SPARKS

piley · Junior Groupie Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 48

hi all,

I've just published my Hello Young Lovers review. Recently I met up with press photographer and Sparks fan Tony Bartolo. He was the only profesional photographer in the world to cover 21x21 every single night - ensuring this historic event was preserved.

Currently, Tony has not published any of his shots anywhere, but nice guy that he is, he has kindly given me a real exclusive, and allowed me to use some of his stunning photos for my review. He also allowed me to update my previous Propaganda review with yet more of his beautiful shots.

If you'd like to see my reviews and Tonys great photographs, do please pop over to my blog!

Hello Young Lovers review is here:
http://piley.blogspot.com/2008/06/sparks-hello-young-lovers-live-review.html

Propaganda review is here:
http://piley.blogspot.com/2008/05/sparks-propaganda-live-review.html

I really hope you enjoy them. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish to.

Best Wishes all

Piley
www.piley.blogspot.com

TommyGun · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:41 am Post subject:

live the picture of ron with his junior les paul guitar, he rocks

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Robin Davies · Certified Fan Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 64

I enjoyed the reviews but I really must disagree with this bit:
"speak to the casual music fan, and they’ll describe Sparks as morose or painfully serious, yet they couldn't be more wrong".
I don't believe anyone thinks of Sparks as "morose or painfully serious". Surely one of the reasons Sparks don't get the respect they deserve is that too many people think of them as a kind of novelty joke band featuring "that guy with the Hitler moustache".

piley · Junior Groupie Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 48

hi Robin... hmmm i think you may have a point. I know what i was trying to convey, but i see where you're coming from...

I think there are two 'non-fan' camps. There are the people for whom music doesn't pay much importance in their life, and they just go with whatever is fed to them via the radio\tv. These are the people who will refer to Sparks as having 'hitler' or 'blakey' from on the busses in them. All they know about them is what they saw on top of the pops in the 70's!

The 2nd group - and these were the ones i was trying to refer to in my article, but appreciate now i probably didn't get the wording right - are people who consider themselves big music fans, but are not into Sparks. I work with a group of guys who are all into classic rock (led zep, neil young etc). they really know their stuff, but know little about any other genre, but THINK they know about every other genre!

These guys think they are the authority on all music, and usually base their opinons on 'other' music by whatever they happen to have read in their copy of Mojo, Uncut or the like, On more than one occasion these guys have informed me that Sparks are "pretencious" "arty ****s" and "up their own ****". Of course they wont actually listen to or see Sparks to confirm or otherwise this opinion - but they somehow feel informed becuase they are "music fans". So it was these genuine experiences I was refering to in the article. I'm not for one minute suggesting they are right, but i've come across this in real life. Don't know if any others have come across this sort of reaction? be interesting to hear what encounters others had with non-fans.

Thanks for the comments Robin, hope you enjoyed the rest of the articles.

Piley

Robin Davies · Certified Fan Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 64