SPARKS

[Toughest Girl In Town]

I'm a bit late for this week's album, I actually struggled finding 1 and a half hours to listen to it in one go.
Live albums are usually not my favourite ones, I often prefer original recordings.
I like the set list though, and Russell's voice took me to heaven a couple of times with "Metaphor" and "Under the table with her" that were particularly nicely sung. I think he also showed great acting skills on "The Rhythm Thief".
I also enjoyed Ron's narration on the intro of "The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman" which sounded even better than the original.

Regarding the only original song of this album, I think it's great, funny and cheeky. That was really a good idea to write a song just for the occasion, this is such a sweet surprise for all the fans who attended those shows. Wish I was one of them, unfortunately I wasn't.

I won't give it a score either, since we know all the original songs already. And I haven't seen the show either, so I guess I won't be able to rate it properly.

[highersynth]

Welcome to Week 4 of Album Club II - HalfNelson Demo


The album is on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/HhKwPqE9lSo?feature=shared

I also found this rather nice summary piece (quite easily!): http://graphikdesigns.free.fr/halfnelson-sparks-demo-lp.html

... and finally I must add a plug for Christian Huey's podcast "All you Ever Think About is Sparks" which was where I first heard about this demo on Episode 1: https://sparkspodcast.podbean.com/e/episode-one-is-here/

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

[Andy M]

“Hello, won’t you join our big show?”

A while back, Oscar said that he wished that R&R would release the demos properly. I suppose it might not only be up to them (who does own the rights – R&R, all those in the band at the time, the record company?) but Sparks have, recently at least, included demos on re-releases (KMH and GS&SV come to mind) and I’d echo wholeheartedly Oscar’s comments. These are important historical recordings!

I can’t remember how I obtained the cd of these songs (12 cuts over 30 minutes) but I do enjoy playing it occasionally.

The quality of the recordings is as good as you could expect (which means that it’s not great) but there are some songs you think could easily have made it to the final cut. Arts & Crafts Spectacular – which HAS been released on an Under the Influence cd selected by Morrissey – is really good, as is Join the Firm and Jane Church. Only two of the demos actually made it onto the Halfnelson debut: Roger and Saccharin and the War. Roger survived pretty much as it originally was in the demo; SATW was much improved.

All in all, great fun, with some Ron’s sometimes flamboyant keyboards occasionally being given full rein.

[Alex Robertson]

Getting hold of these tracks were for a while as difficult to obtain as The Holy Grail...they were spoken about as if they were mythical. Oh what joy when getting hold of them ( how Arts and Crafts Spectacular was a track that Morrissey put down as an "influence" implies he got hold of the demos while he was still known as Steven 😜)
The tracks are a bit of an absorption of styles of the day ( and/or influences). Canned Heat, The Kinks and maybe it's only me but I hear a trace of Motown and even Blues.
Love every track, if pushed for a favourite, I'd be hard pressed to be definite but at this listening, I'm plumping for The Animals At Jason's Bar And Grill.
This does indeed deserve it's own release, but maybe because it's not as polished as later releases doesn't mean it's not a diamond in the rough and as such the Mael's should be proud of it..but as previously mentioned there might be licensing problems but are they able to be overcome....I hope so.

[SteveBoyce]

Regarding 2HOM I think Russell using loops for Your Call was the first time I saw that, Ed Sheeran has become famous for it of course among others.
I agree about the keyboards sometimes being very oompah which isn't to my taste. (It's also one reason I like the latest album where imo more work went into the keyboard arrangements) But some tracks were quite inventively presented.
I liked the "Revenge of 2HOM" song which never go a release sadly.
I had always assumed that one motivation for this format was to build up some money reserves to do other things.

Regarding the Demos, they sound to me like Ray Davies meets Syd Barrett! I have read interviews where it is said that it was meant to be a real album at the time and only got relegated to a demo album later.

[Oscar]

Since I missed THOM week, I'll just echo Spyke's sentiment that it's "a nice souvenir of a really enjoyable tour," and add that I, like waterloosunset, love this version of Sherlock Holmes.

Onto the "Halfnelson Demos." As I mentioned on the other thread, I basically think of this as another Sparks album, albeit one that's very lo-fi (at least in its only "available" state) and that has two songs that are also on another album. Steve and Alex are right-on as far as the influences go. Ron's lyrical style is pretty much fully formed, based on the lyrics it's possible to make out. Johnny's Adventure, Arts & Crafts Spectacular, Landlady, and The Animals at Jason's Bar & Grill are all little story songs with perfect Ron-ish details ("Victorian overstuffed couch," "no more coffee, thanks!" etc.) and Russell's operatic falsetto makes its debut in Big Rock Candy Mountain, elevating a cool but otherwise nondescript Mankey song. Really, every song is good, and while they're all "psychedelic rock" songs, there's a lot of variety in terms of mood, sound, and tempo.

My favorite is Landlady, which manages to feel like an epic despite only being 2 1/2 minutes long.

If they were to officially release a higher-quality version of this, I'd give it a 7/10. Not as good as their actual debut, but close.

[SteveBoyce]

By the way, curious fact about the demo album: it first turned up as a bootleg under the name "California Folk Songs" !!

[waterloosunset]

I have only had this for about 4 months, and don’t run to it regularly, so I just listened and took notes song by song. I thought going into all that detail would be endlessly boring, so I won’t.

[highersynth]

I enjoyed listening to this music, made when I was starting primary school, thumb-painting and learning to write.
I mention this because it gives me a perspective of just how very long ago the "essence" of Sparks emerged - they seem always to have known who they are, and their unclassifiable art-pop sound had already crystallised. Nearly SIXTY years ago. No wonder they are so very, very accomplished.

I've only had chance to listen once - Roger struck me with its similarity to the final recording, and Arts and Crafts Spectacular made me think maybe they took a leaflet about a neighbourhood event and simply set it to music - very effectively, if they did, cleverly exposing the covert pomposity that pervades the arts and crafts clique which is still evident today.
I too would like to own a higher-quality recording of this stuff.
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[highersynth]

Welcome to Week 5 of Album Club II - Week 5 - Is there More to Life than Dancing (Noel)

You can find a link to the album on YouTube here:

https://youtu.be/MpHsVzylYzY?feature=shared

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

[Andy M]

“Those mysteries/I don't even know what I don't even know”

Not from the Nöel/Noel/Noël LP, to be sure, but it sums up something of the enigma that is this R&R project which has intrigued me for forty-odd years.

First, the name, with its errant diaresis. Toughest Girl says in France it would be spelt Noël and – for reasons I’ll come to - I think that applies here too. I’ve got four vinyl records by the artiste, all on Virgin Records – the LP Is There More to Life Than Dancing?, where they have her as Nöel, Dancing is Dangerous on 7” (again as Nöel) and on 12” (this time it’s Noel!) and a 7” of The Night They Invented Love (as Noël). Come on, Virgin – all signs of shoddy workmanship on your behalf, as Ron might say.

For many years that was all I had of N’s output. But not too long ago I came across a 2013 cd reissue of a later work, the album Peer Pressure as by Noël and The Red Wedge (largely undistinguished US power-pop, if you’re interested). So on this evidence, I’ll go with Noël. Pronunciation? No-el in my mind, rather than Nole, but yet again I could be wrong.

Until I found the cd, I’d always wondered whether Noël was a singer that the Maels had discovered and hoped to make big – as with Christi Haydon years later – or was a one-off experiment with a singer using a pseudonym. I’ve never quite decided which is more likely.

What about the album? Well, side A is a cracker, consisting of just two tracks, Dancing is Dangerous and the title track. (Side B is more diffuse and not as strong). The two excellent tracks are real earworms, and I think why they work is because R&R play the writing and production with a straight bat. The listener is no doubt that, for Noël, the dancefloor is everything.

Not a record I listen to regularly by any means, but those two tracks on side A often run through my head. All in all, a curious but welcome addition to the Mael oeuvre.

Finally, the best physical version? In the spirit of oddness that permeates this endeavour, the picture disc version of the LP is easy to come by, whilst I’ve yet to come across an ordinary black vinyl copy. I don’t think there’s an official cd release, but you can get hold of an “unofficial” version.

[Alex Robertson]

In my mind the release of this album followed this sequence...
No. 1 In Heaven
C'est Sheep
Is There more To Life Than Dancing
...so if I'm wrong please feel free to correct me.

After No 1...I think Adrian Munsey's C'est Sheep was on Juke Box Jury. On hearing it was Mael produced, I rushed to order it.
It's strangely glorious...and funny.
The original was called The Lost Sheep...a very classical composition with Adrian holding a sheep and baaing. He is wonderfully eccentric yet a brilliant composer ( check out some of his other works on YouTube...I'll see if I can't post a link later) I'd love to know the story behind how Ron and Russell came to discofy this track...and if they ever met.
Producing this track and collaborating on No.1 may have given Ron and Russell a taste for production. Of course when I read about the forthcoming Noel album, I was straight off ordering again.
This a wonderful album, it has all the Mael elements of a Sparks album, stories told with that Mael flair, it seemed like Sparks were going down a BeeGee route and becoming a disco band....of course that was a wrong assumption, they had new directions or misdirections up their sleeves as we were to find out, once again turning their sails against the wind.
The long tracks are very dancey but I'd say my favourites are Au Revoir, The Night They Invented Love and I Want A Man...the latter not to be sung in communal showers in the gym unless you are prepared to accept the consequences...
I had a friend who was convinced Noel was actually Ron in drag and this was just a "Sparks in disguise" album..can't give my responses here!!!
I love how Dancing Is Dangerous from this album is such a polar opposite to Dancing Is Dangerous, I Ought To Know.

[SteveBoyce]

In my memory, the Noel record and C'Est Sheep came out about the same time.
The Noel record did get a lot of attention from some DJs and I think had a lot of influence, although commercially it did nothing. I think it's very interesting as the first self-produced record by R&R and much more significant in their musical development than TJ (Though WIWY I think was and is their biggest selling record ever) I also personally really like it.
C'Est Sheep had a big sign in London Tower Records saying something like "This is the worst record ever". I've heard it but never bought it.
PS There is an excellent quality cd of the Noel record, which looks totally official, though I'm told it's not.

[waterloosunset]

I was living in Colorado when this was released. It gained no traction there, but the only music one really heard there at that time was country. I don't think it got airplay in the US; maybe it got some in the California area.

Russell sings parts of the song Dancing Is Dangerous, right? I like the parts he sings OK. I like the original song Dancing is Dangerous much, much more.

I listened to the whole album on YouTube twice (but not with my full attention), and decided that it's OK if I never listen to it again. Two problems. I don't like disco and I don't like her voice.
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better drop the requirement that everything be great

[Oscar]

I'm glad we're discussing this album, mainly because it gives me (another?) chance to sing the praises of "The Night They Invented Love" and "Au Revoir." I think "Dancing Is Dangerous" and "Is There More to Life Than Dancing?" are fine, but I found mp3s of those two songs online long before I bought the album, and I listened to them enough times back then that I feel like I probably don't need to ever hear them again. When I finally heard the whole album, I immediately fell in love with the first two songs on side two (more of a medley, really), and continue to listen to them fairly often to this day. ("I Want a Man" has never done anything for me.)

"The Night They Invented Love" is amazing to me because lyrically it could almost be an old showtune, at least in terms of the concept, but the lyrical details make me think of one of my favorite books, Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. The idea of love being invented before men and woman were even men and women is very Cosmicomics. The simplicy and matter-of-factness of "And then someone noticed someone, and then someone needed someone, and then someone felt a way they never felt before" makes this feel plausible. But then the real brilliance of the song is that it doesn't sound old-timey or nerdy at all -- instead it's a 9-minute disco epic, made even more epic by the fact that it transitions seamlessly into "Au Revoir," and you know you're coming into "Au Revoir" because the sax part is better and there are beautiful "Ooh-ooh-ooh" vocals. "Au Revoir" on its own is the closest thing to a typical Sparks song on the album, and a typical Sparks song is, of course, really good. It's short, super catchy, witty. Fits neatly into the canon of Sparks songs about people speaking (or trying to speak) languages that are foreign to them. I just love this whole 12 minutes of music.

[Oscar]

Following up on Andy's mention of Noel's 1982 album... I was aware that she'd put out an album in the '80s, but I hadn't investigated it much until now, and I notice a couple of notable things about it apart from the fact that it's the only other album Noel ever recorded: it was one of the very first albums produced by Mitchell Froom, who went on to be a big-name producer, working with Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, Randy Newman, etc., and several of the songs on the album were written by Froom with Jerry Stahl, who's well known as a novelist and screenwriter and has had an interesting life and career. His Wikipedia doesn't mention anything about songwriting, but I guess he had a brief songwriting partnership with Froom in the early '80s. I'm curious to give the album a listen now, but not really expecting much based on Andy's comments.

[waterloosunset]

[highersynth]

Welcome to Week 6 - other material
- Mai The Psychic Girl excerpts
- Bad Manners (see below for links kindly provided by SteveBoyce)

[highersynth]

Hi everyone,
as we start week 6 you might notice I've been quiet, and that's because at this stage I'm out. I'm still wanting to focus on the main Sparks catalogue, which is what first drew me in all those years ago. The focus for my attention is therefore currently Monte Malin's "Sparks - Entertainment and Art" YouTube show, which he's promoting here - I highly commend it, as he's interviewing some very knowledgeable guests as well as interested fans.

Enjoy the ongoing conversations arising from this group - I won't attempt to continue to orchestrate the thread, and next weekend I'll "unsticky" the topic, unless someone else would like to step in and take it forward.

Thanks so much again all of you for playing along. xx
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Tomorrow I'll find out all I should know...

[Alex Robertson]

I'll take a bit to answer this week's choices because I'll have to give the Mai tracks another listen...so that means looking them out...if I find a YouTube link I'll post it.
I hope someone takes over from Highersynth ( who has done a sterling job in creating and stewarding an interesting topic...it's been good to see how diverse people's perceptions are)...there is AT LEAST another week after this to be squeezed out