SPARKS

[SteveBoyce]

[PeterE]

though I was introduced to Sparks with "This Town"
on the radio ... no TV show...
and Kimono is a great album I do prefer the Bearsville
Albums ... they still sound timeless after all this years

[highersynth]

Welcome to Week 4 of Album Club - First Week of August - Propaganda

You can find a link to the album on Spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0X9oDUDUZEAEkdtIPHXTAY?si=bxny-4fSSEaRNT_D4yc2QA

Prompts for discussion, if needed, at the top of the thread.
Enjoy!
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[Alex Robertson]

Already being the proud owner of 3 Sparks albums (LPs as they were then called), as soon as this release was announced, I was straight down to Groucho's to order it...it was for some reason closed so off to Chalmers to try them...Next week they promised...a week In Sparks limbo is a long time. I managed to collect it on the Friday after work, sitting on the bus to Menzieshill studying the cover and reading the lyrics..tea skipped straight to my room to get a listen.
Wow just when you thought you'd heard everything with Sparks, Woofer and KMH...here was another belter, maybe a little "rockier" than before, but no bad thing. Title track a tad short ( was great to hear a full length version years later...as it was with the buying verse on This Town)... straight into At Home At Work At Play no messing...and so on loving each track more than the last... initially after the first listen...Bon Voyage was my favourite track still rates high. However on subsequent plays BC took that accolade, as ever with Sparks an almost cheery tune with dark underbelly lyrics...I've always taken it to be about a control freak husband/father with OCD. who eventually pushes his family into fleeing him, which of course totally destroys him...and I'm sticking with that interpretation.
As with any album I'll refrain from putting a score on it but if I did it would be a high one...more brilliance.

One note, I remember reading Danny Baker's review, he didn't write kindly of the album, in fact of At Home,At Work At Play....he said , he would much rather have a Mars Bar...it took a long time for me to forgive him that jibe.

[dinky]

Almost sure they released Never Turn Your Back On Mother before the album came out. Was at a friends on a friday night when they trailed it being played (might have been an offshore pirate radio station) and I remember the anticipation even now. Incredible that Ron found the time to write this in a few months, without doubt the darkest lyrics and bleakest song subjects of any release.

[phdave that afternoon]

This is the first album I heard all the way through before this discussion (not the first Sparks album I heard all the way through, just the first of those we have discussed so far). I saw that Bon Voyage was on tour setlists and was not a track on the greatest hits album that I had, so I listened to Propaganda a few times through before the Hollywood Bowl show.

I'll continue to listen to it this week on repeat. I'm leaning towards liking it a bit more than Kimono, but that might be just a recency effect.

[waterloosunset]

@Alex Robertson, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your pursuit of Propaganda. I remember feeling this way waiting for Kinks albums. The Kinks were difficult to follow because the Kinks were banned from the US 1964-1969 and we (my older brother and I) ended up ordering some of their records from England.

Propaganda is in my top 5 Sparks albums (the 5 are in a clump and change positions regularly). I will need to think about my comments for a few days.
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better drop the requirement that everything be great

[Toughest Girl In Town]

[phdave that afternoon]

I might use a hexadecimal rating system used in this set of reviews of Sparks albums.

[highersynth]

[highersynth]

I've listened once, probably for the first time with any level of care and attention in about 40 years (what a confession!)

Initial response - totally disconcerted! I thought this was one of my top fave Sparks albums, but on first listen I'm finding it much more challenging to get into even than the Bearsville albums. Maybe I'm in a funny mood?

It lacks, for me, the immediate, joyful appeal of Kimono... or it could just be the echo of my teenage brain which at the time I recall wanted more and more of the same, rather than Sparks' natural, unique and relentless progression into the new. So I need, surprisingly, to study it.

What I do know, at this point, is that I will never listen again to the interview featured on the remaster. I wasn't conscious at the time that British female radio journalists were required to sound like 6-year old members of the Royal Family - but it's not a memory I wish to refresh.
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[highersynth]

[Buckeye Randy]

I had no expectation for a follow up to “Kimono My House” because I heard it and “Propaganda” during the same period of time. As a midwestern boy in the rust belt of America I probably saw British Glam a little differently than those in the UK. Even if I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, I’ve grown over the years to appreciate the historical importance of “Kimono My House” to glam in general and the legacy to Sparks as a band in particular.

My thoughts now have not changed drastically from my thoughts as a teen. “Propaganda” is “Kimono My House” 2.0.

Being a calculated (or not calculated) follow-up to a breakthrough release is not necessarily a bad thing to my ears. I actually prefer “Wish You Were Here” over “Dark Side Of The Moon” and depending on the day of the week I prefer “A Day At The Races” over “A Night At The Opera”. How and why this happens is good conversation. In this case, “Propaganda” is in the conversation for at least being the equal to “Kimono My House”.

I don’t think there has ever been a three song back to back to back by Sparks that equals “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth”, “Something For The Girl With Everything” and “Achoo”. If the song “Propaganda” had been developed into a real song then maybe we would be talking about a trifecta on side one of that song along with “At Home At Work At Play” and “Reinforcements”. Great stuff.

I don’t care for the ‘la la’ intro on “Thanks But No Thanks” but the lyrics are spot on. I don’t like “Who Don’t Like Kids” for some reason, not sure.

I debated to myself if “Kimono My House” was a 9 or 10. No debate in my mind that “Propaganda” is a 9. That said, I probably listen to “Propaganda” more often, go figure.
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Billy, Don't Be A Porter

[Alex Robertson]

P. S.....
ACHOO....the outro on this was originally recorded as a long Adrian Fisher solo. It was after they had called it a wrap and retired for the night that the guitar was replaced by the "sneezes"...At a convention in Hove, Alpha Mael featuring Ian Hampton and Trevor White played Achoo, and Trevor (by way of homage to Adrian) tried to recreate the original ending.

[dinky]

Achoo....abortion
TBNT... child kidnapping
BV... not making the Ark..death
SFTGWE.. abuse

[Alex Robertson]

[Toughest Girl In Town]

[Andy M]

As with waterloosunset, Propaganda is always in the mutable feast that is my top Sparks albums, occasionally being viewed as #1, and often revisited. As with Kimono, great choices for singles (and ones which probably cemented Ron’s reputation for wonderful song titles), and with Propaganda/At Home, At Work, At Play one of the best openings to any album. (It also struck me, once again, how short KMH and Propaganda are compared to more recent efforts).

Lots of favourites here; only BC fails to do it for me. As for weird - when first played, Who Don’t Like Kids sent me, and doubtless others, scurrying to the record player thinking the needle had got stuck!

As an aside, does anyone know why sometimes Ron adds the question mark to a song title and sometimes doesn’t, the most notable example of the latter approach being When Do I Get to Sing “My Way”? (That’s a question mark on my question, not the title!)

Another great cover, presumably meant to follow Kimono by having no band or album name on it, but spoilt by the addition of a sticker with that very information.

As to live, Never Turn... and Something... used to feature regularly in live sets, but haven’t been heard much in recent years. At Home... seems too to have been dropped. Whilst it was good to hear Bon Voyage again on the last tour, I was surprised that they didn’t use Thanks But No Thanks instead, as that would have been recognisable to new fans from Annette.

9-10/10.

[waterloosunset]

Andy M wrote:"Propaganda is always in the mutable feast that is my top Sparks albums"

Oooooh, so beautifully said, Andy.

Since I got KMH and Propaganda at almost the same time, I consider them to be Part I and Part II of the same album. Right now on Twitter (I refuse to call it by its new name, or letter), there is a poll for Sparks's best album, and Propaganda is about to win. It deserves to. I don't have a streaming service, so I waited for the CDs to arrive after hunting them down on eBay and discogs. When I put on Propaganda, I was gobsmacked by the Propaganda/At Home, At Work, At Play one-two punch. AHAWAP is melodically and lyrically intricate, and Russell's lingual dexterity is at its height. The cynical humor of the whole album is superb. I don't see it quite as darkly as Dinky, but the themes of potential child abduction, extortion, the insidious nature of war, nasty relationships, and the end of the world do loom large. But comically. I never thought of Achoo as related to abortion, but after reviewing the lyrics without the music just now, hmmmm.

Favorites are the whole first side (minus B.C., though it looks like it was great fun live) + Never Turn Your Back, Something for the Girl, and Bon Voyage. I've never really warmed to Who Don't Like Kids, but only because of the melody of "who don't like kids"; once it gets to "you got a cigar," I'm fine.

I give this one a 10. I hear it the same way I hear KMH. They are both so unusual in their musical styles, their topic matter, and their lyrics. And the performances are excellent. I wish I had heard Propaganda when it first came out. In America, I was drowning in the airplay of Chicago and the Eagles and Steve Miller and oh my God, just mentioning these bands gives me hives. I hid within my stack of Kinks albums, thinking that I would never like another band (then punk hit, and I was off and running again).
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better drop the requirement that everything be great

[waterloosunset]

"Here's a partridge in a tree,
A gardener for the tree
Complete with ornithologist"

HOW F**KING BRILLIANT IS THAT!!

It's 8PM so I should probably think about dinner now.
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better drop the requirement that everything be great