Sparks - C ou D

Okay, reminder that the Sparks documentary is live later today via Sundance -- go here:

https://fpg.festival.sundance.org/film-info/5fd11d4063d6771d15c3a5f8

3 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern, 11 pm UK.

Three hours to go, can’t wait!

ysi?

Just kiddin. I hope there will be a DVD.

Awesome and a half. Waiting on the Q&A.

What a ride! I know there was a point where Edgar Wright was having trouble whittling down a 3-hour version of it. Hope that version sees the light of day eventually. Even if it’s just more footage of Ron and Russell going about their daily routine — all that stuff was delightful.

Yeah that sense of regularity of habit immediately made me think of Gilbert and George.

Edgar may have to extend the documentary a bit

🤫#newsparksalbum pic.twitter.com/lyKC5ufzE7

— SPARKS (@sparksofficial) April 7, 2021

new song with Todd Rundgren (!) who is imitating Klaus Nomi (??)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVxnnyvpqr0

Trailer for Leos Carax’s ANNETTE, featuring a script/music by the Brothers Mael

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On4v1gNJkrE

The Sparks Brothers is out in cinemas in multiple countries now*, and for a mere $75 you can pre-order the soundtrack, shipping sometime in the next 12 months, and featuring a few exclusive recordings: https://waxworkrecords.com/products/the-sparks-brothers

*and totally rules. way too short. Wright compared the 2hr 15 runtime this week to Billie Eilish having a 2hr 30 doco out when she's 18, but if one Beatles album can have its theatrical doco turned into a 6-hour series, Sparks could at least get six hours for 15 albums.

This is true.

I streamed it earlier this year, but it feels it would be a perfect summer crowded-on-a-weekend arthouse movie.

Hey @edgarwright — took my son to see Sparks Brothers and later that night he made this… pic.twitter.com/mOUUr4koa5

— Scott Reynolds (@jscottamy) June 26, 2021

Good new story here chatting with R&R, goes into more about the filming of Annette.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/sparks-band-interview-the-sparks-brothers-and-annette.html

A typed-up interview with Ron, Russel, and Wright:
https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/edgar-wright-sparks-interview-2021

and a podcast with Edgar interviewing the Maels via Zoom:
https://www.talkhouse.com/edgar-wright-talks-with-ron-and-russell-mael-sparks-on-the-talkhouse-podcast/

(download option under "share")

can anyone speak to the the reasoning behind putting it in multiplexes nationally (i think its on 500 screen?!) seems likea risky move

Did well enough that they will now have a third feature film released this summer, with a Wright-directed full live show from London 2018 premiering at the BFI in four weeks

Adam Buxton is hosting a four-part Sparks Brothers podcast series, presumably featuring more of the interviews not used in the film.

I absolutely need this heist movie.

The cast & crew at the #Annette photocall: Leos Carax, Ron Mael, Marion Cotillard, Russell Mael, Simon Helberg, and Adam Driver #Cannes2021 pic.twitter.com/8tmdpv8qWJ

— Adam Driver UK (@AdamDriverUK) July 6, 2021

And finally on that red carpet at Cannes, after all these decades.

✨#RedSteps ANNETTE by Leos CARAX – Opening film#Cannes2021 #Competition pic.twitter.com/BB4pdWhUUE

— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) July 6, 2021

Tour time:

Excited to FINALLY announce that Sparks will be touring in North America in 2022! ✨

🔗: https://t.co/50rd7OquJx

Tickets go on sale Friday, July 16 at 10AM.

Pre-sales:
Sparks Fan Club - Tue, 7/13 at 10AM
Maeling List - Wed, 7/14 at 10AM

(Pre-sales end on Thu, 7/15 at 10PM.) pic.twitter.com/EInWY3TzUp

— SPARKS (@sparksofficial) July 12, 2021

THEY ARE AT BIG EARS!

I think you started the Big Ears thread on the wrong board!

Adam Buxton is hosting a four-part Sparks Brothers podcast series, presumably featuring more of the interviews not used in the film.

turns out that only seven minutes of each seventy-minute episode are posted as podcasts, apologies :(

Frustating as it is that 'Talent Is An Asset' doesn't include the line, "We're his parents (that's parenthetical)", I admire their restraint.

It’s all relative.

Not inaccurate

Hey we saw you from accross the bar and wrote a funny little song about it to provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage using the methods of episches theatre to mark our contemporary existence. pic.twitter.com/meQwrLsG91

— OK 🆗 🦊 FOX (@0KF0X) September 8, 2021

A lot of fun, this documentary.

Quite right

https://glidemagazine.com/271576/sparks-reissuing-five-post-millenial-releases-on-cd-vinyl/

Sparks are celebrating their post-millennial renaissance with the 21st Century Sparks collection of deluxe reissues, to be released by BMG on CD and vinyl later this spring. Balls (2000), Lil’ Beethoven (2002), and Hello Young Lovers (2006) arrive on Friday, April 29; Exotic Creatures Of The Deep (2008) and The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman (2009) follow on Friday, May 27.

great news, especially since I just looked up what Li'l Beethoven is selling for and holy fuck. I actually have Hello Young Lovers and the price is absurd even though the record itself doesn't sound great, on account of being over 50 minutes long and all. so the 2xLP should be pretty good.

welp I just played "Here Kitty" seven times in a row

These guys were absolutely terrific at Big Ears.

They don't stop. New movie musical in the works, new Sparks album and world tour in 2023: https://deadline.com/2022/11/sparks-duo-ron-russell-mael-developing-musical-x-crucior-at-focus-1235162734/

new album in the can already? wonder how much stuff out there is completed but waiting due to the vinyl shortage. I heard Todd Rundgren's new album was done for like a year.

Apparently Russell announced it was done at one of their shows in Japan back in August. I'm hoping for an early 2023 release, but we'll see...

Stay tuned — more news soon! ✨ pic.twitter.com/DnKLQWbDpP

— SPARKS (@sparksofficial) November 14, 2022

Nice that a new Sparks album is actually an event.

no one writes funnier horny songs than Sparks. listening to "Let The Monkey Drive" rn and it's really cracking me up

They're just that good.

Exotic Creatures actually has a lot of really funny lyrics. I mean all Sparks albums do but some of them will randomly be really great, like this and Whomp That Sucker. The opening lines to "This is the Renaissance" are so good. the whole song is actually

Seeing them do that whole album at UCLA was a treat, thanks to extra staging as well. Imagine a whole bunch of women dressed as Ron coming out during "She Got Me Pregnant" (with fake baby bumps of course). Ron's looks to them in (fake) confusion were amazing.

Has any other band had such an Indian Summer as them? It’s wonderful they are not only getting the recognition they deserve in the US, but still putting out vital new work—for over two decades!—that can stand beside their best. It’s like of Bowie was putting out consistent Blackstars since 2000.

Suede have been making a hell of a second run but then again they had broken up. Sparks had the dry gulch period but after that, it just all kept coming.

I guess Gary Numan comes to mind, as he's got that same pattern of acclaimed and innovative early stuff leading to a decade of mediocre, floundering pop records, only to score an out of nowhere comeback that not only changed his sound but brought in a whole new audience, from which he's never looked back. all his records have been pretty similar since then. idk how true that is for Sparks exactly but I would say all their records from Hello Young Lovers on are kinda the same amalgam of all the elements of the "Sparks" sound, as opposed to the ones before that which were often hyperfocused on a specific thing. obviously not a bad thing, I feel like I enjoy those records even more than the old ones.

Seeing them do that whole album at UCLA was a treat, thanks to extra staging as well. Imagine a whole bunch of women dressed as Ron coming out during "She Got Me Pregnant" (with fake baby bumps of course). Ron's looks to them in (fake) confusion were amazing.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, January 9, 2023 8:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This was amazing and it's really too bad they didn't release a DVD of any of these shows like they did with the previous few tours.

It's the 21 x 21 set of shows in London I'd love to see a full set of; you get a quick montage of snippets in the documentary but that's it (I saw nearly all of them via webcast, probably mentioned way earlier on this thread). The other one I would love is the one-off Guy Maddin staging of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman; again, we get a clip in the documentary so a full recording must exist. In a weird way, the fact that R&R keep being engaged with trying something new first and foremost is a blessing and maybe a slight curse; while they'll do reissues and things there's very little sense of sustained creative retrospection with them, which is why 21 x 21 was such a thoroughly unique one off.

feels way too big to release even as a DVD set but yes I do wish recordings of all that would come out. I mean this band has a long and storied career spanning four decades at that point and they just played every single one of their songs live, that's basically a fever dream

we get a clip in the documentary so a full recording must exist

If it hasn't been done already, there must be a great thread to be had in "a clip of x artist in x situation is out there, so a full recording must exist"

Of course, the artist(s) themselves not liking how it turned out is almost certainly the answer to why we can't see it. Still, I feel like there are a ton of examples of this.

just want to add another vote for "Let The Monkey Drive" as one of their best/funniest songs

"I think his license has expired"

So good. I just love the inner logic of that song, "Can't fool around while we're driving on the PCH but can't wait until we get to Santa Barbara. What to do, what to do? Oh, of course, we'll let the monkey drive. It is his car, after all."

xps Yeah, it's kind of crazy that they've mounted so many different projects for which no there's no real official documentation: 21x21, the Exotic Creatures full-album performances, that Seduction stage show, Kimono with an orchestra, the Revenge of Two Hands One Mouth tour (with its own unique theme song!)... they and their collaborators clearly put a ton of work into these things that basically just existed for those who were lucky enough to be there at the time.

all their records from Hello Young Lovers on are kinda the same amalgam of all the elements of the "Sparks" sound, as opposed to the ones before that which were often hyperfocused on a specific thing

I'm not familiar yet with all the recent records, but I had this same thought recently listening to Balls and A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip: how the earlier record has songs that feel jammed into arrangements that aren't entirely germane but have to conform to a dance-oriented electronic template. Really, you could say this started with Big Beat, where eclecticism within a given album became a bad word. Each record has to stick to "hard rock"/MOR/Eurodisco/New Wave/Synthpop/dance/"classical" etc.. In the last 20 years, they seem to have the confidence that the Sparks name is selling the record, not their conformation to somebody else's genre that will lead listeners blindfolded to their album.

Signed to Island once again -- that has to feel a little weird, almost literally fifty years later from the first time around -- and new album in May, The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte. Also said something about a big headline show in America in particular.