature an ‘alternative’ lover: while in Othello, the young Cassio loves Desdemona but the relationship remains chaste, the Accompanist/Conductor in Annette, who adores Anne, had a brief affair with her prior to her meeting Henry. It is suggested that he may even be the father of baby Annette. Like Cassio, he too attracts the jealous wrath of Henry and becomes his next victim. At the end of the movie, Henry, having looked into the abyss of unspeakable emotions and acts, is consumed by guilt, but ends up in jail alone rather than killing himself like Othello. The final scene in which a real-life Annette chides her father and tells him that he has no-one now to love, reflects chillingly his lasting punishment. There are, of course, huge differences between Annette and Othello, notably the absence of a wicked Iago figure to play on Henry’s insecurities (although perhaps the press and public fill this role?), and, in Annette, the unexpected horror of both parents exploiting their child for their own ends, which creates uneasy ambiguities for the viewer. The role of baby Annette herself is obviously at the centre of the movie’s story and adds to the psychological depth and moving nature of the plot.

This may be striving too hard for comparison, but the echoing of Othello’s words in ‘Sympathy for the Abyss’, apparently written in response to Leos Carax’s request for a song to tie up the themes of the movie, succeeds powerfully in pointing us back to contemplate the universal complexities of human nature and relationships, and the fragile foundations on which love may rest. Just as Ron used the words of Socrates (‘An unexamined life is not worth living’) at the end of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, to underscore the resolving of Bergman’s temptation, the echo of Othello’s belated and fruitless self-realisation in a present day setting firmly establishes the timeless nature of these themes.

These are just my personal thoughts, prompted by that one phrase in Annette: there may well be other explicit or opaque links with Shakespeare’s plays that I have yet to uncover, so ideas would be most welcome!

 

Penny Brown

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sparks in Isolation: the Story of 2020-2021

 

Sparks in Isolation – the story of 2020-2021.

By Penny Brown

 Sparks had big plans for 2020: a new studio album, a European tour in the early autumn, and the premières of a documentary directed by Edgar Wright and their musical movie, Annette, directed by Leos Carax and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, both of which have been several years in the making. This was to be a major year in their long and distinguished career. But like everything else worldwide, these plans were badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown in many countries. Although, fortunately, filming for both Annette and the documentary had been completed before the pandemic struck, their premières and release were delayed, with film festivals cancelled and the film industry as a whole at a standstill for months. The tour had to be postponed to May 2021 because theatres and other entertainment venues were forced to close and travel restrictions were in place, and even this plan has had to be revised because of the ongoing situation. The tour showcasing A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is now scheduled for April and May 2022.

Ron has spoken movingly of the effects of the situation for him personally, saying early in the pandemic that he felt bewildered and has struggled to remain creative, particularly as their normal strict routine, working together in Russell’s home studio, has been crucially disrupted by the stay-isolated-at- home imperative. A video announcement for the new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, of them standing two meters apart in a local park, wearing masks, was a sad reminder of how they, like everyone else, have had their lives turned upside down by the pandemic. In an interview for the July/August edition of Classic Pop, Ron confesses to a more existential angst, that he feels dwarfed by the whole situation: ‘trying to come up with a reason why you’re significant at all when all this is going on. The inspiration to think one has significance at all is hard, but I’m trying to find a way through it all’. Russell has been less forthcoming about his personal feelings, although he has repeatedly confirmed that he misses being able to work together and their visits to their favourite coffee shop. He has, however, become increasingly upbeat about the effect on their work, describing it in an interview in Entertainment Weekly, accompanying the recent première of the home-made video for ‘Left Out in the Cold’ (18 February) as a ‘really good challenge’, forcing them to think about doing things in a new way: ‘You have to find ways of moving forward and not be paralyzed’. The spirit of Sparks can still flourish, but in a different way.

Flourish it certainly has. Despite these disappointments and frustrations, Sparks have risen to the challenge of maintaining their public profile and keeping the connection with their fans, entertaining us in a multitude of imaginative and innovative ways. This is, of course, entirely typical of Sparks who, throughout their career, have persevered in their self-belief and work ethic despite setbacks and let downs and have always managed to rise above circumstances with an enviable and ingenious talent for adaptation and self-reinvention. Their activities over the past year have gone far beyond the common run of Instagram images or occasional videos of housebound acoustic performances, and demonstrate their dedication to their work, their creative hunger, fertile imagination and sense of fun, and the desire to foster the sense of community amongst their fans worldwide.  Russell has said that he dislikes the approach of some musicians to just pick up an acoustic guitar when it is ‘totally contrary to what you musically believe in’. Full use has been made of the possibilities offered by social media and other online platforms to keep up the momentum. In effect, Russell has asserted, they had been, paradoxically, even more visible this past year, as normally they would be travelling abroad on promotional visits of the new album. In the current circumstances, they were doing similar things and more, but in a much more visible way.

The new studio album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip was released digitally on 15 May 2020, as originally planned, but the release of the physical album was delayed until 3 July as a consequence of the pandemic and the nearly three-month lockdown in the UK. The decision to go ahead with the digital release was a deliberate strategy to avoid disappointing fans. In the Classic Pop interview Russell explains that delay would only have been a marketing decision, and they didn’t think that fans should pay the price of such considerations. Short promotional videos in May and July featured both Ron and Russell and the ‘Sparks’ Spokesperson’ (a model female head wearing a broadbrimmed hat, the voice impersonated by Russell). Previews of individual songs (‘Existential Threat’, ‘Lawnmower’, ‘One for the Ages’, ‘I’m Toast’, and ‘Self-effacing’) were posted in June and July to whet fans’ appetite. The album received widespread acclaim, reaching no 7 in the UK album charts (as did Hippopotamus before it), and extremely positive reviews and articles on Sparks were featured in many newspapers and music magazines. Classic Pop featured Sparks on its cover as well as an eight-page spread inside which included an interview with Edgar Wright about his forthcoming documentary. Ron and Russell also did a number of interviews about the album, virtually of course, with each responding to questions separately from their own homes, for American, English and French outlets.

Several of the songs on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip are in fact relevant to the modern age, such as ‘ I-phone’ and ‘Please don’t fuck up my world’, but none more so than  ‘Existential threat’ (premièred 3 July). This seems uncomfortably prescient in its evocation of a man in the grip of a constant dread, and could well stand as an anthem for the Covid-stricken world. The official video by the graphic designer and animation artist Cyriac admirably captures in a highly coloured and gruesome way the frenetic panic of the obsessed character in the song, who feels besieged by dangers everywhere, in his food, in his toilet, in the street and in his car. This is not one for those of a nervous disposition! Cyriac also provided a ‘guide to making a music video’ (21 August), to celebrate the two million viewings of ‘Existential Threat’, which makes it look ridiculously easy! There have been other official videos too: the entertaining story for ‘One for the ages’ (27 March), hand-drawn and animated by Chintis Lundgren, depicts a cartoon cat-like figure who secretly writes his soon-to-be-great opus while doing a humdrum office job.  A large cast of animal-like creatures, all wearing a tie (presumably a symbol of their corporate oppression!) talk about him over the water cooler, and, in his fantasy, acclaim his success. It should not escape a fan’s notice that the dreamer has floppy dark hair while the boss wears round glasses and a moustache! The ‘office’ is also invaded by sinister ball-like creatures, wearing shades and carrying guns, perhaps the characters from his great project or an externalisation of the would-be star’s feelings about his day job. In complete contrast, the home-made video for ‘Lawnmower’ (14 May) reflects typical Sparks’ humour as scenes of a rather sinister-looking Ron in a bowler hat pushes on an unseen lawnmower behind a singing Russell, intercut with scenes of a young woman packing cases into the back of her car, and various images of lawnmowers going about their work. The video, (29 December) for ‘i-phone’, has Russell (and sometimes multiple Russells) singing against the background of a computer-generated suburban residential road, while Ron (and sometimes multiple Rons) passes back and forth obsessively studying his phone and taking selfies.  The most recent video (18 February 2021), for ‘Left Out in the Cold’ takes a similar approach. Multiple versions of Ron and Russell, muffled in overcoats, scarves and gloves, shiver rhythmically against a haunting background of a frozen waste, with, at the end, a humorous touch as an elegant woman in overcoat and sunglasses crosses the scene with only a passing glance at them. At least she has the sense to wear a hat. Perhaps she is the Uniqlo supervisor, sent to check them out!  Russell explains, in an accompanying interview in Entertainment that they made their contributions separately and, ‘by the magic of film making’ put them together. He describes the nearly year-long restrictions of the pandemic as a continuing challenge that forces them to think in different ways and come up with things that they might not have normally done. This positive approach is their way of not succumbing to ‘the horrible situation that’s out there in the world’, and moving forward.

In the absence of live shows, we have also been treated to’ live in isolation’ performances, in which Ron, Russell and other band members play ‘socially distanced’ in their own homes, the different parts put together seamlessly, a considerable feat of synchronisation and technical wizardry. To date, these have featured ‘All That’ (11 June) and ‘Lawnmower’ (25 December). The band members featured are familiar to us from the Hippo tour: Steve Nistor (drums), Evan Weiss (guitar), Eli Pearl (guitar) and Alex Casnoff (guitar). In the ‘Lawnmower’ video, the latter two are humorously shown ‘otherwise engaged’, Eli busy with a book and a nail file, and Alex with a laptop, although they join in the singing, since the main focus of the music is Ron’s keyboard, Evan’s guitar and Steve’s drums. In October, November and December, we were further treated to a series of videos on Fridays of the lyrics from ASDDD, with the words shown dripping in the now familiar ASDDD primary colours.

In March 2020, when no-one foresaw the extent of the devastation wrought by the pandemic, we were given a humorous video satirising panic buying, in which a white budgie tries to fill a miniature shopping trolley with toilet rolls, to the tune of ‘Something For the Girl With Everything’. Both Ron and Russell have separately treated fans to short videos, which by their contrasting content and presentation reflect the different personalities they cultivate in Sparks. The first, posted on 23 March 2020, was a short piece by Ron on his ‘International Hand Sanitiser Collection’, a topical subject early on in the international health emergency. In his characteristic laconic manner, Ron presents and comments on the qualities of a number of bottles of sanitiser collected on his travels abroad. Many fans commented that it was strange how a boring subject could somehow be so hypnotic and compelling. A week later (30 March), and again on topic, we were treated to ‘A day in the life of Russell, a self-isolating Spark’, a speeded-up gallop through a typical day to a superb instrumental version of ‘The Amazing Mr Repeat’. Russell is seen waking up at eight, having a healthy breakfast, reading the New Yorker, collecting his post, exercising, twice taking a nap on his couch, sorting through his records and hats, watering his garden, playing around with a theremin, practising singing, repeatedly washing his hands and going to bed at 11.30. Despite its pace, it captures the boredom and search for time-occupying activities experienced by everyone in this unprecedented situation, as well as demonstrating the good practice of exercise and frequent hand washing, in an hilarious manner. Described on the NME website as ‘a wholesome video’, it also offers, of course, a tantalising glimpse for fans of various parts of Russell’s house and garden in complete contrast to their usual secrecy about their private lives.

              This was followed up by a series of suggested ‘activities’ from Russell: first, an invitation to the stir-crazy to join in ‘One for the Ages: Russell’s Self-Isolation bop’ (8 April), in which, to an exciting new instrumental version of ‘One for the Ages’, he dances, if that is the right word, with a miniature guitar and a fan, and wearing a black mask.  Over the next few weeks, we were offered two ‘Exercise Classes’, with Russell demonstrating various physical exercises from his living room (20 April and 26 May), which the viewer is invited to join in to ‘beat the self-isolation clock’. In the first video Russell wears a tee-shirt with Shibuya printed on it, a souvenir perhaps from their performance in Japan in 2018 at the Shibuya Club Quattro, while in the second he wears a ‘Moog’ tee-shirt (in honour of Moog synthesizers). Although the advice about pacing oneself and keeping hydrated (although Russell’s frequent slurps from a can of cola is perhaps not the most recommended way to do so) are presented in a serious manner, the ‘demonstration’, to the tunes of ‘Beat the clock’ and ‘Sports’ (‘ready, get set, work out’), is speeded up, so the result is manic, hilarious, not to mention impossible to emulate. Similarly, we were offered two singing lessons, one, headlined ‘A free singing lesson with a top professional’ (11 May) starting off simply, but moving on to feature the impossible ‘Equator’ and a speeded up operatic aria and the other (7 August) a rendition of the entire Kimono My House album in 90 seconds. Well, a line from each of the songs, at least! The energy, humour and element of surprise of these videos present a striking contrast to the gentle and more soothing atmosphere of Ron’s videos.

In the summer, we saw more of the boys’ collections: on 16 June, Russell treated us to a tour of his international fridge magnets collected on his travels, which he says helps to keeps his spirits up by ‘thinking of all the wonderful Sparks fans from around the world’. To appease fans who fail to see their country represented on the display, Russell cannily informs us that he has many more tucked away on a drawer. In interviews, Russell has also talked of his collection of Russian dolls and shown one of his favourites, of Abba, bought in Stockholm.  In complete contrast, on 26 August, Ron, wearing the new Sparks beret, showcased ‘The Ronald D. Mael Collection of Souvenir Stones and Shells’ acquired on their many trips abroad, an addition to the ‘burgeoning cultural scene of Los Angeles’. In this slightly mystifying yet strangely compelling film, he presents a small number of plastic boxes containing stones or shells from Mexico, Italy and Japan, which, he hastens to tells us, have been legally acquired. On 8 July, a video billed as Sparks’ first U.K. television appearance of the year featured the Sparks’ ‘spokesperson’, who greeted us with an Irish ‘Top of the Morning’, and promoted the new album for the UK chart week. A deliberate(?) gaffe occurred when ‘she’ referred to the record company as BMW, instead of BMG, and the promised link with the Mael brothers in Los Angeles results in mere static crackling. Who knows whether this an intended joke or not? I suspect it was, because the announcer seems unfazed by the situation.

A major contribution has been the ‘Lyrically speaking with Ron Mael’ videos, a lengthy series in which Ron reads the lyrics of Sparks’ songs, beginning on 5 April 2020 with perhaps appropriately, ‘Self-Effacing’ and continuing every Sunday for a full year. Ron sits in front of a bookcase which displays a different book each week for fans to identify and ponder its possible relevance to the chosen song (although often ‘Probably Nothing’). Above the bookcase we see cases of his often spoken-of collection of Air Jordan sneakers. His different outfits are a further source of interest and speculation: not just the typical white shirt and tie, but occasionally a dark hoodie, a beret for ‘I am Ingmar Bergman’ and ‘When you’re a French Director’, and a snazzy red shirt with Christmas motifs and matching mask and white beret for ‘Christmas Without a Prayer’. His choice of songs has included all the tracks from A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, plus songs from throughout their lengthy catalogue, some very well-known, others less so: ‘ Let’s go surfing’, ‘Probably Nothing’, ‘High C’, ‘I Married Myself’.  The reading of ‘Johnny Delusional’, from the hugely successful FFS collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, was prefaced by a dedication to ‘Alex, Bob, Nick and Paul – it was a great time’.  Fans have been delighted to hear more of Ron’s voice, which in these presentations is soft and soothing, and his relaxed, even stoic, delivery. His genius as a songwriter is all the more apparent when he is seen to deliver his own words, and the focus on the lyrics has the effect of suggesting different meanings and arousing different emotions, as fans’ reactions testify. One memorable week (30 August), we were introduced to a ‘guest speaker’: Russell, who presented ‘Hasta mañaña monsieur’, for which he penned the lyrics, in a comically serious and straight-faced manner. There is a degree of irony in this, as Russell is known to be a good linguist, who contributes fluently in French in interviews, and often says a few words in the language of the host country at live shows. It is fascinating to see both doing their own very different thing:  Russell’s sporadic and varied videos are generally manic, full of humour and energy while Ron’s regular appearances are calming and restrained and, for many fans, have offered a focal point to the week.

Sparks have also followed a new lockdown trend of participating in live streamed programmes, broadcast from both the US and the UK.  A Tim Twitter’s Listening Party took place on 20 May, to celebrate A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, in which participants were invited to play all the tracks from the album and follow a live commentary with Tim and Sparks. A two-hour radio programme followed on 7 June in which Sparks joined Tom Robinson’s ‘Now Playing @ 6Music, Bring Your Own…Sparks’ on BBC6 Music, to talk about some of their favourite music as well as their own work. The eclectic track list included Billie Holiday’s iconic ‘Strange Fruit’, covers of Sparks’ songs by Gemma Ray and Martin Gore, collaborations with Franz Ferdinand (FFS), Les Rita Mitsouko and SebastiAn, and music by artists and composers from The Who, Kraftwerk, Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, and the Pet Shop Boys to Nervous Norvus and Teleman.  On 13 November, the U.S. Cucalorus Festival featured a 90-minute retrospective of Sparks’ music videos, ‘Visual/Sound/Walls’, hosted by Aaron Hillis, with a live chat where the listeners could send in questions and comments.  

Another new venture was the introduction of the online Reinforcements Official Community Fan Group, administered from Sparks HQ at Republic Media. An official statement tells us that it was created, not to be in competition with other groups, but as an official platform where Sparks HQ can initiate fan-only contests and activities, and was inspired by the success of the ‘Sparks For The Ages’ playlist competition on Spotify. It aims to reach out to super fans (Sparks’ reinforcements) more directly, and although under the official eye, fans are encouraged to celebrate their fandom in any way they want, as long as they abide by the group rules of course. Their fans are ‘some of the kindest and most inclusive people’, we are told, and are a source of pride for Team Sparks. At the time of writing there are 1.2 k members.

The official Facebook site (allsparks.com) remains the main focus for posting news and photos, including Throwback Thursday pictures of past events and photos, fan art and links to online interviews. There have also been photos celebrating the boys‘ birthdays and occasions like voting in the November US election, Christmas and New Year, promotion of the new album, and a number of ‘checking in’ pictures to reassure fans of their wellbeing.  Many of these are repeated on the official Sparks Instagram account. While obviously, these social media sites can no longer offer glimpses of the many places Ron and Russell visit on their travels, fans can still keep track of how their heroes are faring under the conditions that are affecting us all. Early in the pandemic (20 March), they posted a ‘socially distancing’ advice picture, showing Russell in a mask turning his back on Ron, two meters behind him, not wearing a mask. In later rare pictures of them together in the open air, both are, of course, wearing masks. As well as the merchandise related to the new album, the Sparks’ store also offered a superb jigsaw featuring all Spark’s albums up to and including ASDDD and, ‘getting in the swing’, a couple of new items of new merchandise for the times: a hand sanitiser pouch and a mask, although sadly, for technical reasons, the latter did not materialise (no pun intended).

Despite the pandemic, 2021 is still to be a great year for Sparks.  The première of Edgar Wright’s long-awaited documentary, The Sparks Brothers, took place at the Sundance festival (streamed online this year) on 30 January and 1 Feb 2021, and was available only to viewers in the US, much to the chagrin of fans elsewhere.  A tantalising official clip was, however, posted on 30 January, featuring some of the many celebrities who talk of their love of Sparks, and finishing with Ron and Russell expressing less than warm enthusiasm for the title of the film. It is typical of the shared sense of humour that Edgar Wright should leave this in! The film has received hugely enthusiastic and positive reviews in the music and movie press, and ecstatic comments from those lucky fans who were able to view it. It was also selected to feature in this year’s virtual SXSW film festival (première 18 March), with an accompanying Q and A session.  Team Sparks and Team Edgar Wright must be absolutely delighted and Ron and Russell in particular must be elated at the reception of this major project, not least because it is such a wide-ranging, detailed and affectionate tribute. The large number of live interviews via Zoom with Ron, Russell and Edgar discussing the documentary have delighted fans and whetted their appetite for the wider distribution of the film and even better, in DVD form! In fact, news has just appeared that the worldwide rights to the film have been acquired by Focus Features, who will distribute it domestically, with international distribution by Universal Pictures. It will be in US cinemas on 18 June, with a UK release scheduled for 30 July. Bring it on! (Update: The Sparks Brothers is now widely available on DVD for all to enjoy.)

The most recent activity is the digital release of ‘Your Fandango’ in April, their collaboration with Todd Rundgren (who produced their first album), that came about as a result of their meeting during the filming of The Sparks Brothers. This lively earworm of a song is presented in grandiose terms as polyphonic pop that layers Spanish music, Neopolitan cantatas, baroque fugues and glam rock in one epic composition, and more than lives up to this description. The release was accompanied by a stunning video by Finnish media artist Liisa Vääriskoski, premièred on Sparks’ YouTube channel on 23 April, in which an elegant woman in an eighteenth-century portrait comes to life and embarks on an Alice in Wonderland-like excursion through fantastical scenarios. Visually gorgeous and characteristically humorous, the video is a complex collage of images, including various cameos of Ron, Russell and Todd, that brilliantly complements the complexity of the music. It is a superb addition to the many eye-catching videos released to accompany Sparks’ new songs these past months. The song is to be released on vinyl at a later date.

The next step in the Sparks’ saga is, of course, the première of Annette, which will fulfil a lifelong dream of Sparks. A tantalising and highly dramatic trailer for the film has just been released and it has been announced that Annette has been chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival this year on 6 July – an honour that must surely exceed all Ron and Russell’s hopes and expectations. (Update: Ron and Russell were able to attend the Cannes festival and Annette received a standing ovation. Leos Carax won the Best Director award, and Sparks also won an award for the screenplay music.) The movie will then go on general release in France and on international release at a date to be announced. Fans are clearly both enormously excited by this news and hugely proud of their favourite duo at the success of this project which started life as an intended Sparks’ album.

In conclusion, fans are immensely grateful to Ron and Russell and all their associates for giving so much time and effort to create joy in a time where this is otherwise in very short supply. Moreover …… a picture has recently appeared showing Ron and Russell in their studio (masked, of course) with a placard saying ‘Shhhh! Sparks recording!’.   A new album? Despite the horrors of this past year, it is still a great time to be a Sparks’ fan.  

 

               Penny Brown

              May 2021 (updated February 2022)

 

 

 

                    Sparks Take On The world in The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte

In 2023, Sparks not only carried out a hugely successful world tour, encompassing dates in four continents, but took on the world in a different sense in their latest album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte, with an unprecedented number of songs commenting explicitly on the current state of the world. This is not, of course, a new topic for them: with the focus on the desires, frustrations and insecurities of human beings, born of acute observation of behaviour and manners, Sparks’ songs are implicit comments on modern society. When asked in an interview in 2009 (Newsletter 21.6) about whether they were optimistic or pessimistic, Ron opts for the latter, adding that they had ‘a basic antagonism towards ‘something’. We’re not sure what. Maybe the status quo’.  This pessimism is however clothed in the imaginative stories, humour and infectious melodies of their songs, such that they could never be categorized as ‘Grumpy Old Men’*, even if they have earned the right!

However, Ron and Russell have, for the most part, cultivated an image of being non-political in its strictest sense, avoiding overtly political statements both in their work and in interviews and their social media presence.  In recent years, though, there has been a glimpse of their feelings from occasional generalised expressions of exasperation and urgings to vote posted on their websites. Similarly, their comments on the world we live in have become more specific and graphic.

Some of the songs on TGICIHL build on ideas from earlier albums. There have been a few veiled allusions to political situations before: the 2006 song ‘Can I invade your country’ (Hello Young Lovers) which includes the American National Anthem, sung to a jaunty tune, followed by ‘and one more thing: Can I invade your country’, suggested a reference to the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition at the start of the Iraq War (2003-11). The idea that everywhere is fair game for invasion (‘countries, planets, stars/ Galaxies so far’,) followed by the paradox: ‘Don’t let freedom fade/ Baby, let’s invade’, can be seen as a damning critique of Western military intervention, an issue still debated today, only partially hidden behind the more obvious idea of sexual conquest. 

More recently, in the wider sense of the word ‘political’, overt concerns about the state of the planet can be seen to be underpinning a number of songs, mirroring increasing public awareness of such issues. The 2017 eco-ballad on Hippopotamus, ‘Please Don’t Fuck Up My World’ co-opts the Coldwater Canyon Youth Choir to emphasise the need to tackle the damage being done to the planet for the sake of future generations. The shock effect of the F-bomb in the children’s chorus diffuses any potential sentimentality, and the sincerity of this appeal is underlined by not being cloaked in humour.   (Although ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ (Propaganda, 1974) has been seen to have a similar message, that song is actually referencing the power of Nature and its indifference to human affairs, of which as natives of earthquake-prone Los Angeles, Ron and Russell are well aware.) The hilarious ‘What The Hell Is It This Time’ (Hippopotamus) offers the point of view of God, frustrated with the constant demands of self-absorbed humanity about their ‘band-aid affairs’ when there are wars, famine, crime and ‘wholesome clean air’ to be addressed. Society’s materialism had, of course, already been critiqued in ‘Irreplaceable’ and ‘It’s a Knock Off’ (Balls, 2000). When A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip was released in 2020, ‘The Existential Threat’, which depicts an hysterical state of panic about unspecified dangers in a precarious world, was seen as unnervingly prescient in the light of the subsequent coronavirus pandemic. A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip in fact features other narrators unhappy with their existences, while the fury of ‘I-phone’, with its repeated injunction to ‘Put Your Fucking I-phone Down And Listen To Me’, offers a more specific and strongly worded irritation with an aspect of contemporary life, akin to the less graphic ‘Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold’ of 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven. (Does this song suggest that Sparks share the annoyance expressed by other artists at being watched through phones at their concerts?)

So, is The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte Sparks’ most political album to date?

It seems that Sparks have now felt the need to express more strongly and consistently their feelings about the frightening and sometimes unfathomable state of the world today. The title song itself exemplifies a kind of undefined universal angst, described elsewhere by Ron as ‘the melancholy of the times’, grounded in a privileged Western world. The narrator is unsure what ails a young woman in a coffee shop until the situation is repeated with ‘so many people’, and, after ‘trying to figure their game’, he concludes ‘guess this world is to blame’.  It was suggested to me that his initial reactions (‘bad’, ‘sad’, ‘wow’) had uncomfortable echoes of a former President’s communication style (thank you, Jo and Christian), and, indeed, one reviewer commented on a ‘lack of empathy’ in the narrator’s observations. It is certainly possible to interpret this song as a critique of the West’s failure to go beyond merely crying in our expensive latte while we sit in a warm coffee shop.

The twenty-two-hour old baby in ‘Nothing Is As Good as They Say It Is’, who takes one look at the world and is not impressed, takes up the theme suggested in ‘Unaware’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), which lists banal events that create headlines in a materialistic world and culminates in the warning (Wish I could warn her/ Don’t turn that corner/Stay unaware of it all’). The point of view shifts to the baby of 2023 who quickly recognises that life is ‘a bad surprise’, plagued with ‘ugliness, anxieties, phony tans’ and begs to opt out of ‘a place like this’, where ‘your standards must be so very low’.  Despite the humour of their desire to return to their pre-birth ‘former quarters’, we sense that this child, though a winner in the ‘Tryouts for the Human Race’ stakes, is probably doomed to end up as another person crying in their latte. Any sense of despair or cynicism is, however, mitigated in typically Sparksian manner by the implausible humour of the situation and the catchy, jaunty melody.

The same idea appears in the bonus song on the Japanese release (‘This is not the world I signed up for’) which, in its focus on lost pleasures of a carefree youth (walking on the beach, wild parties), suggests more a lament for the reality of adult life today, fraught with anxieties and responsibilities.  In ‘When You Leave’, and ‘It’s Sunny Today’, however, such activities are also seen to generate social anxieties and insecurities, and have lost that pleasurable meaning.

Another wannabe escapee from the world is none other than the Mona Lisa (‘The Mona Lisa’s Packing, Leaving Late Tonight’) who, unlike the rebellious statue in ‘Le Louvre’ (A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1973), takes matters into her own hands. The choice of such a famous icon of Western civilization is a potent conceit to illustrate the discontents of the times. The repeated emphasis on ‘Nobody knew she was so disturbed (uptight)’ in the chorus, because her enigmatic smile hides her deep-seated angst, highlights the disconnect between individuals in modern society already suggested in the title song. To pick up on another theme in this album, her image has never been that easily defined (‘she seemed imperturbed’), but she can no longer mask her fear with that mysterious smile.  She opts out of the current atmosphere in a world that is ‘agitated and ill at ease’ in favour, perhaps, of an island in the sun, although there are dangers for her there too (the sun might ‘fade her priceless imagery’).

 A different kind of escape is described in ‘Take Me For A Ride’, in which a respectable middle-class couple escape from the tedium of their daily lives by creating a fantasy of lawlessness. The song evokes a movie-style car chase, a fugitive highjacking a woman in her Chevy Powerglide car, urging her to drive ever faster to escape capture. Despite clues that all is not what it might seem, the reveal is withheld until the last verse when we are told: ‘They repeat this ritual each Friday night at nine’, in which they ‘live a moment that makes them alive/Fighting off the boredom of both their daily lives’. Whether this fantasy is actualised, or remains in their imaginations is left uncertain.  Interestingly, the twinkling intro to this song was used at the start of the recent concerts, perhaps to indicate that the audience were about to be taken on an exhilarating journey.

‘A Love Story’ depicts a guy who believes that getting drugs for his girlfriend is ‘the perfect gift for a love that’s sublime’. Is he insecure or possessive? He fears losing his place in the queue and someone hitting on his girl in his absence. While boasting that the drugs prove the strength of his love and his ability to pay for them, he is at pains to distance himself from her habit, suggesting an uneasiness about his situation: ‘’Aint my thing, it's her thing’. Despite the minimal plot, this little scenario speaks volumes about the complexity of relationships in the modern world.

There are two songs on the new album which stand out for their clear political reference. ‘Veronica Lake’ tells the true story of the film star whose iconic ‘peek-a-boo’ hairstyle caused accidents on production lines during the Second World War and was deemed a threat to the war effort. Veronica Lake was asked to change her style for the country’s sake, and her ‘sacrifice’ of her defining image had dire consequences for her (‘she will kill her career all for the sake/ Of our winning the war’.)  There are multiple inferences in this song – apart from the power of celebrity, already highlighted in ‘That’s Not Nastassia’, (Whomp That Sucker’, 1981), and the need for a little fantasy in stressful times, we also see the fickleness of public opinion and the price of fame. In agreeing to demands in the national interest, Veronica Lake effectively became another ‘casualty of war’.  Such an historically based story is almost unprecedented in Sparks’ work and it is certainly ‘Educational’ (Balls, 2000)

The second song is ‘We Go Dancing’, a deceptively anodyne title for an astonishingly daring and explicit political subject. It depicts satirically the regimented view of life in North Korea, by casting Jim Jong Un as a DJ directing the ‘dancing’ of its brainwashed, automata-like citizens (’he rocks our world’), from the point of view of one of them.  Here discipline is a clearly defined moral and social imperative, following orders is paramount, deviation out of the question and injury ignored. The rejection of YouTube music highlights the outlawing of Western values (‘Kim Jong-un don’t like their vibe’), although the speaker evokes dancing comparisons (‘we don’t have a lot of moves, but our one move is tight’).  The song ends on the sound of marching feet – definitely not music that you can dance to. Although the analogy is humorous, this song, highly unusual for Sparks in its political specificity, is profoundly unsettling.

Finally, two songs that reflect on fundamental existential questions. In ‘Not That Well Defined’, the speaker lacks the subtlety to understand someone who appears to defy straightforward, accepted binary categorisation (‘Things are either black or they are white’). He is at a loss when faced with values that do not fit a clear definition (‘Can a person say that they exist/When so far they’ve managed to resist/Any definition, any key’). Perhaps this song reflects the entrenched views often found on social media, lacking awareness of ambiguity and relativity. The majestic anthem ‘It Doesn’t Have to be That Way’ which in its reference to music and creativity clearly reflects Sparks’ own experience and vision, acts as a kind of response to the concerns raised in the rest of the album. This song argues in favour of difference, rejecting the status quo (represented by the unspecified ‘They’), the limitations imposed by societal or artistic expectations, stereotyping, in fact any ‘well defined’ attitudes or demands. The lyrics endorse individuality and staying true to one’s own vision, as Ron and Russell have claimed to do throughout their career, even though this may come at a price. Their resigned but determined approach is fully evident in Ron’s words here (‘no chart bound song, I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for it’) as is their rejection of the idea that art should reflect the artist’s life or strife: they do not subscribe to the washing of personal linen in public, a common feature of much contemporary confessional pop.

The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte intensifies the themes of tedium, regret, frustration, dissatisfaction and missed opportunities found in other Sparks’ songs, as in ‘Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)’, Hippopotamus, and ‘Left Out In The Cold’, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip). Even ‘It’s Sunny Today’, which seems laid back and relaxed suggests a state of unmotivated drifting and half-hearted decisions with its echoes of ‘Popularity’ (Sparks in Outer Space, 1983). However, these concerns are linked strongly with an overt and disconcerting critique of modern society, despite their wonderfully catchy tunes. It is an album that manages to be melancholy, thought-provoking and joyous all at the same time. That’s the wonder of Sparks.

 

*Grumpy Old Men – a UK TV show in which celebrities of a certain age aired their pet grumbles.

Penny Brown

December 2023