SPARKS

[phdave that afternoon]

I found this interpretation of Balls interesting. Maybe some over interpretation and I don't know if it is consistent with facts of the band at the time, but a lot of it seems plausible.

SPARKS: A meta guide to ‘Balls’

https://www.sparks-onefortheages.com/post/sparks-a-meta-guide-to-balls

[Oscar]

[Alex Robertson]

No more relying on random poster sightings, sporadic mentions in the media...or my lost route to releases via fanclub messages and now thanks to the internet, chatting with other fans so all knowledge is being shared and we are all aware of concerts etc.
Met so many great people (virtually for the time being but soon to meet at concerts) but now I had a network to chat all things Sparksual with.
Up to HMV in the town centre they seemed to be up to date with new releases...and home with my new purchase.
This to me was still undeniably Sparks but somehow deeper and darker, however deep calls to deep and there was something thrilling about this album, again something moving direction...a great album IMO but lacking a vitality of its predecessor...still a firm favourite as a total listen...
....so 8/10

[Toughest Girl In Town]

I'm glad we skipped Plagiarism, we've already discussed all the original versions anyway.
This forum is probably the only place in the world where I can safely proclaim my love for Balls without sounding weird, so that's what I'll do.

When I first gave this album a try, I wasn't expecting anything I'd like (mostly because of the 2 previous albums I didn't really enjoy) but I had a very nice surprise listening to it after all. Now it's one of my personal favourites, and Aeroflot even entered my top-10 all-time favourite Sparks songs. Balls is also an excellent one, with (of course) Calm before the storm and even It's educational. They tried lots of new sounds, new ways to produce them as well, and I really appreciate the hard work they put into it.

However not all songs in this album did benefit from that in my opinion: How to get your ass kicked and It's a knockoff are short and that's probably the only good thing I can see about them.

I'll give it a 7.5/10, things will only get better from here, so buckle up daddy-o!

[phdave that afternoon]

I must have had low expectations for this album before I started listening to it because I was so pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I think the comparison to Big Beat makes a lot of sense, although the albums themselves are very different. There is a consistency of sound and an over the top attitude to the lyrics that matches the sound. I would not want two albums that sounded like this, but this is a great addition to the Sparks discography. I have not listened to any of the next few albums, so I am happy I can listen to Balls without any thoughts about how much better the next albums are than Balls. I wonder if some of the disappointment I have seen directed towards Balls is a function of comparison to the subsequent direction the band took.

My favorite song is More Than a Sex Machine. I get a rush of excitement when I hear it start. Totally Sparks lyrics and the beat gives me a jolt similar to songs on Number 1. I love Russ's singing of the word "machine". Second favorite is Calm Before the Storm. I also like the alternative versions, including the instrumental. The video is also hilarious. One of my favorites.

Other songs I enjoy are everything from Balls to Bullet Train. I like the other songs more or less but I feel somewhat drained of energy when I listen to the album from start to finish. I lose a bit of attention once it hits Knockoff. How to Get Your Ass Kicked is less of a jolt song, but it has funny Sparks lyrics. Scheherazade is not funny but I like Sparks writing a pop song about Arabian Nights. Aeroflot seems like an updating of Back in the USSR or at least done from a similar satiric point of view.

My least favorite is The Angels. Not a bad song but it reminds me of songs in the later 80s albums too much. It seems out of place on this album. Thankfully it does not have the same synth sound that I do not like. It's an OK ending to the album but I would not go out of my way to listen to it. Seems like the only hook of the song is saying the f word over and over. Which is fine, but not that interesting to me.

I saw Balls live. Would love to see Sex Machine live. I can't really think of a good band to cover one of these songs. It's Educational reminds me of the Pixies song UMass, so I'll go with the Pixies covering It's Educational.

I give this 8/10.
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I don’t have time to fill out questionnaires.

[Eric Murray]

I Picked up The Angels 4 track CD in Munich on a business trip back in 2000.
It contains a Tony and Morgan Visconti remix which is very good.

[waterloosunset]

Balls is an extension of Gratuitous Sax with little of the WOW factor that its predecessor has. That does not make me dislike the album; I enjoy listening to the dancy and hypnotic songs and happily choose to play the album as a whole. My favorite songs are Balls, Aeroflot, The Calm Before the Storm, How to Get Your Ass Kicked, and Irreplaceable. If The Calm Before the Opera were a stand-alone track, it would be my favorite on the album. Balls is sublime live – I wish I could have seen the performance from which the clip in The Sparks Brothers was taken. I wish I liked Bullet Train the way that others here and some online friends do, but it doesn’t grab me. Maybe too many horns? Not sure. I find It’s a Knockoff and The Angels a little bland. All in all, where Gratuitous Sax would have turned me into a fan, Balls, at least, would have kept me one in the year 2000.

Favorite Track: The Calm Before the Storm (hard decision)
Least Favorite Track: Bullet Train
Score: 7/10
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better drop the requirement that everything be great

[highersynth]

[highersynth]

Welcome to Week 18 of Album Club - w/c 5th November - Lil' Beethoven

You can find links to the album on Spotify here:

https://open.spotify.com/album/6PDuMIX5sav0klZWpdZPNJ?si=5OzdBCLpR_axhJFGoFwseg

Confusingly, both editions are "Deluxe" - one with 14 tracks, one with 12. The above links to the 14 track version, which is still only an hour run-time.

Prompts for discussion, if needed, and scores for previous albums, at the top of the thread.
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[Andy M]

“We can hear the sound of a chorus singing”

I’ve a fair few copies of Lil’ Beethoven. On one or two of them there’s a sticker with quotes from reviews. One word stands out.

Masterpiece.

Who am I to argue?

For all the brilliant work R&R had produced in the previous thirty years, this was still a game-changer for Sparks. The humour is still there in force – especially in Ugly Guys and Suburban Homeboy – but it’s linked with more biting social observation than ever before, sometimes going into dark places (e.g. Ride ‘Em Cowboy). Outstanding production, painstaking vocal overlays, and fantastic use of repeated phrases (as the late Mark E Smith once sang, “We dig repetition”).

The album boasts one of the greatest ever songs in My Baby’s Taking Me Home. Perhaps some musicologist could explain exactly why the music works as it does, but the differing emphases on the repeated five words and the bravura ending makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. And this from a songwriter noted for his expansive lyrics . . .

My least favourite song is the last, but I can see why the lighter coda is required. Suburban Homeboy also has some of Ron’s best lines, such as, “I say yo dog to my pool cleaning guy” and “She’s from the projects in San Tropez”.

I can live without the Lil’ Beethoven cartoon character on the cover (and, indeed, the entire LB backstory on the extras), but the simple, stark cover is entirely appropriate to the contents.

10/10 hardly does this justice.

PS If you’ve got to plump for one physical version of the album, I’d suggest the one which contains two tracks that had previously appeared on thematic compilations: Wunderbar (Concerto in Koch Minor) – which in another universe would have been the theme tune to the BBC’s 2006 world cup coverage - and Kakadu, where you can hear Tammy Glover taking the lead “vocal”.

[Alex Robertson]

At the end of a concert , Russell told the audience, "Be prepared, there will be an announcement very very soon with regards to the release of a new secret project....Watch this space!"
One or two people in the crowd, murmured," Lil Beethoven!"...So, as is often the case with Sparks, someone lets the cat out of the bag prematurely. I think it is because some people get a sense of importance being first to break news..as there were other people aware of this secret project who were able to keep schtum about it.
Some people also had a preview copy...but I wouldn't have wanted to hear the album until it's live premiere as it was going to be played in its entirety. So my first hearing of this album was a concert....it was mind blowing...up until then, the best concert I had ever attended bar none and didn't think it would be surpassed. ( but it is Sparks we are talking about so nothing should be taken for granted).
Again, it is an album where I can't choose a favourite or least favourite track...everyone an absolute belter fro start to finish and when it finishes it is one of those albums you just play again and benefits from being played loud....love it.
10/10

[highersynth]

Been listening to Lil' Beethoven pretty much all day, ever since I posted the review of Balls. I've never listened to it in entirety before. I'm blown away. Another masterful demonstration of Mael genius.

I agree that it's difficult to pick a favourite track, and I suspect this will change with continued listening; however, today, Rhythm Thief is sublime - and Ugly Guys is, although totally at odds with the style of the rest of the album, equally wonderful in a totally different way. I don't really know what Ugly Guys is doing on this album at all - but maybe that's the point. I love it, nonetheless. All that boiling anger bitterly and eloquently expressed!
I genuinely can't find a track on here that is "less than", though.

In terms of covers, Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer made an excellent job of Suburban Homeboy (available via Bandcamp at nominal cost (https://mrbthegentlemanrhymer.bandcamp.com/album/larks-sparks-e-p) and I have to say his ironic chap-hop delivery suits it perfectly, almost better than Russell's. Can't imagine any of the other tracks covered though - this album is too uniquely Sparks.

10/10
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[Toughest Girl In Town]

What else can I add? It's all been said above already.
Genius, brilliant, clever, awesome.
This album was the start of a new Sparks era, their absolute best if you ask me.

Favourite song? Too many to choose from, I love them all.

Ron often said in interviews that Lil Beethoven was the album he was the most proud of... and we clearly understand why, it is such an amazing work of art.

10/10 obviously.

[Spyke]

If I could rate Lil' Beethoven higher than a 10, I would! I was lucky enough to be at its first concert on the South Bank in London, and was stunned from start to finish. The staging complemented the songs perfectly (Ron's long arms, the 'girlfriend' in UGWBG...), although of course the songs work just as well without the visuals. The arrangements, the lyrics, the melodies are all packed with imagination, and the brothers are clearly enjoying their new-found sound (even more so than on GSASV). The first few tracks introduce the Maels' different style (TRT, WAATBSAA) and remind us that they've got there through perseverance and being individual (HDIGTCH, IMM, REC). And side 2's songs are the brothers 'just' showing off (justifiably!) what they can now do. The sparse use of guitars and drums proves that 'less is more', as they have more impact on the few times they let rip. There's not a weak track on the album: my favourite is MBTMH (undiluted genius), with UGWBG not too far behind.

Best album ever made.
10(+)/10
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"but we can hear what others can't hear..."

[Oscar]

Man, so jealous of Alex and Spyke first experiencing this album at its live premiere! That must have been incredible. This was the first Sparks album to come out after I'd become a fan, so at least I got to experience the album release in real time, which was amazing enough as it was.

I'd previously been a little bummed that I had apparently missed the era of Sparks rocking out with guitars, so Dean Menta's guitar parts were one of the most exciting things about the album, even if he was just on a couple songs. But "I Married Myself" was my first favorite song on the album. As a college student who'd at the time never been in a relationship and was beginning to suspect he never would, everything about that song felt perfectly suited to me, and I almost couldn't believe that this band who I'd only discovered fairly recently (but who were already my new favorite band) were just now putting out a new song that sounded unlike anything they'd ever done before but also resonated with me maybe more than anything they'd done before. It felt like they were intentionally coming to me, rather than expecting me to come to wherever they were at that point in their career.

And then, years later, my wife and I played "My Baby's Taking Me Home" as the last song at our wedding reception, as everyone was making their way out of the venue. And that's my current favorite song on the album, probably unsurprisingly.

So this is an important album to me, and obviously it's a really important album for Sparks, in that they weren't just reinventing themselves, but also essentially inventing their own genre of music, and changing the trajectory of their career. Which is why I'm a little disappointed that I don't think I can quite give it a 10/10. And the two reasons for that are "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?" and "Ugly Guys with Beautiful Girls." The former just...isn't much of a song. I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but I don't really get anything out of listening to it. "UGwBG" sounds great -- I love the intro/outro, the drums and guitars, Russell's vocals on the chorus -- but after listening to it a few times, the humor kind of wears off, and I'm left with seven minutes of mostly spoken bits that don't really make me want to keep coming back to it. It's like "ok, i get it, next song."

The rest of the album is so good though, that I can't just give it a 9. So a 9.5/10 it is!

[phdave that afternoon]

I really envy those who were Sparks fans before this album came out and then were able to hear it from start to finish fresh. What a mind blowing experience that would have been. It is strange that this album is at the same time a clear extension of what Sparks had done previously and is recognizably Sparks, but is also like something from another dimension.

Before listening start to finish, I was familiar with My Baby, Rhythm Thief, and Suburban Homeboy from the Past Tense album. I only figured out later that the songs were in chronological order on PT, mostly because I had been listening on shuffle and didn't look much up in their discography. Early on I decided to do what I am doing now: go through each album one by one. I wanted to have some surprises. Those three songs were way up on the top of the list of my favorite songs from PT, so it is amazing that they would be from the same album.

SH is hilarious, maybe the most hilarious Sparks songs for me. My wife and I Yo-Yo each other. The pairing of the lyrics with the barbershop quartet music is sublime.

I was so happy when they started playing MBITMH at the Bowl show. Amazingly hypnotic.

I love almost all of the new songs (for me). Maybe especially Ride 'em Cowboy and Your call is very important to us, please hold. Both are hilarious in two different ways. Each Cowboy lyric is a hilarious gem building on the same theme while the lyrics for Your Call are hilarious because of their unceasing repetition. I can picture Ron imagining that song while sitting on hold.

Carnegie Hall might be the first time I attached "Sparks" to a song that caught my attention. I heard it at the end of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel episode with Lennie Bruce playing Carnegie Hall. As soon as the song started I was like, who is that? What is that band? That sounds like something I would like! So I used my Shazam app and saw Sparks with a picture of them and the Lil' Beethoven album cover, and I did not know what to make of it and forgot to follow up. It was about a year before I saw that they were headlining the Bowl and then watched the documentary. Only later did I remember that they were that band I looked up from Mrs. Maisel. The song is a classic Sparks lyric of mostly humor with a very sad twist tucked inside.

I enjoy What are all these bands so angry about because it is so weird. I married myself is another classic Sparks take on being single. The song sounds like a traditional love song overall with some really weird sounds thrown in and an overly jaunty part in the middle. The whole combination is hilarious.

I completely agree with Oscar that the biggest downer on the album is Ugly Guys. I like everything about it except that the spoken word part is extremely long and does not strike me funny at all. Maybe I would appreciate it more if I had never heard King Missile. It is the same structure as many of their songs with a narrator of some humorous essay or observations interspersed with heavy guitar. It would be fine if the narration had some funny lines, but it feels to me too spot on with what a bitter rejected man who became misogynistic towards all women might say. I don't mind a song taking on the point of view of a bad person if it is not so straightforward. Like Throw Her Away and Get a New One is certainly a point of view I don't appreciate, but it is so over the top and has hilarious lines that it works. La Dulce Vita is also a take on gold diggers, but there are some amazing lines in that song and you don't wonder if you should sympathize with the gold diggers. The best thing I can say about Ugly Guys is that it seems to be a preview of Dick Around with a similar hard guitar sound thrown in and a reversal of the theme where a guy who did have lots of money is rejected but then accepted again after he lost everything, so I see that as somewhat of a response to Ugly Guys. I might be imagining that connection. I also might be harder on this song because of how much I like all of the other songs on the album and feel like I have to skip it because I don't want to listen to it again for 7 minutes. I just want to listen to Suburban Homeboy for the millionth time.


The other songs are so good I considered putting my misgivings towards Ugly Guys and give it a 10 but I decided that since I wrote that huge paragraph that I should probably rate it slightly less: 9.9.
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I don’t have time to fill out questionnaires.

[waterloosunset]

As almost everyone (everyone?) has written, Lil’ Beethoven is a masterwork, one that I can’t imagine anyone saw coming. Because I insisted on collecting physical Sparks CDs/vinyl before listening to them, it took me a few months (and a lot of money) to finally hear LB. This was in early 2022, before the re-releases. When I finally ripped open the mailer and listened to it, I didn’t care how much I had paid for it. I was gobsmacked for all the reasons everyone has cited. For me, there are three tiers of Lil’ Beethoven. Tier 1 (still leave me in disbelief) – The Rhythm Thief, How Do I Get to Carnegie Hall, My Baby’s Taking Me Home. Tier 2 (each would be the best song on many of their albums) – I Married Myself, Ride ‘Em Cowboy, Your Call’s Very Important to Us, Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls, Suburban Homeboy. Tier 3 – What Are All These Bands So Angry About (I love the music when it switches from major to minor, but the lyrics are kind of blah). I think if you locked me in a room with nothing but MBTMH on repeat for four hours, I’d be happy to hear it again upon my release. The Kinks have always been my band (I’m older than all of you), and I remember the release of Waterloo Sunset when I was 12. It was sublime. There are many Kinks albums that I find amazing, but I think Lil’ Beethoven might surpass all of them.

Some of you got to see LB performed before you had heard it anywhere else (did they carry you out on a stretcher?), and many of you own or have seen the Stockholm concert. For anyone who hasn’t, just watch it. It’s up on YouTube somewhere. The sheer theater of it will draw you into songs you might not think are winners; Carnegie Hall and Your Call are the best examples.

The Legend of LB, Kakadu, and Concerto in Koch Minor are such great bonus additions. Now when watching association football (or what we call soccer) on TV, I invariably chime in with “O-la-la, das ist nicht zu fassen, Fuss – ball, Fuss – ball” at some point.

I still wonder when exactly in 2001 Ron sold his soul to the devil. I can’t see any other way for this album’s existence.

Favorite Track: My Baby’s Taking Me Home
Least Favorite Track: What Are All These Bands So Angry About
Score: 10+/10
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better drop the requirement that everything be great

[waterloosunset]

[Oscar]

Good question! I think probably just my best man, who'd become a Sparks fan mainly as a consequence of being best friends with me.

I should also mention that "Falling in Love With Myself Again" was our cake-cutting song :)

[Buckeye Randy]

My Sparks fandom is convoluted but I loved Lil Beethoven the moment I heard it. It's the first album worthy of repeat listens since Angst. Our cable company at the time had a generic video channel and The Rhythm Thief was in regular rotation. All is right with the world. Suburban Homeboy is in my all-time top ten of all music/all bands.

9/10
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Billy, Don't Be A Porter