Found Footage documentary on the band Sparks that I made for a journalism class in 2010. Featuring, This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us, Achoo, Wacky Women, My Baby's Taking Me Home, Lighten Up Morrissey and more!
On September 7, 1973, I heard Moon Over Kentucky in a record store. Decided to buy Woofer right then. Took it home and nearly launched into space. It was beyond anything I had ever known. I simply couldn't believe it. And so was born one of the most intense Sparks lovers in Michigan.
I agree 100%! They are very talented. Have loved them for years. Marketing strategy didn't succeed for them. A very weird time in music. Didn't quite fit in between 70's and 80's, though wow!
It's 2023, 10 years after this was posted & Sparks are more relevant now than they have been in 30 plus years. Ten years from now they will be in their mid to late 80's, stay tuned!
i cant believe i just got into this guys now.........fucking musical genius! when u can make ppl laugh and yet play some serious diverse music and with complex structure, u know thats special. It kinda like how Frank Zappa was......Amazing!!!
As a Sparks fan of over 40 years (actually met Russ once in a supermarket in L.A!) I must say that I found this documentary fun ,stylish, stimulating and provocative- therefore perfectly appropriate to the band. Loved the archive footage! People always tried to classify them as one-hit-wonders, but they've always moved on from commercialism and done their own thing.From Halfnelson to FFS, who knows where they'll go next....
This is an excellent documentary about an awesome band a lot of people have never heard of. A lot of their songs sound like French folk music to me ..maybe it's only me.. In any case I really love this band!
'This Town' gob-smacked me in 1974, as it did many others of my age! I wish they'd come to my own town, and play anything they please... Yeah, brothers, Portland Maine would give you a fine welcome!
Thanks for this, they deserve more attention. As you say, totally resisting classification, serious yet witty, avante garde yet commercial, esoteric but catchy, pretentious but brutally down-to-earth. I love the way they answer the questions of TV interviewers, ie they tell the truth. Russell fancied Jane Wiedlin and has sex with the groupies.. you won't get that from Bono. The music scene would be a poorer place without them.
I was a great fan of sparks when they first arrived on the scene in England in the mid 70's. I saw them in concert in Leeds university in 1975 and stared out Ron which, was for me, a highlight in my life. Unfortunately, since nowadays nobody remembers them, I wallow in the memory!!
That must have been the same concert I met Adrian Fisher...I'd gone there with support act Nicole and Marsh, and left with Adrian to a big party, and then ended up going on the rest of the tour with them. I must have been the luckiest girl alive!
Thanks very much for posting this video. While putting to DVD my old 90's VHS tapes, I found a short extract of this band performing "This town ain't big enough for both of us", unfortunately there was no mention of the band's name nor the name of the song. I fought it sounded a bit like "Virginia Plain" by Roxy Music, so I started investigating for Roxy music's early video's here on RU-vid and eventually found your video... NOW I know the name of this band and the song. Thank you for helping me solve this mystery !
Merci pour ce merveilleux film qui me met en haleine avant de découvrir le film qu'Edgard Wright a fait sur les Sparks. Cela fait plus de 40 ans que je suis fascinée par ces deux gentlemans hors du commun et pourtant cela ne fait que récemment que je regarde les films sur eux sur youtube. RU-vid m'a permis d'oublier que je ne pouvais plus aller au concert et les Sparks ont sû gérer cette pandémie avec beaucoup d'humour à la grande joie de leur fans. Vous avez raison de dire que ce groupe a été longtemps sous-estimé, mais ceux avec lesquels on les a injustement comparé T-Rex, Queens, ne sont plus là depuis longtemps, et ceux qui restent des années fin 60-70 se contentent de vivre de leur vieux succès.... Ron et Russell sont toujours là et au mieux de leur forme, délivré des stéréotypes qu'on leur attribué. Non les Sparks ce n'est pas"Marc Bolan, qui chante avec Hitler", comme l'aurait déclaré John Lennon, sans doute avec humour, mais pour d'autres, ce n'en était pas. Et ils ont tenu bon Cette année 2021 sera l'année de nos deux éternels jeunes gens, déjà grâce au film "Annette" dont ils ont fait la musique et créé le scénaro et le joli documentaire qu'a fait sur eux Edgar Wright, sans compter les concerts prévus depuis deux années qui auront enfin lieu. Puis le réalisateur Leos Carax vient d'être récompenser par le Prix du metteur en scène au festival de Cannes, et ce sont les Sparks qui sont allés chercher le prix car le réalisateur n'a pas pu êtrer présent... Et ce n'est pas fini. Quelle joie!!!
Absolutely brilliant work!! Thank you so much. My second favourite band of all time after The Beatles. Hugely underrated and underappreciated. Long may they continue.
This is a fine piece of work, entertaining and so well-put together. You reveal their unusual creativity and presence in ways that are straight forward without being up in your face. Their quirkiness is well-shown without being made slapstick. Thank you.
A rare treat for anyone willing to take a risk on the odd, quirky or simply unique. There's much in the way of musical genius here to reward the brave.
Wow! Great Job jedenobel! I am amazed that you got so much footage but then again here in Ohio Sparks footage is pretty thin! Been a fan since 1982 when my Brother gave me Kimono My House to listen to! Bravo!
I do hope, Mr. deNobel, that you aced your journalism class with this project. A Sparks documentary worth being seen world-wide by a student. Bravo! I've been following them since '74 onward.
I've been listening to Sparks for more than 35 years... one of my bands in college even covered Sparks I Predict for a while... still enjoy recent gems like Home or Suburban Homeboys!
Wow, great vid. I've been following Sparks for over 40 years. Never tire of them and always amazed how they changed their style .💪 I just wish they would come to Australia for a concert!
You did a great job putting this documentary together. I simply Googled never turn your back on Mother Earth because I wanted to know who did the original since I'm familiar with Martin Gore, of Depeche Mode, covering the song over 20 years ago. I had no idea that Sparks ever existed and I'm looking forward to getting to know their catalog now. Nearly every song is brilliant, including lighten up Morrissey.
I had the biggest grin on my face when I saw them last week in Montreal. What a simple, elegant, amazing show. Delightfully odd. I love these guys. I'm so excited to hear more about their upcoming collaboration with Guy Madden!
I did a tfinal paper on the Velvet underground, & Lou Reed NY LP with a little Plastic Bertrand and Elvis Costello thrown in and my community college English professor thought I plagiarized it. Loved Sparks still have the half Nelson 45. Finally they just have been rewarded with a documentary and a career retrospective box set
I saw Sparks live in Oxford UK in November 1974! That makes me feel old! They were great, amazing that that they’re still going strong, a very underrated band in my humble opinion.
So many opinions and thoughts I embrace here - best band, band of gold, pure genius, and above all, "Hope you got a good grade for this" !!! Sparks will be here with us til the end of the world just like the band in theTitanic...and later, in Heaven, we'll still be listening to their nº1 song...
Sparks originated a genre that is like 'satirock' (satire rock). There have been many bands who flirted with this since then and really expanded on the concept (Pure Guava by Ween, or Mr. Bungle s/t being the best defining albums of the genre)...but I wholeheartedly believe our whole thing comes from Sparks. If there were no Sparks, nobody would have had the balls to do this in public. God bless em. thanks for giving them their overdue documentary- this is great. I also love the found footage concept as with the digital format it feels pretty fresh.
I Still Remember the Unbelivibal Day when I Disco-vered THE SPARKS . In 1974, I was 5, I was watching the Famous French Music Pro-Glam sorry Program called MÉLODIE(melody in English) . I was with the 3 daughters of my Nurse( very Catholic Faùmily), All the Girls(the Younger One was 9 years old, the Older 12 or 13), They said "Oh shit, He looks like Hitler" and I answered "WWWOOOWWW, IT'S GREAT ! NNNNOOOO !!! LOOKED LIKE CHAPLIN !"(They were so New Wave, P,unk, New Romantic, a liitle bit Glam too, Rock'n'Roll, More English than English Themselves, No Style Defined but All the Style at the Same Time ..... and RON and RUSSEL MAËL still singing in Regular Concerts in 2021 !!!
I hope this video earned you a good grade! I like the way the narrative focused on the Sparks' ongoing reinvention of itself. Along that line, it would have been nice if the video had mentioned Sparks' brush with the NYC downtown punk scene circa 1976-1977, an important phase in their history even if it wasn't their most commercially successful period, instead of jumping directly from 1975 to 1979. Regardless, great work, thanks for posting it!
Russell being astonished at being mobbed adoring mainly teenage female fans is priceless, Sparks is far the arrogant, egotistical, vanity driven narcissist pop group a slot which much of the music press desperately wanted to Sparks to flit into. Sparks really the original intellectual 'punk' group [similar to Lou Reed, Nico, Velvet Underground, etc] in that they refused to conform to expectations and strive to confound their critics and fans alike. In the latest development Sparks have merged with Franz Ferdinand to form FFS ... the story of their lifelong musical rebellion continues
Underrated band. They created a sound , which although did have echoes of Roxy music , was in the main , highly original. Ron's Hitler moustache freaked a lot of people out . This Town Ain't Big enough For The Both Of Us and Amateur Hour are great songs.
Yeah but Hardy n Chaplin was way before Hitler. I'm sure 99% of people will associate that tache with him. I think it took balls for Ron to sport that tache. Imagine the looks and possible confrontations? I was unaware they are Jewish, that adds a different slant to it....
wow! thanks for the documentry! I really loved some of their albums. Kimono my house my favorite. but i didn't know that Earl and Jim Mankey were involved with Sparks. I knew Jim when he was with Dream 6 and later, Concrete Blonde and Earl recorded an album I was on with Downy Mildew...
Saw the show this past Saturday in Toronto. Awesome. Two young 20-something women came to the show dressed as Geishas. Nice touch. Also saw them in 2008 in London for the Kimono & Propaganda album shows. Sparks are so good.
When I was in high school I saw Sparks on Saturday Night Live and after hearing Ron describe Mickey Mouse, then hearing the song I went out and bought Angst in my Pants and I became the only kid in my high school who was into Sparks. I guess I was the only Kidd with good musical taste
I have 3000 different songs or so on my Spotify collection. 95% of the artists I have, have songs in mix 'tapes' (40 songs per) from 1 or 2 to about 6-7 songs (Rare) total. I also have a very few collections (40+ songs) just for the greats. The Beatles, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Depeche Mode, The Grateful Dead, Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, kd Lang, P. Funkadelic, Jefferson Airplane /Lene Lovich and *Sparks* This is the company they deserve to be put in. Even the Beatles had songs I don't like. However ONLY the good ones count! *Talent IS an asset!*
Rough, but quite enjoyable. Captures the key moments of the band with some amazing footage. Amateur on a student level, but thought out quite well. Bravo!
